Stables, Clatto House

Stables at Clatto House

Possibly designed by Burn and Bryce, this steading is dated 1853 on its west gable. It comprises a U-plan courtyard arrangement in plain Scots vernacular style. The layout consists of an L-plan range to the south and east, with a detached T-plan range to the west. The courtyard is enclosed to the north by a coped boundary wall in a symmetrical arrangement. A centre entrance is flanked by a pair of ashlar gatepiers, with two subsidiary pedestrian entrances on either side (the right-hand one now blocked). The court itself is setted, with a circular masonry trough at its centre.

The steading is constructed in stugged and snecked sandstone with droved ashlar dressings and raised margins at the openings. A distinctive feature is the stack detailing, with end stacks pierced by two rectangular ventilator openings. The roofs are slated. Many of the original openings have been altered to accommodate new domestic use.

The L-plan range is single storey with a crowstepped north gable featuring a finely detailed scroll-moulded skewputt and nosed skews. At the centre of the gable is a corbelled chimney breast on moulded ashlar brackets with finely droved ashlar. A garage door now occupies what was presumably a window opening similar to the two vertically placed windows in the symmetrical gable of the taller west range. The long range, built on a slope, contains various openings and a corniced ridge stack at the division between two rooms in a three-bay section at the south end. The south end has a piended roof, with a modern timber porch at the southeast re-entrant angle.

The single storey south range, also in domestic use, has the same crowstepped eaves and end stack detailing. Its openings are mostly altered, with some blind on the rear elevation towards the west end.

The detached west stables block is taller, a single storey and loft range built on a slope. It has two vertically-placed window openings on the north gable and a five-bay courtyard elevation featuring alternate two-leaf doors (two with narrow fanlights) and three sash and case glazed windows with 12 panes. A single storey wing to the rear forms the tail of the T-plan. At the southwest angle of the steading, attached at right angles to this wing and parallel to the main west range, is a coped wall enclosing a pen and hen-house (subject to alterations in 1991).

Burn and Bryce remodelled the pre-existing Clatto House for General John Low in 1845. It is presumed that the steading was built during the same phase of major alterations and additions, and may therefore also have been designed by Burn and Bryce. The steading appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1854 in much the same form as it exists today, showing an L-plan range to the east and south (as present) and a detached range apparently with a horse mill (no longer extant) to the west. The L-plan ranges are currently in domestic use, and 1991 proposals envisioned alterations that would change the west T-plan range to domestic use and link it at the southwest angle to the south wing of the main L-plan range.