Craigsanquhar House

Craigsanquhar House is a mansion dating to around 1874, designed by James Maitland Wardrop in a Jacobethan style. The house is roughly square in plan, and notable for its skillful and distinctive asymmetrical design. Originally accompanied by single-storey buildings forming a kitchen court to the northwest, these have been demolished, although remnants of the inner courtyard walls remain.

The exterior is constructed from bull-faced coursed or snecked rubble, partially repointed in 1991, with finely polished ashlar used for the doorpiece and bay windows. Stugged dressings are present, along with a rubble base course and plain string courses at the first and moulded string course at the second floor on the principal elevations. Coped gables and octagonal pinnacles project from the wallhead parapet, with finials at the gable apices, including a lion rampant above the entrance bay. Tall, octagonal, shafted Jacobethan stacks rise from the ridges, and the roof is steeply pitched and slated. A square timber lantern tops the rear staircase, capped with a fish-scale slated ogival form and a weathervane. Decorative rainwater heads are attached to downpipes. Sash and case windows are used throughout, with plate glass in the principal rooms and three panes deep at the first floor and rear.

The eastern front, which serves as the main entrance front, features a slightly advanced gable with single windows on each floor to the left. The right side of the entrance front presents an irregular four-window pattern, with an off-centre advanced entrance bay. The doorpiece has a basket-arched design, a plain pilastered architrave, fluted consoles, a corniced frieze, and strapwork above terminating in a cartouche inscribed with ‘NJS’ flanked by obelisk finials atop balls. The heavy, nailed oak door is in a 17th-century style.

The south elevation, which faces the garden, is near-symmetrical. Single-storey canted bay windows flank a central three-light mullioned and transomed window at ground level; later steps have been added at the centre. The parapets of the canted bays feature a quatrefoil in a pierced roundel and ball-finials, set upon a moulded cope. The first floor has a bipartite window at the centre, flanked on the left by a bipartite (outer) and single-light windows and on the right by two single-light windows. A single gable steps above the wallhead parapet to the left of the bipartite.

The west elevation presents an L-plan frontage with three windows to the left, and gabled, plain outer bays. A gable to the right incorporates belt and string courses, and angle pinnacles.

The north elevation was originally an E-plan layout, with a single-storey range extending northward to form a kitchen court. It is now an F-plan, plain in appearance and incorporating large wallhead stacks. Only the inner walls of the kitchen court buildings – with blocked openings – and a single corniced gatepier at the east entrance survive.

The interior features a top-lit, dog-legged principal staircase with twisted balusters and panelled newels, topped with decorative ball finials. The ground floor rooms retain original timber chimney-pieces. The southeast drawing room and southwest dining room are in a Jacobethan style; the drawing room has Ionic capped baluster stiles and the dining room incorporates an ionic pilaster and tiled insets. A simple, lugged and moulded classical timber chimney-piece, with a monogram inscription ('?MLS') in a pulvinated frieze, is found in the “business room” located at the northeast angle to the right of the entrance porch. Plain cornices are present on the ground floor, although the first and attic floors were not inspected.