West Garden Lodge, Melville House

Melville House is a large, symmetrical, H-plan classical mansion house dating from 1697 to 1701, designed by James Smith, and likely influenced by or based on designs by Sir William Bruce. Reginald Fairlie made alterations and additions in 1939. The main house is three storeys high over a raised basement. It is rendered and lined with ashlar, featuring ashlar dressings, lugged architraves, and rusticated quoins. The north and south elevations are similar in design, with nine bays, the outer two bays projecting forward and containing the central entrance. The principal entrance was originally on the south elevation but is now glazed. It is accessed by splayed stone steps with an ornate wrought-iron balustrade. A projecting, pilastered and pedimented porch was added in the 19th century to the north elevation. The east and west elevations each have six bays, with the inner two bays slightly advanced and topped with pediments featuring oculi. Windows are 12 or 15-pane sashes on the ground and first floors, with smaller windows on the basement and second floors, the latter being 6-pane. A set-off marks the basement level, with a continuous string course between the floors and an eaves course and cornice. Symmetrically placed corniced stacks are present, and a central octagonal lantern rises above the roof, featuring a bell-cast roof and a capping weather vane finial. The roof is piended, slate, and leaded.

The interior of the house boasts lavishly oak-panelled rooms with classical features, including panelled doors—some corniced with pulvinated friezes and pedimented, all generally in lugged architraves. Corinthian or Ionic pilasters and entablatures flank chimney pieces. Raised and fielded panelling and box cornices are also evident. The first-floor saloon’s west drawing room contains a carved chimneypiece with an overmantel carved with swags, putti, and an Earl's coronet.

Two parallel pavilion blocks form a courtyard to the south of the main house. These are rectangular, two-storey blocks, harled with ashlar margins, an eaves course, cornice, two corniced axial stacks and piended slate roofs. The west block has seven irregular bays facing the courtyard and a blind tripartite window on a single bay of the south wall. The east block has eight bays facing the courtyard and blind windows on the two-bay south elevation. Screen walls link the pavilions to the main house, and are harled with ashlar margins. These walls feature altered rectangular gates with blind oculi above and flanking round-headed alcoves, all topped with moulded stone coping and capped urns and four symmetrically placed balls. Two square lodges flank the gateway to the south of the house. These are two-storey, harled structures with ashlar margins and rusticated quoins, featuring a large, central rectangular ground floor opening on the north elevation of each, with a window above. Doors and windows are present on the other elevations. Single wall-head stacks rise above, and the roofs are slated with a bell cast finish and a weathervane finial inscribed 'M' and dated 1697. A low rubble wall connects to squat, corniced square gatepiers with diamond pointed masonry.