Kemback House

Kemback House is an earlier 18th-century house with additions dating from around the same time, and substantial baronial style additions from 1907. Originally a three-story, three-window-wide by one-window-deep rectangular block of droved ashlar, it features a Gibbsian doorpiece, raised angle, window, and eaves margins, and a piended roof with tall rectangular end stacks on curvilinear gablets. The house was extended to the west by one bay and returned north, forming an L-shaped plan with a symmetrical five-window west front. The west front has more closely spaced windows but otherwise shares the same detailing as the earlier work. The 1907 additions include crowstepped gablets at the centers of the east and west fronts, a crow-stepped porch with a coat of arms on the south front, a turret at the southeast angle, and a lower, projecting wing created by pushing out the left-hand bay. Internally, much of the original 18th-century fabric remains, including a good scale-and-platt cantilever staircase. The 1907 alterations lack particular distinction. The work of 1907 was commissioned by Sir George Makgill and a postcard in the National Monuments Record of Scotland shows the appearance of the south front before these changes.