Dovecot, North Piteadie

This is a two-storey, four-bay house, originally dated 1685, with later additions around 1800 and further alterations in 1869. It is accompanied by single-storey pavilions and a rear courtyard, all set within a walled garden and associated outbuildings. The main house is harled with rusticated and droved quoins and dressed margins, featuring base and eaves courses.

The south (principal) elevation displays a doorway in the outer left bay, featuring an elaborate carved pediment with scrollwork dated 1685, and a two-leaf panelled timber door. Three windows are regularly spaced to the right, while three offset windows at the first floor each break the eaves to form a pedimented dormerhead. Flanking wings are single-storey, each with a wide, central tripartite window.

The west elevation is lower, with a crowstepped, finialled lean-to bay projecting to the left of the pavilion gable. Further windows are present on the return to the right, and a smaller window is high up in the recessed two-storey block.

The east (courtyard) elevation is largely obscured by a link wall, but includes a small window at first floor and a gablehead stack with an inset stone inscribed “WD 1869”.

The north (rear) elevation is a mix of elements, including a triple-gable with a four-light transomed window at first floor, and a canted oriel in the centre of the same floor. A high garden wall abuts to the left of centre, with lower bays at each re-entrant angle.

The windows are timber sash and case with 4, 6, 10, and 12 panes of glass. The roof is covered with grey slates, with larger slate/stone eaves courses on the pavilions. Chimneys are coped ashlar with cans, and the skewputts are moulded. The interior was not inspected in 1999.

A small, rectangular, gabled dovecot is located in a projecting wing adjoining the eastern link wall and the northern courtyard wall. This dovecot is built of harled rubble with stone quoin strips, and its south-facing gable has a small window at ground level and a round-arched dovecot opening above, with brick margins, a stone alighting ledge, and two flight holes to either side of three tiers of timber-surrounded flight holes.

A flat-coped rubble wall encloses the walled garden to the west, with slated, rubble lean-to outbuildings along the north elevation. The property is approached via corniced, pyramidally-coped, rusticated ashlar gatepiers and rubble boundary walls. It’s believed the 1685 datestone was added during the 1869 alterations.