Western Garden Pavilion, Pollok House, Pollok Park, Pollokshaws Road, Glasgow

The Eastern Garden Pavilion is part of Pollok House, located within Pollok Park in Glasgow. Likely designed by an architect based in the west, possibly Allan Dreghorn, the original house dates to 1752. Significant additions and alterations were made beginning in 1890 by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson for Sir John Stirling Maxwell, including wings, an entrance hall, a reconstructed forecourt to the northeast, garden pavilions to the southwest, and offices to the northwest. Pollok House, its contents, and grounds were gifted to the people of Glasgow in 1966 and now operate as a museum and public park.

The original house is a three-story structure over a half-raised basement, fully raised on its garden front. It features plain elevations, rusticated quoins, and keystoned lintels at the ground and first floors, with unusual offsets above both the base and band courses at the first floor. An advanced, pedimented centrepiece defines the forecourt (northeast side), while the garden side presents a single, uninterrupted wall plane aside from the offsets. A wide central bay features an entrance arranged in a Venetian window style, flanked by sculpted swags above each upper-floor window and with three further plain bays on each side. A deep, projecting cornice tops the building, and the bell-cast, slated roof has stacks at a leaded platform and over the flank wall-heads.

The interior layout deviates from conventional design, with a full-depth central entrance hall providing ample light to the garden and featuring a columned screen. A cross-ways corridor runs the full length of the house. An open main stair is located to the right upon entering, while a concealed service stair occupies the corresponding position on the otherwise symmetrical plan; the dining and drawing rooms are of equal size, facing the garden, and retain some of the original, high-quality decorative plasterwork.

Sir Robert Rowand Anderson’s additions were designed to be sympathetic to the original house. They utilize a restrained Gibbsian/William Adam style. Flanking wings—a library to the southeast and a billiard room to the northwest—are single-story with Venetian windows facing the garden, mirroring the garden doorway. The entrance hall has a D-ended plan, reuses the original doorcase, and incorporates a double-flighted stair. The kitchen to the northwest features a roof dome and a large cast-iron range. Offices extending to the northeast have a pedimented, round-arched pend with sculpted ornament, facing a court and driveway. The forecourt is enclosed by tall walls with channelled piers at intervals and at the gateway, all surmounted by urns, and decorative cast-iron gates.

A terraced garden to the southwest features pavilions with ogee roofs, balustrades, and steps.