Mountgerald

Around 1800, Mountgerald is a two-storey and attic house with a raised basement, originally three bays wide. The front and side elevations are of coursed rubble stone with pinned details, with harled work on the rear. The windows have tooled ashlar surrounds. A painted, polished ashlar doorpiece, featuring a central pilaster and cornice, frames a round-headed doorway with a keystone, and is approached by a flight of steps that overhang the raised basement. Flanking the entrance are full-height, bowed bays, each with three windows and piended roofs. The symmetrical side elevations have three bays, with some windows being blind. A symmetrical three-bay rear elevation features a slightly advanced centre bay with a pediment and a long, round-headed stair window. Tripartite windows are present in the outer bays of the ground and first floors, with the outer lights being blind. The rear and side elevations have 12-pane glazing, while the front windows have been replaced with 2-pane sashes. A band course runs between the raised basement and the ground floor; a cill band connects all first-floor windows; and a moulded eaves cornice runs around the building. There is a single piended dormer on each side gable, along with a more recent, small, off-centre dormer in the front elevation. Paired, corniced ridge stacks rise from the roof, which is covered in slate.

The interior retains original decorative plaster cornices, panelled doors with moulded door surrounds, and panelled chair rails in the ground-floor rooms.

The house, built on an earlier site previously known as Clyne, was associated with the Mackenzie estate and had links to Findon across the Cromarty Firth. Records concerning Mountgerald date back to at least 1714, showing continuous ownership. Sir George Steuart Mackenzie documented the property in A General View of the Agriculture of the Counties of Ross and Cromarty (1810), and Ian R M Mowat discussed it in Easter Ross, 1750-1850, The Double Frontier (1981).