Outbuildings, Ardverikie House

Ardverikie House and its Outbuildings

This is a large irregular baronial mansion of 2 and 3 storeys, designed by architect John Rhind of Inverness and dated variously between 1873 and 1878. The house probably incorporates fragments of an earlier shooting lodge. It stands on a commanding site on the loch-side at Loch Laggan.

The main house is constructed of grey granite rubble with contrasting tooled ashlar dressings and features a varied gabled roofline. The south front is L-shaped with a round-headed entrance set within a 2-storey projecting gabled porch with corbelled detailing over the ground floor. The first floor is bipartite with a crest above. A panelled double leaf door marks the entrance. The elevation is articulated by a variety of gabled bays that terminate in circular and octagonal turrets with boldly corbelled conical roofs.

The west garden front is gabled with four bays and projecting canted outer bays, with a 5-storey square tower set back at the north. An off-centre entrance is contained within a 3-arched loggia with a crenellated balcony above. A corbelled turret marks the re-entrant angle, and a set-back turret stands at the south. Upper storeys have crenellated parapets, with a crowstepped and brattished caphouse. Two-storey wings extend to the north and south; the south wing possibly forms part of the earlier house.

Windows are single, double, triple or four-light mullioned types with mainly 2-pane glazing and decorative cast-iron finials. Wooden gable apex finials, coped end and ridge stacks, and slate roofs complete the exterior.

A walled service court on the east is entered through a round-headed archway.

The interior is richly decorated. A Neo-Jacobean inner stair hall features inset low-relief panels depicting sporting artifacts, with a wide wooden staircase possessing a carved balustrade and square finialled newels.

The drawing room contains a carved marble chimney-piece with mirrored overmantel, a panelled dado, and panelled double doors with broken pedimented doorpieces. A strapwork plaster ceiling enriches this space.

The library is panelled throughout with a carved wooden chimney-piece featuring an overmantel flanked by caryatids. An inglenook is screened by a round-headed arch supported by a pair of fluted Corinthian columns, and bookshelves are delineated by barley-sugar clustered colonettes.

The dining room displays an ornate variegated marble chimney-piece with a heavy carved wooden overmantel framing a portrait, panelling to cornice height, and an arcaded plasterwork cornice.

The billiard room is a panelled room with built-in bookshelves.

The outer service court to the east is partially enclosed by single-storey outbuildings and a single-storey building with loft space in a helm-roofed boathouse and garages block. A detached single-storey building with loft contains a symmetrical game larder with gabled centre piece and tall slated ridge fleche. A further detached square game larder with louvered walls and pyramidal louvered roof stands on a mound to the north of the house by the loch-side.

A small rubble L-plan boathouse with double doors opening to a loch inlet (now dried up) stands to the north. It has a coped end stack and slate roof.

A coped rubble walled garden features shallow buttresses at regular intervals and an arched entrance under a stepped coped overthrow bearing a monogram and dated 1939.

Historical Note

A panel on the tower records: "Burnt 1873 Rebuilt 1874 Finished 1878". Various other date stones and monograms are scattered throughout the complex.

A very splendid shooting lodge was built by the Marquis of Abercorn around 1836 and was destroyed by fire in 1873, though a portion of the south wing may date from that period. The present mansion was erected by Sir John Ramsden, who purchased the Ardverikie Estate in 1872. Scant remains of a castle stand on an islet close by.