Thrumster House

Thrumster House is a double pile house from the later 18th century, featuring extensive additions and alterations from various dates in the 19th century. The building has a symmetrical three-bay front that is two storeys high, with single-storey and attic wings set back at the gables. There are later additions at the rear.

The front of the house is white harled with contrasting painted details, while the side and rear elevations are constructed of rubble with tooled rubble dressings. The central door on the south front is obscured by a mid-19th century projecting square porch that has a round-headed keystoned doorway. All front windows are adorned with square hoodmoulds from around 1830 to 1840, and there are long windows flanking the centre door.

At the rear, the central bay is gabled and crowstepped, featuring a long Gothic Y-traceried stair window from circa 1830 to 1840. The projecting flanking wings form a U-plan court that is partially infilled by a low single-storey gabled mid-19th century centre porch, flanked by crowstepped bays with pointed-headed windows.

There is a further two-storey, three-bay double pile wing at the southwest, built in the mid to later 19th century, with two wallhead gables on the southeast elevation. The windows mainly have four- and twelve-pane glazing, and the house features end and apex stacks with some decorative chimney cans, all under Caithness slate roofs.

Inside, the original later 18th century entrance hall and flanking rooms were re-cast in the mid-19th century, featuring a staircase from that period that rises through the rear pile. The first-floor landing is horseshoe fronted and is below a corbelled and braced timber roof decorated with shields bearing family coats of arms. The staircase has shaped balusters and decorative newels, and the landing is supported by ornately carved brackets. The entrance hall has a decorative plaster ceiling cornice, and the doorways are moulded and panelled with segmental-headed doors that have Y-traceried upper glazed panels. There is a later 18th-century chimney piece in the right portion of the entrance hall and a modern chimney piece to the left. The small drawing room in the southwest wing features a barrel ceiling. The interior has various changes of level, including a small blocked staircase at the rear.