Steading And Gighouse, The Old Manse, Lothmore

The Old Manse is a complex of buildings, originally dating to the later 18th century, but significantly altered with extensions. The main house is harled, with contrasting painted tooled ashlar margins. The north facade presents a 2-storey, 3-bay arrangement. The original south frontage, with a central doorway, is partially masked by a later 19th-century, 2-storey asymmetrical wing, which incorporates a new entrance in a shallow southwest-facing re-entrant angle with a projecting square porch. The windows are 12-pane sash windows, and two original piended dormers are present in the earlier section of the house. Corniced end stacks are visible, alongside later 19th-century skewes and skewputts; the roofs are slate.

A single-storey, 3-bay service cottage stands at a right angle to the east gable, with a more recent door inserted in the rear.

Adjacent to the house is a long, low, single-storey, buttressed L-plan steading, which also functions as a gighouse. This building is also harled and has a slate roof.

The manse garden abuts an old graveyard, which marks the site of an earlier parish church. A plan of the manse, dated 1826, is held within the National Library of Scotland’s Sutherland Papers.