Walled Garden And Loggia, Gledfield House

The property comprises a mansion house with a core dating to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, significantly altered and extended in 1895 and 1907 by Ross and Macbeth. The main structure is two storeys and an attic, built over a raised basement, and is finished with pink harling and tooled ashlar margins.

The south elevation features the original three-bay, two-storey and attic section, which forms the central element and is accessed by a flight of steps to the entrance. The doorpiece and glazed door are later additions. A shaped gable and apex stack mark the slightly advanced centre bay, flanked by ground floor tripartite windows. To either side of this central block are late 19th-century two-storey sections with wide, bowed bays, each containing three windows on the ground floor and first-floor tripartite windows rising into piended dormers. The west gable of the western bay features a shaped gable.

A further addition, a ballroom likely built in 1907, is located at the east gable. This is a single-storey structure over a raised basement, with a wide, single bay and a simple Venetian window under a shaped and finialled gable. The east elevation of the ballroom has a wide, shallow bow with three windows to the ground and basement levels.

Extensive east-facing additions extend to the rear of the house, varying in height and incorporating further bowed bays, tripartite windows and piended dormers. The rear elevation of this wing is primarily service areas, with irregular window placement and three small piended dormers.

The windows are fitted with 12-pane glazing, and there are corniced end and ridge stacks. The roofs are slate.

The interior of the house has a rambling layout, with the original late 18th-century plan significantly altered. It features very fine, late 19th and early 20th-century Adamesque plaster ceilings and cornices in the drawing room, dining room, and ballroom. Dados and fine fireplaces also date from this period, along with a late 19th-century staircase.

To the west of the house is a large walled garden enclosed by an ashlar-coped rubble wall. Within the west wall is a shallow, classical temple-fronted loggia, built of polished ashlar. The loggia features a wide pediment supported by four Ionic columns, with a crested oval medallion in the centre of the pediment displaying the Matheson arms.

Gledfield House was described as a “gentleman’s residence” by 1840 and was purchased by Sir Alexander Matheson of Ardross in 1847. A photograph of the house before alterations, taken before 1895, is in the possession of the current owner. Tenders for the 1895 and 1907 alterations were advertised in the Inverness Courier.