Game Larder, Ardverikie House

Game Larder, Ardverikie House

A Grade-listed stone structure forming part of the Ardverikie House complex on Loch Lagganside.

The main mansion at Ardverikie House 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. It probably incorporates fragments of an earlier shooting lodge. The building is constructed of grey granite rubble with contrasting tooled ashlar dressings and features a varied gabled roofline.

The south front follows an L-plan 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 provides access. Various gabled bays terminate in circular and octagonal turrets topped with boldly corbelled conical roofs.

The west garden front is a gabled facade of four bays with projecting canted outer bays and a 5-storey square tower set back to the north. An off-centre entrance is framed within a 3-arched loggia with a crenellated balcony above. A corbelled turret occupies the re-entrant angle, with a set-back turret to the south. Upper crenellated parapets, crowstepped and brattished caphouse complete this elevation. Two-storey wings extend to north and south, with the southern wing possibly part of the earlier house.

Windows throughout are single, 2, 3 or 4-light mullioned windows with mainly 2-pane glazing and decorative cast-iron finials. Wooden gable apex finials crown the roof, which is slated with coped end and ridge stacks.

A walled service court lies to the east, entered through a round-headed archway.

The interior is richly decorated. The Neo-Jacobean inner stair hall features inset low-relief panels depicting sporting artifacts, with a wide wooden staircase carrying a carved balustrade and square finialled newels. The drawing room contains a carved marble chimney-piece with mirrored overmantel, panelled dado, and panelled double doors with broken pedimented doorpieces beneath a strapwork plaster ceiling. The library is panelled with a carved wooden chimney-piece whose overmantel is flanked by caryatids; an inglenook is screened by a round-headed arch supported by a pair of fluted Corinthian columns, with bookshelves delineated by barley-sugar clustered colonettes. The dining room features an ornate variegated marble chimney-piece with heavy carved wooden overmantel framing a portrait, panelling to cornice height, and an arcaded plasterwork cornice. The billiard room is panelled with built-in bookshelves.

The outer service court to the east is partially enclosed by single-storey outbuildings and a single-storey helm-roofed boathouse/garages block. A detached single-storey game larder with gabled centrepiece and tall slated ridge fleche stands within this court. 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 also stands to the north with double doors to a loch inlet (now dried up), featuring a coped end stack and slate roof.

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

A panel on the tower is inscribed "Burnt 1873 Rebuilt 1874 Finished 1878". Various other datestones and monograms appear throughout.

Historical Context

A "very splendid shooting lodge" was originally built by the Marquis of Abercorn around 1836 and 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 survive on an islet close by.