Ness castle

Ness Castle is a large, single-story villa dating to around 1830, built over a raised basement. Later attic windows have been added to the north elevation. The villa is constructed of coursed rubble with tooled and polished ashlar dressings.

The north entrance front features a tetrastyle portico covering the advanced central three bays. The centre has a pilastered doorpiece with a monogrammed cartouche displaying a coat of arms above it, and small flanking attic windows. Three bays flank the portico, with later raised and pedimented dormers. Advanced outer two-bay wings, with a lower roofline, extend outwards, accompanied by five-bay return elevations to the east and west.

The south garden elevation presents a seven-bay frontage, with a wide, projecting, bowed three-window bay in the centre, topped with a shallow bowed piended roof and a shallow terrace. Advanced canted three-window bays at the outer edges have lower piended roofs. Decorative cast-iron guards are present on some front and west return gable windows.

The windows are largely double-hung with two and four panes, although some nine- and twelve-pane windows remain in the raised basement. Symmetrical corniced stacks are topped with decorative pottery cans. The roofs are piended, with a platform and central domed roof light to the main central block. Various service wings extend eastwards, screened from the south front by a high coped wall that fronts a range of glass houses.

A two-story Italianate water tower is also present.

Inside, the entrance hall leads to a top-lit central hall beneath a dome, featuring decorative plaster ribbing and festoons. Coffered plaster ceilings are found in the main public rooms, along with corniced and moulded door frames, panelled doors and dados, a black marble chimney piece in the former dining room, and vaulted corridors.

The building was formerly known as Darochville. By 1835, it was the residence of Lady Saltoun. It was bought by Sir John Ramsden in 1871, and by the mid-1890s was owned by Charles Fountaine Walker, whose monogram appears above the front door.