Boathouse, Ardverikie House

Ardverikie House is a large, irregular baronial mansion in grey granite rubble with contrasting tooled ashlar dressings, designed by architect John Rhind of Inverness. The house was built between 1873 and 1878, probably incorporating fragments of an earlier shooting lodge. A panel on the tower records "Burnt 1873 Rebuilt 1874 Finished 1878". The original structure, described as a "very splendid shooting lodge" built by the Marquis of Abercorn around 1836, was destroyed by fire in 1873. The present mansion was erected by Sir John Ramsden, who purchased the Ardverikie Estate in 1872, though a portion of the south wing may date from the earlier building.

The house displays a varied gabled roofline across two and three storeys. The south front follows an L-plan with a round-headed entrance set within a two-storey projecting gabled porch featuring corbelled detailing over the ground floor. The first floor is bipartite with a crest above, and a panelled double-leaf door provides access. Gabled bays terminate in circular and octagonal turrets with boldly corbelled conical roofs.

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

Windows throughout are single, double, triple, or four-light mullioned openings, mainly with two-pane glazing and decorative cast-iron finials. Wooden gable apex finials, coped end and ridge stacks, and slate roofs are consistent features.

The interior is richly decorated. The neo-Jacobean inner stair hall features inset low-relief panels depicting sporting artifacts, with a wide wooden staircase of carved balustrade and square finialled newels. The drawing room contains a carved marble chimney-piece and mirrored overmantel, panelled dado, double doors with broken pedimented doorpieces, and a strapwork plaster ceiling. The library is panelled throughout with a carved wooden chimney-piece and overmantel flanked by caryatids; an inglenook is screened by a round-headed arch supported by a pair of fluted Corinthian columns, and bookshelves are 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.

A walled service court at the east is entered through a round-headed archway. The outer service court, set with sett paving, is partially enclosed by single-storey outbuildings and a single-storey-and-loft helm-roofed boathouse and garages block. A detached single-storey-and-loft symmetrical game larder with gabled centrepiece and tall slated ridge fleche stands in the 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 with double doors to a loch inlet (now dried up) is also located to the north. It is constructed of rubble, with coped end stack and slate roof.

The walled garden features coped rubble walls with shallow buttresses at regular intervals. An arched entrance stands beneath a stepped coped overthrow inscribed with a monogram and dated 1939.

The house commands a striking position on the shore of Loch Laggan. Scant remains of a castle survive on an islet nearby. Various datestones and monograms appear throughout the ensemble.