Pennyland House

Pennyland House is a farmhouse with associated buildings, largely dating from between 1780 and 1860, with later alterations. It comprises a courtyard grouping of the farmhouse, a threshing mill, and farm cottages. Later extensions to the house and ranges to the south, including a former byre and stable, are not included in the listing.

The farmhouse itself is a symmetrical, two-storey and attic building with three bays facing east. It features a late 18th-century design with an early 20th-century projecting gabled porch, which has windows on all sides and a side entrance. The exterior is primarily rough-cut flagstone, all whitewashed, with contrasting painted ashlar margins. The ground floor windows have been slightly enlarged, and there are two piended dormers in the roof. The rear elevation is symmetrical, featuring a small, round bullseye window set just below the wallhead. Replacement 12-pane windows are fitted throughout, and the roof is covered with Caithness slate and features margined end stacks, straight skews. The interior, inspected in 2015, displays decorative plaster cornicing in the principal rooms, plain cornicing elsewhere, panelled doors, moulded architraves, and a curved timber staircase with decorative cast metal railings. A former drawing room on the ground floor contains a recessed niche flanked by fluted pilasters.

The farmhouse is linked to the north gable of a former threshing barn, dating from the early to mid-19th century, by a length of crenellated wall forming an ‘L’ shape. This wall includes two doors, a dummy corbelled and crenellated angle bartizan, and blind ground and first-floor windows on the north gable of the barn. A similar blind window is also present in the wall. The threshing barn is a long, two-storey, seven-bay building with rough-cut flagstone construction and elevations facing east and west, with all eastern openings blocked or boarded up as of 2015.

A terrace of three cottages, dating from the early 19th century, encloses the farm court against the south gable of the farmhouse. They are two-bay cottages with timber doors and narrow fanlights. Gabled dormers are present in the center and to the right. The cottages are constructed of rough-cut flagstone with Caithness slate roofs, and have corniced gable end and ridge stacks. Interior inspection in 2015 revealed flagstone floors and timber panelling.

A circa early 19th-century boundary wall of rough-cut flagstone runs along the north and west sides of the property, whitewashed on the north side and featuring a commemorative plaque to Sir William Alexander Smith, founder of the Boys' Brigade, reputedly born at the house on 27 October 1854.