Ardverikie House

Ardverikie House

This large baronial mansion stands on a commanding site on the banks of Loch Laggan. Designed by the Inverness architect John Rhind and dated variously between 1873 and 1878, it was probably built incorporating fragments of an earlier shooting lodge. The house was erected for Sir John Ramsden, who purchased the Ardverikie Estate in 1872, following the destruction by fire in 1873 of a "very splendid shooting lodge" built by the Marquis of Abercorn around 1836. A panel on the tower records "Burnt 1873 Rebuilt 1874 Finished 1878". The southern wing may possibly incorporate portions of the earlier house.

The building is a large irregular structure of two and three storeys with a varied gabled roofline. It is constructed of grey granite rubble with contrasting tooled ashlar dressings. The south front is L-shaped with a two-storey projecting gabled porch featuring corbelled detailing over the ground floor and round-headed entrance. The first floor is bipartite with a crest above. A panelled double leaf door opens from here. The roofline is punctuated by a variety of gabled bays terminating in circular and octagonal turrets crowned with boldly corbelled conical roofs.

The west garden front features a gabled elevation of four bays with projecting canted outer bays and a five-storey square tower set back to the north. An off-centre entrance is contained within a three-arched loggia topped by a crenellated balcony. A corbelled turret sits in the re-entrant angle, with a set-back turret to the south. Upper levels have crenellated parapets, a crowstepped and brattished caphouse, and wooden gable apex finials. Two-storey wings extend to the north and south.

Windows throughout are mullioned, single, double, triple or four-light, with mainly two-pane glazing and decorative cast-iron finials. The roofs are slated with coped end and ridge stacks.

Interior

The interior is richly decorated. A neo-Jacobean inner stair hall features inset low-relief panels depicting sporting artifacts and a wide wooden staircase with carved balustrade and square finalled newels.

The drawing room contains a carved marble chimneypiece with mirrored overmantel, panelled dado, and panelled double doors with broken pedimented doorpieces. The ceiling is of strapwork plaster.

The library is panelled throughout with a carved wooden chimneypiece featuring an overmantel flanked by caryatids. An inglenook is screened by a round-headed arch supported by a pair of fluted Corinthian columns. Bookshelves are delineated by barley-sugar clustered colonettes.

The dining room features an ornate variegated marble chimneypiece with a heavy carved wooden overmantel framing a portrait. The room is panelled to cornice height with an arcaded plasterwork cornice.

The billiard room is panelled with built-in bookshelves.

Outer service court

A walled service court lies to the east, entered through a round-headed archway. The outer service court is setted and partially enclosed by single-storey outbuildings and a single-storey building with loft containing a helm-roofed boathouse and garages block. A detached single-storey building with loft contains a symmetrical game larder with gabled centrepiece and tall slated ridge fleche. 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 lochside.

A small rubble boathouse of L-plan stands to the north with double doors to a loch inlet, now dried up. It is constructed of rubble with a coped end stack and slate roof.

The walled garden is built of coped rubble with shallow buttresses at regular intervals. An arched entrance is set beneath a stepped coped overthrow bearing a monogram and dated 1939.

Scant remains of a castle survive on an islet close by.