Walled Garden, Cranston House

Walled Garden, Cranston House

This is a substantial country house built around 1835 in the manner of architect William Burn, though possibly incorporating elements from an earlier reconstruction. The building serves as a former manse, now in private use.

The main block is a 2-storey structure with a double L-plan arrangement: a main L-plan block to the north and a subsidiary L-plan block containing former offices to the south and west. Enclosing a courtyard to the east and south are former barn and stable ranges, now converted to domestic use. The style is Scots Jacobethan, with crowstepped gables and dormer-headed windows. Tall grouped chimneys feature diagonally-set square-plan ashlar chimney shafts. The walls are constructed of squared and snecked sandstone with ashlar dressings and droved quoins with narrow raised margins. The skewputts are beaked.

The principal north elevation is asymmetrical in L-plan arrangement. An advanced full-height gable projects to the left, with a 3-bay parapetted canted bay window at ground floor and a single window above. Three bays set back to the right contain the entrance to the left, marked by a steeply pitched pointed canopy hood, deeply projecting with an apex finial supported on sculptured ashlar consoles and enclosing a triangular tympanum. The 4-panelled door has a letterbox fanlight with margined glazing above. Two single windows occupy the ground floor to the right, and three crowstepped dormers sit at 1st floor level.

The interior features a masonry staircase with cast-iron balustrades and original window shutters in the dining room, with pilastered panels between windows in the projecting canted bays.

The stable and barn ranges form an L-plan single-storey range enclosing a courtyard to the southwest of the house. These are linked by a gateway to the southeast corner leading to the garden. Openings have been blocked and glazed during conversion; the west-facing gable end of the south range has paired slit ventilators, and a small slit ventilator appears on the west elevation of the east barn range facing the garden. The former offices originally single-storey and situated to the south of the west house block, were heightened to single-storey with attic dormer heads around the later 19th century.

A walled garden enclosed by coped walls of stugged and snecked sandstone lies to the east of the house; the east wall of the barn is incorporated into the garden's west wall. Windows throughout are 12-pane timber sash and case. The roofs are pitched slate with masonry ridges (except the west former barn range, which lacks a masonry ridge). Chimney flues are carried up through the centres of gable ends.

The history of the building is complex. Records indicate that a manse was planned for construction in 1793-5 according to designs by Alexander Stevens, with detailed specifications for materials and finishes approved by the Heritors in 1783. The existing manse and church—possibly both built in 1698—had been declared uninhabitable and were surrounded by Lord Adam Gordon's plantations at Preston Hall. The original manse, positioned adjacent to the Lion's Gates at Preston Hall, remained in place as late as 1794 and 1806 according to estate plans. However, the new manse was not built until 1835, following the Callander family's acquisition of the estate. William Burn Callander Esq. funded the construction at his own expense, as he considered the aged manse too close to his estate. The Reverend Alexander Welsh was the first occupant of this new manse.