Old Manse, Borthwick

The Old Manse is an earlier 19th-century building, originally a three-bay, L-shaped manse. It has had mid-19th century additions and alterations. The exterior is constructed of squared and snecked tooled sandstone with droved dressings, polished to the margins, and features long and short quoins. A base course is present, along with chamfered reveals, blind pointed arched recesses set within the gableheads, and decorative stone finials at the apex of the gables.

The elevation facing southeast is asymmetrical, with a projecting gabled bay added in the mid-19th century, featuring a bipartite window on the ground floor and a single window centrally on the first floor. A single-storey, stugged gabled porch, also from the mid-19th century, is positioned at the re-entrant angle, with a panelled timber door and a small window to the right return. Fenestration is regular in the central and right bays.

The northeast elevation is also asymmetrical, with a projecting gabled bay to the left and a single window offset to the left on the first floor, and a window on the right return at the first floor. The central bay, dating to the mid-19th century, is recessed, and a later snecked sandstone rubble porch and carport have been advanced to the ground floor. There is a window to the left and a carport to the right, alongside a window and door to the inside left return. A skirt roof is present above, with irregular fenestration to the first floor. A slightly recessed bay from the mid-19th century is on the right, featuring a single window centred on the ground floor.

The northwest elevation is asymmetrical, with a projecting central bay from the mid-19th century containing a bipartite window on the ground floor and a single window on the first floor. A stone finial is missing. A carport is in the bay to the left, and a late 20th-century conservatory sits in the re-entrant angle, alongside a recessed bay to the right.

The southwest elevation is asymmetrical, with a gabled central bay containing a single window off-centre to the left on both the ground and first floors. The fenestration is regular on the outer left, and there is a blank bay to the right.

The windows are predominantly 12-pane lying pane and 8-pane timber sash and case. The roof is purple-grey graded slate with lead ridges, stone coped skews with beaked skewputts, and cast iron rainwater goods. Polished ashlar gablehead stacks feature paired offset corniced flues, with a single ridge stack matching this design.

Stone gatepiers have stop-chamfered droved angles and pyramidal caps. Random rubble boundary walls run along the northeast, northwest, and southwest sides, with coping on the northwest and southwest. A droved doorway in the northeast wall has a boarded timber door. There's a roofless rubble lean-to with a central doorway and a corrugated iron-roofed rubble lean-to adjacent to the centre of the southwest inside wall. A rubble wall with semicircular coping, perpendicular to the southwest wall, slopes down toward the house, and a boarded timber door leads to the front garden. An outbuilding with a boarded timber door and slate roof is located in the southwest corner of the garden. A simple cast iron railing sits atop a low rubble wall to the southeast of the manse.

The interior was not inspected in 1997.