Barn And Stables, Cranston House

Barn and Stables, Cranston House

Cranston House is a substantial residence dating from 1835, designed in the manner of William Burn, though it may incorporate elements of an earlier manse from the 1790s. The building comprises a two-storey, double L-plan main block with a northern principal block and a southern subsidiary block containing former offices. Former barn and stables, now converted to domestic use, enclose a courtyard to the east and south.

The house displays asymmetrical Scots Jacobethan styling 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 form with an advanced full-height gable to the left. A three-bay parapetted canted bay window projects at ground floor level, with a single window above. Three bays set back to the right contain the entrance to the left, which features a steeply pitched pointed canopy hood deeply projecting with an apex finial supported on sculptured ashlar consoles and enclosing a triangular tympanum. The door is four-panelled with a letterbox fanlight with margined glazing above. Two single windows occupy the ground floor to the right, with three crowstepped dormers at first floor level.

Internally, the house contains a masonry staircase with cast-iron balustrades. Original window shutters remain in the dining room, with pilastered panels between windows in the projecting canted bays.

The service buildings comprise an L-plan stable and barn range of single storey, enclosing a courtyard to the southwest of the house and linked by a gateway to the southeast corner leading to the garden. Openings have been blocked and glazed during conversion. Paired slit ventilators are present in the west-facing gable end of the south range, and a small slit ventilator on the west elevation of the east barn range faces onto 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 in the later 19th century.

A walled garden with coped walls of stugged and snecked sandstone encloses a rectangle to the east of the house, with the east wall of the barn incorporated into the garden's west wall.

The house features twelve-pane timber sash and case windows. Pitched slate roofs have masonry ridges, except the west former barn range, which lacks a masonry ridge. Chimney flues are carried up through the centres of the gable ends.

Historical context

The building's history is complex. Records suggest that a manse was originally planned for this site in 1783-95, with detailed specifications provided by Alexander Stevens in 1783. However, these designs were apparently never executed. At a Heritors' meeting in December 1783, the existing manse and church (possibly both dating from 1698) were deemed uninhabitable, particularly as they were surrounded and obscured by Lord Adam Gordon's plantations at Preston Hall. Although a new manse was planned, relocation did not occur until 1835, following the Callander family's acquisition of the estate. The former manse, situated adjacent to the Lion's Gates at Preston Hall, remained marked on estate plans of 1794 and 1806. The new house was built at the sole expense of William Burn Callander Esq., who considered the aged manse too close to his estate. The Reverend Alexander Welsh was the first occupant of the new manse.