Cairnfield House

Dated 1802, this is a mansion house possibly designed by John Paterson of Edinburgh, built on an earlier site. The main house is linked at its north-east to an earlier service pavilion by a curved quadrant.

The north-facing main block is a two-storey house with a dormerless attic, rising over a raised basement, spanning three wide bays. The front elevation displays pinned rubble with contrasting tooled ashlar dressings; the remaining elevations are harled or harl-pointed rubble. The slightly advanced and pedimented centre bay forms the north entrance front, featuring a doorway approached by a splayed flight of steps that overhang the raised basement. The doorpiece is of corniced and pilastered ashlar, incorporating narrow side lights and a large square fanlight with decorative glazing, with double-leaf panelled doors. Above this sits a keystoned Venetian window.

The south or garden front has an advanced centre bay with a ground-floor Venetian window and a tripartite window above (the centre light being blind). A mid-twentieth-century single-storey kitchen wing over a raised basement occupies the south-west re-entrant angle, featuring a balcony with steps leading to the garden.

The east and west gables each have two bays; the west gable features notably long raised ground-floor windows lighting the drawing room, fronted by small cast-iron balconies. Between these windows, overgrown with vegetation, sits a reset datestone from 1666. A small oval oculus appears between the first-floor windows. The east gable displays a decorated and dated rainwater head from 1802, long first-floor windows, and two sunken attic windows in the piended roof. Multi-pane glazing throughout. A pair of long centre coped flues rise through the piended platform slate roof.

Interior

The D-ended entrance lobby features beaded panelled dado and doors, opening right to the drawing room and left to the dining room, with a centre doorway leading to the stairhall.

The stairhall is narrow and bowed at each end, top-lit by a cantilevered staircase rising the full height with delicate decorative cast-iron balusters and a polished wooden handrail. The lobby displays a bucrania frieze and decorative centre plaster rose.

The drawing room retains beaded panelled dados, window shutters and doors, corniced overdoors with carved floral decoration, and a white marble chimneypiece with cluster columns; the ceiling features a moulded plaster cornice.

The dining room has similar panelling and corniced overdoors decorated with carved ferns and flowers, and a moulded plaster ceiling cornice; no original chimneypiece survives.

A small south-facing parlour contains a basket grate within a re-assembled marble chimneypiece and panelling matching the other rooms.

The first floor includes some D-ended rooms with beaded panelling and simple cornices.

The attic contains four D-ended rooms, each retaining decorative cast-iron basket grates and moulded dado rails. Rooms open into shaped closets formed between curved party walls; later built-in chests of drawers occupy window embrasures.

Service Wing

A later eighteenth-century two-storey service wing on the west forms part of the earlier mansion and is linked to the main house by a curved corridor quadrant with a convex north-east face. This quadrant is harled with a regular arcade of engaged Doric columns and a corniced blocking course. The north gable of the wing is re-faced in coursed pinned rubble, with harl-pointed rubble elsewhere and tooled and polished ashlar dressings.

A wide segmental-headed recess opens in the ground floor of the wing's north gable (facing the entrance front), containing a centre window between engaged Doric pilasters. A demi-octagonal stairwell projects from the centre of the west-facing three-bay front, which features varied glazing. The roof is piended Banffshire slate with a centre coped ridge stack. A large garage door has been inserted into the east elevation.

The wing's interior has been substantially altered: the former ground-floor kitchen is now gutted as a garage, and the first floor has been modernised as an independent flatted dwelling reached by a curved staircase.

Close to the former kitchen stands a small single-storey outbuilding with a bellcote and a re-used lintel.