Cathay House

Cathay House is a large, asymmetrical baronial villa built in 1887-8 by George Simpson, with an extensive conservatory and glasshouse range attached to the west. The house was commissioned and built for Mr John Kyle, an engineer who retired to Forres after 18 years in China; he furnished it with fine furniture and created an exotic garden.

The main house is two storeys high, with an entrance front facing east. It is constructed of bullfaced rubble stone with contrasting tooled and polished ashlar dressings. A projecting square porch has a segmental-headed entrance and crenellated wallhead, leading to an ornate panelled double-leaf door. A tower-like centre bay rises above the ridge, featuring a corbelled wallhead and a steeply pitched crowstepped "cap house" roof. To the left of the entrance is a shallow projecting bipartite section with a corniced blocking course and decorative gablet-headed window on the first floor; an oriel window is located to the right of the centre bay.

The south garden front is asymmetrical with four bays. A projecting bowed three-light window with a corniced and ball finialled wallhead is located on the right at ground floor level. A canted oriel window sits near the centre on the first floor. A two-storey angle drum tower is situated at the southwest corner, featuring narrow ground and first-floor windows, a deep eaves course with ball ornamentation, and a bellcast fish-scale conical slate roof with a cast iron apex weathervane. A square, three-storey tower rises above the west elevation, with a corbelled and crenellated upper storey, angle bartizans, and a circular stair turret at the northeast. The upper storeys of the east, west, and south elevations have three narrow windows each. Ornamentation includes shaped or broken pediments over first-floor windows. The windows feature two-pane glazing.

The exterior features crowstepped gables, a shaped coped wallhead, and end stacks. Slate roofs have decorative red tile ridges.

The interior retains panelled window shutters and doors, original carved wooden chimney pieces in the public rooms, and decorative plaster ceiling cornices.

The conservatory and glasshouse range, located to the west of the house, consists of a substantial glazed conservatory with a four-bay frontage and a domed glazed roof supporting a raised and domed toplight. This conservatory is connected to the main house by a six-bay glazed passage with a pitched glazed roof and a pedimented porch similar in style to the one fronting the principal block. An extensive lean-to glasshouse extends further west.

The Elgin Courant of 13 August 1907 provides a description of the house and gardens.