Middleton

Middleton is a substantial rural courtyard complex dating from 1769, with significant late 19th-century additions and late 20th-century reconstruction and restoration. The buildings are arranged in a U-plan around a cobbled courtyard, comprising two crowstepped dwellings flanking a former barn, byre, and stables, with a large walled garden to the rear.

The north front facing the courtyard displays a small 2-storey 3-bay house with a distinctive nepus gable. A door to the left has simple roll-moulded reveals and a marriage lintel inscribed 'WC JS'. Two triangular doocots are set into the nepus with 3 triangular ledges each, and an apex stack rises above. The walls are rubble built with droved ashlar dressings, a moulded string course between ground and first floor, and a moulded eaves cornice. To the west stands a tall 2-storey late 19th-century house that was raised over an earlier single-storey range, with irregular openings. The flanking ranges that enclose the courtyard feature irregular openings including a cart arch and a mounting block. The right-hand range retains crowstepped skews and triangular doocots in the end gables, formerly topped with apex ball finials. These ranges are rubble built with droved dressings and moulded eaves cornices; the left-hand range has since lost its original gables and roof.

The south-west (rear) elevation shows a 2-storey 4-bay later house to the left with bipartite and single windows, and a timber-panelled door to the centre right with a stop-chamfered surround, cornice, and frieze above. An earlier house to the right has a single window and door at ground level. A 6-bay wing to the outer right is a reconstruction dating from around 2000.

Throughout the complex, windows are timber sash and case with plate glass, except for uPVC windows in the converted stables. Roofs are grey slate with stone ridges and coped ashlar stacks.

The interior is mostly modernised, but the earlier house retains an original 18th-century stone chimneybreast. The later house preserves timber-panelled doors, cornices, chimneypieces, and a turned timber stair balustrade.

The walled garden to the south of the house is rubble built with dressed coping and an ashlar flat arch opening to the fields. It was in ruins as of 2003.

When first constructed, Middleton consisted of a single 2-storey dwelling at the centre of the long courtyard range. The byre and stables projecting at right angles were both topped with crowstepped gables and doocots in their north ends, crowned with substantial ball finials—a formal arrangement typical of early improvement-era steadings and indicative of the landowner's prosperity. Doocots were a common feature in 18th-century Scotland, providing inhabitants with valuable food reserves during winter. William Caldwell is recorded as the landowner in the Heritors' Records of 1820–22, when Middleton ranked as the tenth most profitable lands in the parish.

Originally, the buildings would have been harled with exposed margins and thatched roofs. The late 19th-century house, built over the earlier single-storey range, is considerably larger in scale than the other structures. The former byre to the east has lost its pitched roof but remains otherwise well preserved, with good voussoired arches over its doorways. The wing east of the earlier house is a late 20th-century reconstruction.