The Meadows, Arran Crescent, Beith

The Meadows, Arran Crescent, Beith

The Meadows is a large Scots Baronial villa dating from around 1880, located in a spacious garden surrounded by mature trees and lawns. It was subdivided in 1976. The building is two storeys with an attic, three bays wide, and features a French Renaissance-style tower, ornamental railings, gabletted crowstepped gables with mace-shaped finials, and crowstepped hoodmoulds with square panels within. Adjoining the villa is Meadows Cottage, a single-storey and attic former service wing, with a single-storey former coachhouse attached to its south elevation. The current access drives and boundary walls to the west date from the late 20th century.

The Meadows is constructed in cherry-caulked whinstone with sandstone margins to the east (entrance) elevation, Aberdeen-bonded sandstone to the north elevation, and coursed and stugged sandstone to the rear (west) elevation. It has a base course, crenellated parapets to the bay windows, and a string course between the ground and first floors. Meadows Cottage is built in coursed sandstone, and the former coachhouse in random rubble stone.

The east (entrance) elevation features steps leading to a central crenellated porch with a timber-panelled outer door and windows in the returns. A canted bay window stands to the right, and a slightly advanced tripartite bay window to the left. The first floor has three windows, with triangular-headed attic windows, the central one within a corbelled wallhead dormer. Meadows Cottage, positioned to the left of the villa, has a bipartite window and a wallhead dormer above, and an advanced gabled bay to the left with a window above. The five-bay coachhouse to the outer left features a segmental carriage arch (now glazed) at its centre.

The west (rear) elevation of The Meadows has a central recessed bay with steps leading from the window to the garden, a single first-floor window above, and a gabletted attic window. A squared fishscale slated tower with cast-iron brattishing stands behind. A slightly advanced tripartite bay window extends across ground and first floors to the right, and canted bay windows occupy the same levels to the left. The west elevation of Meadows Cottage has a tripartite window to the left with a crowstepped wallhead dormer above, and a gabled bay to the right with a window above. An entrance porch stands in the re-entrant angle between the service wing and coachhouse.

The windows in The Meadows are predominantly timber sash and case plate glass windows with chamfered margins. Those in Meadows Cottage are largely uPVC replacements. The roof is covered in grey slates with corniced ashlar gable chimneystacks featuring moulded octagonal clay cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods with top hoppers run throughout.

Internally, The Meadows retains principal rooms in the late-19th century classical decorative style. These rooms feature timber panelling to the walls, moulded cornicing, picture rails, and fire surrounds with some featuring scrolled brackets. The main hall contains a Jacobethan-style oak chimneypiece and overmantel supported by barley-twist columns, coffered ceilings, dentilled cornicing, and decorative plasterwork forming an eclectic and distinctive late-19th century scheme. The Renaissance-style timber dog-leg staircase has a moulded balustrade, newel posts with attached candelabra (now electric), and a gallery to the first floor. The dining room includes an adjacent servery. A decorated arch with low-relief figurative medallions leads to the first-floor drawing room, which has an elaborate cornice and ceiling rose, classical-style mahogany chimneypiece, and tiled hearth. The attic billiard room has small timber chimneypieces at each end, tiled with depictions of Aesop's fables and craft scenes (plumber, shoemaker, dyer, barber, weaver, tailor, and tanner), and three small stained-glass domed cupoli.

Meadows Cottage retains some late-19th century internal features, including decorative fire surrounds, moulded cornicing, picture rails, deep skirting, and timber panelling to the window reveals.