64 Eglinton Street, Beith

64 Eglinton Street, Beith is a Grade B listed building comprising a villa designed and built by mason Robert Snodgrass in 1821, together with a later outbuilding.

The main house is a two-storey, three-bay classical villa presented to the street with a base course, outer pilasters supporting an eaves course, cornice and blocking course (painted with the date '1821' at the centre). The principal feature is a pilastered doorpiece with entablature and projecting tablet above, containing a door with plywood facing and fanlight within a recessed round-arched surround. The windows have architraved surrounds. The front façade is rendered in non-traditional cement, though it may originally have had polished ashlar or stuccoed finish. The side and rear elevations show random whinstone rubble with sandstone dressings. The north-west (rear) elevation is three storeys with irregular fenestration and a small later lean-to at the centre.

The roof is finished in grey slates with straight skews and a stone ridge. The chimneys are corniced ashlar end stacks with hexagonal clay cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods remain. The original twelve-pane sash and case windows were replaced with late twentieth-century glazing, a change documented in photographs from 1979.

The interior contains a hall with a nine-field panelled door, a consoled arch and moulded acanthus ceiling rose, and plain cast-iron railings to the stair with mahogany handrail. The first-floor drawing room is the showpiece, featuring a polished black slate chimneypiece with flanking paired engaged reeded columns, corner roundels and reeded lintel, later fitted with a brick insert. Flanking cupboards and all doors are panelled within reeded architraved surrounds with corner roundels and cornices. The doors feature delicate bead mouldings to fielded panels. An egg and dart cornice with fruit motif frieze completes the scheme. This room displays characteristic Regency detailing and formal symmetry with windows overlooking both front and rear, clearly the most important space in the house where doorpieces are elaborate, contrasting with simple plain architraves elsewhere.

The outbuilding is a small two-storey structure set back to the right of the house, with a pitched roof. It features a cast-iron railed forestair to the upper floor, timber boarded doors to the ground and first floors of the north elevation, and windows to the ground and first floors of the south elevation. It is built of random whinstone rubble with sandstone dressings and retains remains of harled surface. The roof is slate with straight skews and cast-iron rainwater goods.

This villa is one of a number of early nineteenth-century villas in Eglinton Street. Its smart classical vocabulary—particularly the doorpiece, end pilasters and entablature—indicates a relatively sophisticated design. Robert Snodgrass, who drew the plan, likely built other contemporary villas in the town. The first-floor drawing room contains patternbook features of the kind advocated by architect and surveyor W F Pocock in his Modern Finishings for Rooms (1811), a widely available source.

The terraced garden to the rear is characteristic of villas on the north side of Eglinton Street, separated by a low wall with ashlar piers and steps. The large gardens and open vistas to the rear distinguish these villas from those opposite, which have smaller, more enclosed grounds. The land was originally feued to John Crawford, thread manufacturer, in 1820. The Crawford family had established a thread factory at Crummock in Beith in 1775, and in 1836 James Crawford of 37 Eglinton Street (separately listed) established a flax spinning mill and workers' housing in what became known as Barrmill.