Flats 1-6 Redheugh House including balustraded wall with gatepier, Kilbirnie

Redheugh House is a large, multi-phase house in the Scots Baronial style, built on high ground to the north of the village of Kilbirnie. It takes an irregular L-plan form and stands two storeys plus attic. The earliest part of the building was designed by the architectural partnership of Clarke and Bell around 1880. A dated addition was made to the north in 1890, and further additions to the west and north, dated 1905, were designed by local architect John Snodgrass. Around 2000 the house was subdivided into six apartments. The listing is recorded as having been revised in 2018, when the category was changed from B to C, and the statutory address updated from the previous listing as simply "Redheugh".

The building is constructed in coursed sandstone with a base course, a first-floor string course enclosing downpipes, and an eaves course. Decorative details include crenellated architraves to some windows and wallheads, crowstepped gables, and corbelled turrets at first-floor level on some corners.

EXTERIOR

The entrance elevation facing east is eight bays wide and asymmetrical. An off-centre canted entrance bay projects forward, topped with a corbelled and crowstepped wallhead gable and a central stack. The entrance door has a segmental arched surround with a stone panel above bearing the carved initials "G K". To the right, a slightly lower four-bay section features varied detailing: a small crowstepped wallhead gable, a rounded bay with a conical turret, and two first-floor windows that break through the eaves line, each with differently shaped stone pediments and decorative label stops.

Attached to this east entrance elevation is a stepped wall incorporating a round-headed arrowslit opening and a balustrade. This wall terminates in a large round gatepier with a domed cap. The paired gatepier and screen wall on the other side have been demolished. The surviving single easternmost gatepier now sits within the garden ground of 1 Redheugh Court and is excluded from the listing.

The south (garden) elevation comprises an 1890 four-bay section to the right, with crowstepped gables, and an advanced two-bay section to the left bearing a 1905 datestone in the west gable. The 1890 part has paired crenellated wallhead gables with a two-storey canted bay on the left gable. The 1905 section has a corbelled and crenellated parapet, rounded corners, and a corbelled turret at the west corner at first-floor level.

The north and west elevations are plainer. The stonework shows evidence of later 20th-century additions that have since been removed, with the masonry reinstated around 2000. Window patterns vary throughout; the larger ground-floor windows are predominantly tripartite with crenellated details over the lintels. There is also a single-storey gabled addition on the north elevation, thought to date from the 1905 work.

The windows are predominantly plate glazing in timber sash and case frames. The entrance doors are timber-panelled. Roofs are grey slate with crowstepped stone skews and decorative skewputts. The turret roofs have decorative slate patterns.

A photograph taken around 1900 shows stone balustrading to the entrance steps matching the gatepiers; this no longer survives. A 1979 photograph shows a corresponding gatepier and balustraded screen wall on the other side, which was largely removed around 2000 when the access to the cul-de-sac development behind the house was widened. A fragment of this wall and a gatepier survives adjacent to the southwest corner of 1 Redheugh Court, but this is excluded from the listing.

INTERIOR

The ground-floor interior was partially inspected in 2017. The entrance hall and staircase retain timber geometric panelling to dado height, along with decoratively carved, slender timber columns supporting plaster arches with a foliate and egg-and-dart cornice. Two of the columns are integral with the timber turned stair banisters. Some small painted glass panes survive in the upper part of the hall windows.

The room at the southwest corner, part of the 1905 additions, has geometric timber dado panelling and a parquet floor. The space is divided by a pair of decoratively carved timber columns supporting a shallow arch, flanked by smaller arches with columnettes to the sides and low timber fretwork screens. Behind this screen, the floor is raised on a dais. This section has an imposing sandstone fireplace with a full-height triangulated stone overmantle. Full-height glass doors lead to the south lawn. The arrangement of this room — with its raised section behind a columned screen — suggests it was designed as a billiard room. An adjoining room in the earlier part of the house has a decorative cornice and a marble mantlepiece with an arched firebox with a tiled insert.

Photographs taken in 1979 when the building was in use as a residential hostel for boys show that the southwest room once had a decorative frieze, and the adjoining room had a decorative plaster ceiling. These features have been lost. At least one room also had a coloured painted ceiling at that time, though it is not known whether this survives. Some parts of the interior have not been inspected and cannot currently be assessed.

PLAN FORM

Redheugh is a multi-phase building whose incremental development created the L-plan footprint. The principal rooms face the south lawn with the staircase at the rear, a common plan layout for large houses of this date. As noted above, the southwest reception room is likely to have served as a billiard room, a fashionable addition at the time; as prominent local industrialists, the Knox family may also have used it for entertaining clients.

ARCHITECTS

The partnership of William Clarke (1809–1889) and George Bell (1814–1887) met while working as draughtsmen for William Burn in the 1820s. They formed their practice in 1843 following a joint success in the competition for the Lanarkshire County Buildings, and consolidated their reputation two years later with their success in the Edinburgh Free Church competition. Clarke was a leading member of the Architectural Institute of Scotland, founded in 1850, and later delivered the opening address of the Glasgow Architectural Society in 1864. While the firm's early commissions included schools, churches, and some commercial buildings, from the 1870s onwards domestic villas and estate houses formed the core of their work, mostly in the west of Scotland around Glasgow. Other comparable large house commissions include Dalnair House in Drymen (1884), Arkleton House in Ewes (1884), and Adamton House near Prestwick (1885). Redheugh is considered a well-executed example of their late domestic work in the Scots Baronial style.

The 1905 additions were designed by John Snodgrass, who had previously designed the Knox Institute in Kilbirnie for the same family in 1892. The balustraded screen wall and surviving gatepier attached to the east elevation are also likely to date from the 1905 work, as their design is similar to that of the gatepiers and quadrant walls associated with Redheugh Lodge, also designed by Snodgrass in 1905. Stonework analysis confirms the screen wall and gatepier were constructed after the wall to which they are joined.

HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS

Redheugh House was built for Bryce Muir Knox, whose family's thread and fishing-net manufacturing company, W & J Knox Ltd, was the principal employer in Kilbirnie. The firm had its origins in the later 18th century and by the late 19th century operated three mills in the town, with subsidiary companies in the USA and Canada.

The Knox family built three large houses to the north of the town. In 1860 William Knox's son built Moorpark House (now a hotel). By 1895, James Knox's elder son James had commissioned Place House (demolished in the 1990s following a fire). Bryce Muir Knox, the younger son, lived at Redheugh. Before his marriage to Agnes Dunlop, daughter of William Barr, a leather manufacturer in the neighbouring town of Beith, an 1871 newspaper recorded him living at Riverside House in Kilbirnie. The initials of Bryce Muir Knox and Agnes Dunlop are incorporated into the 1890 datestone on the north gable. Different sources give conflicting dates for when he moved to Redheugh: an 1898 newspaper article records him as resident there by that year, while company history notes state he moved in 1901.

The Knox family also funded the Knox Institute, a library and public building in Kilbirnie built in 1892. Part of the Stoneyholm Mill, its engine house and gatepiers, remain in the centre of the town. The Dennyholm Mill has been demolished.

In the 1970s Redheugh passed out of private ownership and was used as a residential hostel for boys. Around 2000, it was converted to six apartments.

The family's company, W & J Knox Ltd, remains in business today, over 250 years after its founding. Redheugh House is one of two surviving large houses associated with the Knox family.

HISTORIC MAP EVIDENCE

On the first edition Ordnance Survey map (surveyed 1856, published 1858), the site is shown as a small farm called "Redheugh" to the north of Kilbirnie, comprising a long rectangular building — similar to neighbouring farms — in the position now occupied by 1, 2 and 3 Redheugh Court. Redheugh House itself does not appear on this map.

By the second edition (surveyed 1895, published 1897), Redheugh House is shown as a large, roughly L-plan building immediately to the west of the earlier farm building. A walled garden is shown to the northwest and a further rectangular enclosure to the immediate north, possibly a kitchen garden. The grounds were set out with paths and walkways enclosed by shelterbelt trees.

By the third edition (surveyed 1908, published 1911), the footprint had been extended by the two-storey square-plan addition at the southwest corner and the smaller single-storey addition on the north gable. This edition also shows a new entrance lodge and quadrant gateway to the south providing a new approach from the road, along with a new driveway and garden paths through more extensively planted grounds.

It is likely that the former farm buildings were remodelled in the later 19th century as ancillary buildings for the main house, with crowstepped gables, stone stacks, and a small turret added to match the main house. This building, now 1, 2 and 3 Redheugh Court, was converted to three houses around 2000, and a further addition was made at the southeast corner of No. 3 around 2015.

SETTING

The house stands on elevated ground at the northern edge of Kilbirnie, where the western boundary of the original estate follows the River Garnock, which powered the town's manufacturing mills. When the house was subdivided around 2000, a new cul-de-sac of houses (Redheugh Court) was built immediately to the rear of the main building. The former southern access drive was blocked and a new entrance created from the east. Houses were also built within the former walled garden, and two new streets — Redheugh Avenue and Broster Meadows — were laid out to infill the south and west areas of the original garden grounds. The late 19th-century setting of the house has been significantly altered by these later developments and does not add to the special interest of the building.

EXCLUSIONS

In accordance with Section 1(4A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997, the following are excluded from the listing: 1, 2 and 3 Redheugh Court, and the gatepier to the southwest.