The Lodge, The Cairn, Longforgan

The Cairn is a substantial late 19th-century villa with later additions, located on Main Street, Longforgan. The main house was built in 1891 by John Murray Robertson, with a sympathetic single-storey extension to the east added around 1918. It is an L-plan building, forming a T-plan with the addition.

The house is constructed primarily of red brick in a stretching bond, with ashlar cills and a piended slate roof. Decorative brick stacks are detailed with gauged and corniced brickwork. A base and first-floor band course consisting of string and dentil courses, also formed from angled brickwork, runs around the main house. Segmental-headed sash and case windows are a prominent feature, with plate glass in the lower sashes and multi-pane glazing above. Cast-iron rainwater goods and mannered cast-iron finials adorn the roof.

The west elevation features a pentice-roofed entrance porch to the re-entrant angle, with recessed doors beneath an open porch supported by turned columns. The west return has two paired windows, above which is a stair window and another window to the main elevation. An advanced gable on the right displays paired and single windows on the ground floor; a first-floor door has been converted into a modern canted balcony, and a window is positioned on the right. A recessed service wing to the left incorporates two windows (one originally a door) on the ground floor and one on the first floor.

The south elevation presents the original three-bay, symmetrical house to the left. A central glazed entrance door is flanked by windows, with four-light canted windows to both the left and right, the roof extending over the centre bay to form a verandah. A canted window is positioned on the first floor centre, and bipartite windows are located to the left and right. A ridge stack and a stack to the off-centre right rise through the roof pitch. A slightly recessed single-storey wing is situated to the right, mirroring the original house’s design with a door flanked by windows, and a four-light canted bay on the right. A ridge stack is also present, and the right return gable is blank.

The north elevation has an advanced single-storey and attic service wing, originally a garage, with three windows to the left return. Two dormers are visible at the wallhead, alongside a stack. The original house has one ground-floor window and two first-floor windows at the east gable, with a recessed single-storey addition to the left incorporating a door and window.

The interior retains some original chimneypieces, plain moulded cornices, and simple pierced timber balusters.

A single-storey and attic coach house and stable are located elsewhere on the property, constructed of red brick with a piended slate roof and decorative cast-iron finials. Boarded segmental-headed doors with astragalled fanlights and sash windows (with plate glass in the lower sashes and six-pane glazing above) are characteristic features. The west elevation has a central door, a wider stable door to the left, a window to the far left, a carriage entrance with a sliding two-leaf door, and a hayloft door with a semi-piended roof. Additional doors and windows are situated on the left and right return gables.

The Cairn Lodge is a single-storey, rectangular-plan lodge with a wedge-shaped addition to the west. It shares a stylistic compatibility with the main house, albeit in a simpler form. Constructed of red brick with a piended slate roof and an oversailing ridge stack, it features a door flanked by windows to the main elevation, a window to the left return, and various windows at the addition.

The property is approached by two ashlar gatepiers with curvilinear caps, which flank flat-coped rubble-built quadrants, a flat-coped rubble wall, and a brick wall to the east.