Gates And Gate Piers, Port-Na-Craig House With Walled Garden, Foss Road, Pitlochry

Gates And Gate Piers, Port-Na-Craig House With Walled Garden, Foss Road, Pitlochry

Port-Na-Craig House is a substantial Scots Baronial mansion house designed by Andrew Heiton and dated 1892, later converted to offices with internal alterations carried out in 1954. The building comprises 3 and 4 storeys with basement and attic, arranged in a 4-bay plan, and is constructed in narrow bands of snecked and stugged red Dumfriesshire sandstone with droved and polished ashlar dressings. Base, band and roll-moulded eaves courses feature prominently, along with round- and segmental-headed doors, crowsteps, corbels, voussoirs, hoodmoulds, roll-moulded surrounds and stone mullions throughout.

The principal south elevation displays a 4-storey crowstepped bay to the left of centre with a dated round-headed doorcase and single windows. A stair tower projects to the outer left, while a lower 3-storey bay to the right features an oval gunloop to the ground floor and single windows above. The bay at the outer right is corbelled to a small round tower above ground level.

The south-west tower is a 4-stage circular stair tower with a conical roof, topped with a dated cast-iron weathervane. Three small windows rise through each stage, those to the west breaking the dividing courses with an additional window at ground level.

The east elevation presents two crowstepped 4-storey bays with single and bipartite windows. The bay to the right projects with a chamfered left angle corbelled to a square over the second floor, adjoining an altered stone-roofed oriel and modern extension at the outer right. A corbelled angle tower projects at the outer left.

The west elevation features a tall tower-house like bay to the left of centre with a projecting stepped chimney breast, a small round-headed attic window above, and a window punctuating each floor, including the basement, immediately to the right. A bartizan with three tiny windows projects at the outer right. A lower centre bay incorporates an oversailing stair to a ground-floor door at the left with single windows to each floor. A stone pedimented dormer breaks the eaves to the left above, with a diminutive bipartite dormer to the right. A round tower projects to the right.

The north elevation is similarly asymmetrical, featuring an advanced tower-house bay to the right containing a corbelled 3-light oriel in the gablehead, a 4-stage tower with caphouse, and single and bipartite windows throughout.

Windows are principally sash and case with timber frames, displaying 4-, 6- and 9-pane glazing patterns to upper sashes over plate-glass lower sashes. The roof is covered in grey slates, with coped ashlar chimney stacks, ashlar-coped skews and moulded skewputts. Cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers and fixings complete the external detailing.

The interior retains fine period decorative schemes throughout. The panelled hall features fluted pilasters, alcoves flanking a screen door, a canopied stone chimneypiece and a 1915–1919 memorial plaque. The spiral stone stair is lined with panelled dadoes and shutters. The first-floor north meeting room contains a stone chimneypiece with flanking clustered columns and overmantel with mutuled cornice, tabbed architraves, panelled shutters and decorative plasterwork to the ceiling and cornices featuring thistle and rose motifs. The north-west attic billiard room is fitted with a panelled dado, a hammerbeam-type roof with tie-beams at broad top-lit sections, and a stone chimneypiece with clustered-column shafts, cast-iron inset and tiled cheeks. A timber spiral stair with an elaborately carved newel finial provides access to a small timber-lined attic space. Some panelled soffits, brass sash lifts, timber fireplaces and moulded cornices are retained throughout.

The walled garden is rectangular in plan, enclosed by high flat-coped rubble walls to the north and west with slated lean-to ancillary buildings to the north. A stepped brick-lined wall to the north features small segmental-headed windows to the south elevation. Low coped rubble walls bound the east side, pierced by a small circular gate with a pyramidally-coped squared rubble gatepiece and hooped ironwork gate. A ha-ha style wall defines the south boundary.

Two pairs of square-section red sandstone gatepiers in 3-stage form stand either side of the entrance, with a square-section base giving way to a rounded second stage corbelled back to square at the third stage, each topped with a cornice, shallow crenellations and low pyramidal cope. The outer piers feature semicircular-moulded coping to each face. Decorative cast-iron gates and linking boundary walls with moulded ashlar coping and long and shortwork quoins complete the entrance composition.