The Haugh, Ashgrove Road, New Rattray

The Haugh, Ashgrove Road, New Rattray

A classical house dating from around 1850, converted to offices circa 1990, with a steading reception added by Nicol Russell Architects of Dundee in 2000. The main house is a 2-storey, 3-bay rectangular-plan building with narrow ashlar bands and droved ashlar margins. The base course, first-floor cill course and eaves course are emphasised as band courses, becoming band courses at the gable ends.

The principal south elevation is symmetrical. The centre bay at ground floor features steps with flanking decorative ironwork railings leading to a shallow-pedimented doorpiece with heavy pilasters and cornice. The door is a deep-set 9-panelled timber door with a plate glass fanlight. The flanking bays contain regular windows, with further regular fenestration at first-floor level.

The west and east elevations each feature a broad gable with 2 windows to each floor in the outer bays and a small window off-centre in the gablehead. A converted steading adjoins to the left of the west elevation.

The roof is covered with grey slates. Windows throughout are timber sash and case with a 12-pane glazing pattern, except for an 8-pane margined stair window to an enclosed courtyard at the north-east. Chimneys are coped brick stacks with cans; the gable skews are ashlar-coped.

The interior retains good decorative schemes including decorative plasterwork cornices and ceiling roses, architraved doors, and working shutters. Fireplaces are of marble and timber. The stairhall features a broad segmental arch with a curved staircase with decorative ironwork balusters. The stair window has etched and colour-margined glazing.

The coach house is a single-storey building with attic space, comprising 3 bays with gabled ends. It has been converted to offices and adjoining house use. The gables are decoratively finialled. Construction is squared and snecked rubble with ashlar margins, some raised. Openings include circular and round-headed types; there is a Venetian window with ball-finialled keystone, cornice and tabbed margins, with stone mullions and chamfered arrises.

The west entrance elevation features a gabled bay to the right of centre with 2 windows and a glazed oculus in the gablehead. A further gable projects to the left. A lower gabled bay to the left contains a bipartite window. A slightly set-back centre bay has a ball-finialled round-arched opening flanked by screen walls infilled with a modern part-glazed timber door; the courtyard behind has been converted to a reception area. A flat-roofed extension adjoins to the outer left.

The north elevation features a projecting gabled bay to the right with a small infilled triangular opening at centre, a window on the return to the left, and a timber door under a modern canopy in the re-entrant angle beyond. The set-back face to the left is blank, and a flat-roofed extension adjoins at the outer right.

The east elevation has a gabled bay to the left of centre with a Venetian window, and a further gabled bay to the right with bipartite windows. Slightly set-back centre bays contain 2 windows to the right, with a later lean-to porch at the left.

The coach house windows are largely 4-pane and plate glass in timber sash and case; the centre light of the Venetian window displays decorative astragals over a 9-pane glazing pattern. The roof is covered with grey slates. A coped ashlar chimney stack with polygonal can is present. The eaves feature plain bargeboarding, pendant finials and decorative ball-and-spike finials.

The interior of the coach house has been largely converted to modern offices, though the Venetian-windowed room retains a lowered ceiling that reveals the exposed braces of a hammerbeam roof structure.

Associated with the property is a small circular garden store with a boarded timber door to the west, built into a wall forming a small walled garden to the east of the steading. Coped rubble boundary walls define the site, with pyramidally-coped square-section ashlar gatepiers.