Gazebo, Lethangie House

Lethangie House is a complex building with a substantial construction and alteration history spanning from the early 19th century to the mid-20th century.

The original house is a two-storey, three-bay late Georgian farmhouse of early 19th-century date. It is harled with raised long and short ashlar quoins. The central door has a projecting canopy. The fenestration is regular except for a bipartite window to the right at ground floor, contained within a projecting ashlar architrave with cornice and blocking course. Two blind heraldic shields are set between the first-floor windows. The original plate glass sash and case glazing was altered to twelve-pane during early 20th-century remodelling. Single ground-floor windows to the east gable and first-floor windows have two-leaf louvered shutters, present by the 1860s. The slated roof has three regularly spaced flat-roofed three-light multi-paned dormer windows of early 20th-century date. The gable end has ashlar end stacks and skews. A two-storey rear wing with a conical-roofed bartizan turret is attached to the north and west elevations, now forming the northwest re-entrant angle. This turret contains a circular zinc-lined bath, still extant. The gable end of the rear wing faces north with a Roman Doric columned entrance at first-floor level, approached by a flight of steps.

The southwest wing was added circa 1860-70 and remodelled circa 1910-20. It is two storeys, constructed of stugged and snecked rubble with a steep pitched slated roof. The original lucarnes have been lost but are shown in a photograph of circa 1920, taken before the fire of 1935. A conical roof covers a bow-fronted three-light bay which projects at the front south elevation. The return west elevation has a single light to the left at first floor and a blind at ground floor. A broad projecting chimneybreast with curved angles to the right contains a pair of small windows with stained glass at ground floor and first-floor levels. The chimneybreast rises above the wallhead with a gable and tall stack over. Multi-paned glazing of circa 1910-20 date appears at fifteen panes at ground floor and twenty at first floor. The west flank of the original house recesses to the left.

William Kerr of Alloa carried out three periods of alteration and additions. The rear northwest wing, dating to circa 1911, is linked to the northwest corner of the original house. It is two storeys, harled with a slated piend roof and three bays to the south. A rectangular bay projecting to the left contains an opening with two widely spaced Doric columns in antis supporting an ashlar lintel at ground floor, with a six-light window to first floor. Single lights appear at ground and first floors to the centre. A slightly advanced gabled bay to the right has a tall arched first-floor window.

The east wing, a William Kerr addition of circa 1923, is two storeys with a pitched roof and three-storey piend-roofed tower. It comprises five asymmetrical bays, is harled with multi-paned sash and case glazing, and features two three-light full-height canted bay windows projecting on the east elevation. A pair of octagonal gatepiers of early 19th-century date stands at the northeast corner of the earlier section.

The interior of the original house was remodelled by William Kerr circa 1910-20s. The hall features full-height white-painted timber wainscot and an arcaded timber screen with two broad segmental keyblocked arches in front of the principal stair. The staircase has fields of open latticework between finely turned balusters. The dining room occupies the bowed front in the southwest wing and contains stained-glass roundels depicting Lords Darnley and Ruthven in a west inglenook recess. A drawing room is located above at first-floor level.

The garden walls and gazebo are probably of 17th-century origin, rebuilt in the early 19th century. Red sandstone rubble walls with ashlar quoins and cope enclose the garden on the north and west, to the west of the house. These terminate at the southwest in a square-plan gazebo of early 19th-century date, which incorporates a relocated 1691 datestone. The gazebo is two-stage with a string course between stages. Small rectangular lights with stepped hood-moulds appear over three elevations, and a larger opening with a boarded door is positioned to the north. A heraldic shield and date panel appear to the west. The gazebo has a frieze, cornice, and steep pitched slated pyramidal roof with a ball finial at the apex. A diminutive arched door is set in the wall close to the house. A pair of dwarf Doric columns originally from the gazebo have been relocated nearby.

A summer house stands to the southeast of the house, dating to circa the early 19th century. It is a small circular rustic structure with rustic tree-trunk columns and heather-thatched screen walls. The conical roof is clad in fish-scale slates with a leaded flashing at the apex. Coloured leaded glass is fitted to triangular-headed windows. The interior has a polygonal plan lined with twigs laid in geometrical patterns and contains a timber bench.