Glenfarg House

Glenfarg House

This house was designed by architect James B Dunn and built in 1907, with a wing added around 1915. The building displays 17th-century Scottish architectural style and is constructed of harled stone with cream sandstone ashlar dressings featuring fine naturalistic carving. The roofs are slated, and the gables are crowstepped with beak skewputts.

The main body is H-plan, largely symmetrical and two storeys high. A wing steps down at right angles to the left, with an octagonal ogee domed entrance tower apparently added around 1915 in the re-entrant angle, creating an L-plan entrance front. Windows throughout include bay windows and multi-paned sash and case glazing, with top sashes of six panes. The bay windows feature sash and case glazing, while other windows use multi-paned sash and case or casement designs. A conservatory stands in front of the later part of the house on the garden elevation.

The north elevation features a central door and two bays flanked by advanced gables, with a canted bay at ground level on the right. The ashlar moulded doorcase has a datestone on its tympanum recessed in a distinctively cusped architrave frame. Paired long ten-pane stair windows above to the right have linked stilted segmental masonry dormer heads, mirrored by similar smaller first-floor windows to the left. A secondary entrance in the octagonal tower sits in the north-east re-entrant angle and leads to the ballroom. This tower has a Lorimerian depressed ogee doorcase with a square sculptured panel above depicting birds and acorn design. The ballroom is expressed externally as a canted bay on the north elevation of the east wing, with a catslide dormer above. A stepped stack emerges from an ingleneuk, rising through the gable head of the east wing and adjoined to the tower in the re-entrant angle.

The east elevation displays a gable at the right-hand bay, a narrow entrance porch with a lean-to roof at the centre, and a broad-pitched garage block to the left. The south garden elevation shows a symmetrical elevation of the earlier block to the left, both advanced gables with ground-floor canted bays and a central door between recessed bays. The 1915 block to the right features two bays with a gable at the third, right-hand bay; a contemporary conservatory masks the ground floor, with a catslide dormer-headed window at first-floor level. The west elevation is asymmetrical, slightly advanced at the left-hand bay with complex grouping of stepped wallhead stack and canted ingleneuk; plainer bays to the right have a centre wallhead stack and flanking triangular dormer-headed windows.

The interior retains much of the original decorative scheme in both the main block and east wing, executed in the Lorimerian Crafts style. The principal ground-floor apartments include an inner hall with three-quarter-height pine panelling and a corniced timber chimneypiece, with a plain ceiling decorated with square high-relief carved panels. The drawing room features a timber pilastered chimneypiece with veined marble inset and a ceiling with clusters of naturalistic carved detail in the corners and at intervals, with rosette detailing in the bay window alcove ceiling. The dining room has a lugged Caroline-style chimneypiece with similar naturalistic carved plasterwork detail arranged in square panels enclosed by thin cable string moulding. The morning room to the north displays a Caroline-style chimneypiece distinctively canted to fit the canted bay, with relief plaster ceiling detail above depicting roses, squirrels and rabbits.

The main staircase is timber construction with Jacobethan-style balusters and a deep straight-coved ceiling decorated with garlands and square panels of naturalistic carving (noted in poor repair in 1991). Principal bedrooms retain original fitted wardrobes with deep dentilled cornices and a variety of chimneypieces, including a timber Jacobean strapwork example in the north bedroom above the morning room.

The east wing contains a polygonal vestibule with terrazzo floor and scroll pendant for a light fitting. The ballroom features a large segmental-arched neo-medieval ashlar chimneypiece with a naturalistically carved keystone and a smaller depressed Tudor-arched stone fireplace recessed within, along with a fine carved plaster frieze, ceiling and centre rose decorated with bands of grapes and vines. Bedrooms in the east wing have a variety of cast-iron chimneypieces. An elaborate cast-iron spiral servants' stair and circular radiator, made in Union Street, London, are notable features.