Glenmayne House, Galashiels

Glenmayne House, Galashiels

Glenmayne House is a large baronial house designed by Charles Kinnear of Peddie & Kinnear in 1866, set on a landscaped hilltop. Sir Robert Lorimer added a library and lodge gates in 1913. The building is randomly asymmetrical in composition, roughly square on plan with a gable tower and canted bay projections, and incorporates a small courtyard within, now enclosed. It is largely three-storey with some attic storeys and a five-storey entrance tower. The exterior features courses with polished dressings, stringcourses, triangular-pedimented and finialled dormer-heads, and crowstepped gables with fishscale slated roofs crowning the conical caps of turrets. End and ridge stacks are corniced and coped.

The north-east entrance elevation is dominated by a large square entrance tower projecting off centre, with an arched doorway beneath an inscription panel. Above this is a projecting arched window with colonettes and a semi-circular corbelled balcony. The second stage has two windows with corbelling stepped over them, while the plain top stage contains single windows and a machicolated parapet. A circular stair tower with conical roof stands at the south angle, its outshot linking to a gable with bipartite windows to the left, beyond which is a circular angle turret. On the right is a single bipartite bay with corbelled wallhead and a corbelled angle turret, circular at second floor level and corbelled to square at attic. A single-storey range extends on the north-east to south-west axis to the right of the front. Originally this had symmetrical end gables (crowstepped with pyramid-roofed open belfries) at each front, but the garden gable was subsequently replaced by Lorimer's library addition extending at the west gable.

The south-east elevation displays a semi-symmetrical three-storey arrangement with bartizans corbelled out at upper level. An advanced gable on the left features a bowed bay progressively corbelled to canted at second floor level and square at attic. A canted bay on the right is similarly corbelled. Each bay contains mullioned and transomed windows of four, two, and single lights. The central section has three windows at ground floor and a large three-light window at first floor, with dormer-headed windows breaching the wallhead (the centre pediment being larger with a circular panel). A first floor balcony corbelled out between the projecting bays sits on cable corbel mouldings and is circled out on bold corbelling, with a pierced balustrade. The right gable is crowstepped; the left gable is crocketted with an elaborate stack rising above.

The south-west garden elevation features segmental-arched openings at ground floor, round-arched openings at first floor, and square-headed upper storeys with pedimented wallhead gables. Bartizans stand at each angle. A wide projecting bay on the right, curved at its angles and corbelled to square above, is step-gabled with a centre stack. Mullioned and transomed glazed openings at first floor are recessed in a segmental arch and incorporate a door to a balustraded double perron leading to the walled garden. Garden steps and ball-finialled walls date to 1867.

The interior is rich and finely detailed. Principal state rooms occupy the first floor; the ground floor formerly served as servants' quarters and was converted to a flat in 1990. The entrance hall is wainscotted with an elaborate vine-carved and gilded cornice. The main stair features a cast-iron balustrade set in carved panelled newels and timber rails, beneath a straight-coved ceiling with restored geometric painted decorations. A large transomed three-light stained-glass stair window overlooks the stairwell.

The Music Room is oak-panelled with mixed Gothic and Renaissance motifs, featuring a Gothic niche over an elaborate early Georgian oak chimney-piece with an elliptically arched recess. The Drawing Room has a deep-coved ceiling with acanthus, palmetted and egg-and-dart cornice, and a panelled ceiling. Screens with Corinthianesque columns separate end bays, with fitted bookcases, panelling, chimneypieces and French overmantle mirror. A secondary room contains an outstanding early Renaissance white and pink-veined marble chimneypiece with a classical figurative frieze depicting cupids around a central urn, with later nineteenth-century wallpaper.

Lorimer's library addition is top-lit with a glass-domed oculus set in a square flat-coffered ceiling with a deep cornice frieze featuring garland sculptured panels. Original bookcases display carved panels incorporating cameos framed by caryatid aedicules.

The lodge, dated 1869-70, is an L-plan single-storey asymmetrical gate lodge built of snecked rubble with a slated roof and projecting eaves, cross-braced. The front elevation features a projecting timber porch integrated with a small verandah on the right, and a canted bay corbelled to square on the left. A tall axial stack (now copied and altered) stands axially. Modern additions have been made to the rear. The gatepiers are rusticated, and Lorimer's scalloped wrought-iron railings of 1913 sit on low boundary walls.