Swimming Pool, Srongarbh, The Loan, West Linton

Swimming Pool, Srongarbh, The Loan, West Linton

A Grade A listed house designed by Leslie Grahame Thomson in 1934-5 for himself, with ironwork by Thomas Hadden. The building is a 2-storey, roughly 9-bay, roughly rectangular-plan house with a piend roof, combining Arts and Crafts and American Mediterranean Revival influences.

The near-symmetrical northeast elevation faces a courtyard with curved edges and circular paving, enclosed by exceptionally fine ornamental wrought-iron railings and gates. Twin curved garages flank the courtyard entrance. The exterior features rough-cast harl with reconstituted stone dressings, a first-floor cill course, and horizontally-set windows. The entrance elevation has an advanced central 2-bay piended entrance block and a slightly advanced chimney stack to the left with scrolled shoulder. The timber-panelled front door has a small window and ornamental wrought-iron grill depicting buttercups, with a roll-moulded architrave surmounted by Thomson's crest. Two windows above are divided by a central panel bearing an inscription. Round-arched French doors to principal rooms face the southwest garden elevation, divided by plain pilastered piers; all round-arched windows have ornamental wrought-iron flowers to the central window pane of the arch.

The southwest garden elevation exhibits American Mediterranean Revival style with an off-centre advanced 2-bay piend-roofed section, 5 bays to the right with an outer ground-floor bay extending to form a flat-roofed sun room, and 3 bays to the left with a slightly advanced conservatory at ground level (originally an open pergola, now glazed). A walled service courtyard extends to the outer left with a flat-coped wallhead. A half-glazed timber-boarded side door has a lean-to coal house to its right.

The interior features high-quality Hollywood Art Deco style with the original room plan largely intact, though the former service area has been altered. The entrance hall has oak floorboards and an Art Deco mantelpiece with tiled inset around an original 2-bar electric heater. A downstairs cloakroom retains original fixtures including a mahogany lavatory cistern. The swept oak staircase has ornamental wrought-iron banisters incorporating animals, reptiles and insects, with a curved handrail apparently comprising a single piece of wrought bronze. Corner stair windows at first-floor level have short column supports.

The drawing room features a coved ceiling, stepped entrance from the hall, marble chimneypiece, and fitted bookcases, one swinging open to reveal a window recess. The dining room has a stone chimneypiece and walnut veneer doors. The principal bedroom has a French door to a balcony over the sun room and an Art Deco timber mantelpiece with tiled inset around a 2-bar electric heater. There are two Art Deco bathrooms with original fixtures and Vitrolite tiles. A butler's pantry with cupboard and butler's sitting room with a small Art Deco tiled corner chimneypiece complete the service accommodation. Unpanelled polished timber doors throughout have Art Deco handles.

Windows are small-pane glazing in timber casements, with curved glazing patterns to French doors at ground level. Coped stacks have short red clay cans. Stone slates with stone ridge tiles and cast-iron rainwater goods. Two iron Scottie-Dog boot scrapers by Thomas Hadden flank the front door.

The stone-paved courtyard is enclosed by low ashlar-coped rendered boundary walls surmounted by wrought-iron railings set between raised piers. The wrought-iron railings are of exceptional quality, containing panels of naturalistic flowers and plants inhabited by birds, animals and other wildlife. Two-leaf gates in the same style serve the entrance and southeast side of the courtyard; the entrance gate has SRON GARBH wrought into the top border.

The twin garages at the front of the courtyard have curved walls forming a convex sweep at the entrance, with later panelled garage doors and horizontal windows. A store room and workshop to the rear of each has a panelled door.

Beyond the house lie garden terraces with broad steps to the southwest, a long rectangular bow-ended swimming pool with ashlar cope and fountain, a paved rose garden to the southeast of the courtyard, and further garden walls and terraced sections elsewhere. All walls and terraces are of random rubble with ashlar dressings. A small bow-fronted garden pavilion south of the swimming pool has columns to the front supporting a bowed piended roof.