Garden Cottage, Traquair House

Garden Cottage at Traquair House was built around 1749 for Charles Stuart, the 5th Earl of Traquair, with improvements made in the mid to late 19th century. The cottage was later extended into a store in the 20th century. It is a one-and-a-half-storey, three-bay vernacular estate cottage featuring gabled timber dormers. There is also an adjoining single-storey, multi-bayed vernacular range that includes a former store, a cart arch, and a workshop/store. The building is constructed from coursed whinstone rubble with whinstone dressings around earlier openings and sandstone sills for later or altered openings.

On the northeast elevation, the cottage has a central boarded timber entrance door with a narrow letterbox fanlight above it, and rectangular windows on either side. In the attic, there are two gabled timber dormers with slated cheeks and pitched roofs, aligned with the outer bays, and a 2-pane cast-iron Carron light in the center that illuminates the stairs. To the left, the adjoining single-storey range includes a former store with a window and a timber boarded door (now part of the cottage), a segmental-headed cart arch with a pair of timber boarded doors, and a large opening that was originally fitted with a timber sliding door but has since been in-filled with timber boarding, gate, and various styles of glazing. The gabled ends are fairly plain, and the rear elevation is also simple.

The windows feature 4 and 12-pane glazing in timber sash and case frames. The roof is pitched and covered with slate, featuring lead ridging and extended slating instead of skews. There are painted cast-iron rainwater goods and a pair of short squat whinstone stacks at the gable ends of the cottage, each with a thin ashlar neck cope; however, only one of the original paired cans for each stack remains.

Inside, the cottage is still used as residential accommodation for a brewer and features timber doors and skirting boards. The interior of the cart shed and store has been preserved with plain stone walls.