Ardenlea, West Stewart Place

Ardenlea is a Queen Anne-style villa dating from 1898, designed by James Pearson Alison. The house is roughly L-shaped and stands two storeys high with an attic. It features a gabled, glazed timber porch to the front, deep bracketed overhanging eaves, plain bargeboarding, and a catslide roof to a single-storey service wing to the rear.

The exterior is constructed of squared, snecked, and stugged red sandstone with polished ashlar dressings, incorporating a base course. Some windows are stone-mullioned, with moulded margins and chamfered cills. Several first-floor windows are pedimented, breaking through the eaves.

The principal, south-facing elevation has three bays. A projecting gabled bay to the right includes a canted ground floor window with a decorative parapet displaying a blank plaque. Above this is a tripartite window, and in the gable apex, a bipartite window. A glazed timber porch, with a stone base, sits in the re-entrant angle, alongside a tripartite ground floor window to the left and a bipartite window above, also featuring a two-stage pediment that breaks through the eaves. Two flat-roofed dormers with small triangular pediments are also present.

The west elevation is symmetrical and gabled. Projecting tripartite windows flank the ground floor, linked by an architrave and supporting a first-floor balcony. A bipartite window with a semicircular pediment opens onto the balcony, while single-light windows are situated to the left and right at attic level.

The rear, north-facing elevation has an irregular window arrangement. A tall, tripartite, mullioned and transomed, round-arched stair window is centrally placed, featuring a scrolled cope that rises to a semicircular-pedimented attic window and wallhead stack above. A semicircular-pedimented window breaks through the eaves to the right, and a catslide roof projects to the left, with a tripartite flat-roofed dormer in the attic.

The east-facing side elevation is also irregular, with a full-height gable to the left, a projecting gable to the right marking the single-storey service wing, and a slated vertical section of wall filling the space between them.

The windows are predominantly timber sash and case, with plate glass. The porch features small-pane leaded glass. Stained glass is found in the stair window, with casement windows in the attic. The roof is covered in grey slate with a metal ridge, and red brick stacks incorporate some short clay cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods are also present.

The interior displays Arts and Crafts mosaic flooring in the porch. The central hall and former smoking room have herringbone parquet flooring and dark timber panelling. A decorative plaster ceiling and frieze, incorporating Ionic pilasters and egg-and-dart moulding framing an inglenook, is found in the former drawing room; simpler cornices are elsewhere. The pantry has timber-boarded fitted cupboards, and some windows are surrounded by timber panelling. Principal ground-floor rooms have doors with linenfold carving on dark timber panels, while other rooms feature four- and six-panel doors. The house contains a cast-iron and several timber chimneypieces. A dark timber staircase features a fretted balustrade and square newels, while the attic staircase has turned balusters.