Drygrange House

Drygrange House

A large, asymmetrically composed mansion in red sandstone, built between 1887 and 1889 by the architects Kinnear and Peddie (Charles G H Kinnear). The house was altered and extended in 1910 by J M Dick Peddie, and further additions were made around 1962 when it became St Andrew's College. The building stands on the banks of the Leader Water.

The house is three storeys high with a basement and attic, arranged in an L-plan. It displays Scots-Baronial and Scots Renaissance architectural style. A four-stage circular entrance tower with a crenellated parapet sits in a re-entrant angle of the entrance court. Throughout the building, mullioned and transomed windows light the principal floors. Corbelled pepperpot turrets with swept fish-scale slated conical roofs sit at the angles, complemented by moulded corbel tables, balustraded parapets, and crowstepped gables. Pedimented dormer-headed windows with Renaissance finials punctuate the roofline. Steeply pitched grey slated roofs cover the structure, with axial and wallhead stacks rising through them. Plate-glass glazing to timber sash-and-case windows appears on the upper floors, and cast-iron rainwater goods run throughout.

The entrance front features a splayed balustered staircase with decorative wrought-iron lamps. An elaborately detailed pilastered doorpiece displays billet detail at the column necks, a frieze with triglyphs and guttae, and sculptured detailing at the metopes. A block pediment crowns the composition, with a sculptured heraldic panel and inscription reading 'et industria probitate' flanked by obelisk finials raised on balls. A stepped string-course marks the first floor, and a corbel table of multiple billet mouldings runs at the second floor. A three-storey turret in the re-entrant angle is corbelled out at second floor level over a squinch arch, with a gable and canted bay to its left, full-height with an attic gable.

The south wing of the entrance elevation presents three regular bays with single-light windows to the right of the tower. A fourth bay is a shallow rectangular projection with three-light windows and a balustraded parapet at a bipartite dormer, richly decorated. A circular tower with a fish-scale slated roof sits in the re-entrant angle of a projecting gable, which itself has corbelled angle turrets. A bolection-moulded architrave frames a heavy nailed oak door with thistle-pattern detailing to a basement entrance in the main re-entrant angle between the south wing and west cross-arm.

The east wing extends for two bays from the main house. Its outer bay contains a shallow rectangular tripartite bay with balustraded parapet forming a balcony to a tripartite window above. Two small timber dormers light the elevation, with a corbelled angle turret at the outer bay. A lower service range extends to the left, featuring a crowstepped gable off-centre with decorative stack coping, grouped with a circular angle tower. An unsympathetic reconstruction of the balustraded area wall in front of the courtyard elevations dates to 1990/91.

The north elevation, facing the service court, includes a segmentally arched pend to the service court in the end gable of a two-storey-and-attic range, with single-storey ranges beyond.

The rear (east) elevation presents an asymmetrical composition of parapets and crowstepped gables of service ranges, masked on the left by a 1960s building and by single-storey flat-roofed additions in the north-east re-entrant angle.

The south elevation is dominated by a five-bay main block, whose central three bays are regular except at the first floor, where an asymmetrical three-light window appears on the left and a two-light on the right. On the left, a full-height canted bay corbels out twice to reach square. On the right, a rectangular tripartite bay rises to an entablature and balustraded parapet, crowned by a gable with a single-light window above. The end elevation of the west wing is recessed to the left, with a full-height circular angle tower bay corbelled out at first floor level and a rectangular bay in the re-entrant angle at first floor with balustraded parapet. A stair and terrace sit on a segmental arch with balustraded parapet; a southwest angle rising around it was added in 1904. A terraced garden was laid out at the same time. A late twentieth-century corrugated sheet-iron fire-escape adjoins the west elevation.

Much of the original interior and the 1910–14 refurbishment survives. Seventeenth-century style Scots Renaissance plaster ceilings and timber panelling run throughout the house.

The entrance hall is wainscotted and features a cast-iron detailed radiator case. A decorative terrazzo floor leads to a two-tier broken pedimented ionic pilastered chimney-piece with a neo-Georgian cast-iron register and grate, complemented by a mirror overmantle. A Jacobethan plaster ceiling with strapwork cornice crowns the upper landing. Rich timber architraved and pedimented doorcases frame the openings. A central staircase displays Jacobethan-detailed newels and finials, with half-balusters alternating with full-height balusters.

The dining room contains a very elaborate chimney-piece with coupled half-fluted Doric columns below and coupled Corinthianesque fluted columns above flanking two shell niches, surmounted by a broken pediment.

A room identified as a boudoir features a bowed angle at the west and is now subdivided. Its elaborate plaster ceilings and bolection-moulded chimney-piece date from 1914. The main part remains unseen.

The drawing room is executed in a neo-rococo style with an elaborate plaster ceiling and cornice. A gilt border moulding and rococo sopra porte decoration enhance the scheme, and an original gilt pelmet survives.