Stables, Dryburgh Abbey House

The stables at Dryburgh Abbey House date to around 1820, attributed to John Smith of Darnwick, and were moved and rebuilt circa 1892. They are a single-storey and attic structure, forming a courtyard plan, built in a Gothick style. The front elevation is particularly ornate, featuring crenellations, an arched gateway, blind arcaded walls, and cross-finialed gabled outer bays with pointed-arch recesses. A plain gateway provides access to the rear, on the east side. The accommodation includes stables, coach houses, a tack room, and a groom’s quarters, housed within gabled ranges.

The stables are constructed of squared, snecked sandstone with polished red sandstone ashlar dressings. A base course leads to a crenellated parapet on the front elevation. The courtyard and side elevations feature flush, tabbed, chamfered, round-arched ashlar window and door margins, while the attic has gabled dormers with basket-arched windows. Timber-boarded doors are present throughout.

The principal elevation features a central two-leaf timber-boarded gate with an interlocking arched detail above, set within a moulded archway with engaged columns and a hood mould. A panel is set into the centre of the parapet above the arch, inscribed 'Judge Nought', and a sculpted stone hand emblem holding a club is positioned above it. Blind round-arch arcading flanks the gateway on both sides. Advanced gables are present in the outer bays, each containing rosette windows set in large pointed-arch recesses with engaged columns.

The courtyard includes an open cartshed supported on a stone column to the left of the pend. The south range contains basket-arched cartsheds at ground level and groom's quarters above; a lower gabled range extends to the east. The north stable range has round-arched doors and windows, a dormered hayloft in the attic, and louvred timber ridge vents. A lower ancillary stable building is located on the east range, with round-arched doorways and triple-hole vents near the eaves.

The windows are predominantly fitted with six-pane fixed lights with Gothick-arched glazing to the top of opening hoppers. Dormers have six-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows. Ridge stacks have ashlar copes and small yellow cans. The roofs are covered with Welsh slate, featuring an ashlar ridge on the front section and zinc ridges elsewhere. The ashlar-coped skews have moulded skewputts.

The interior contains fittings from the late 19th century. A stable on the north side, near the Carron Company boundary, has cast iron posts between the stables, decorated with horses' heads. The groom’s room in the northwest corner is lined with pitch pine and features a late 19th century cast-iron fireplace.