The Steading, Nether Blainslie

The Steading at Nether Blainslie is a later 20th century conversion of an early 18th century farmhouse and adjoining barn and outbuildings, transformed into the integrated home, sawmill and workshops of the artist Tim Stead MBE (1952–2000). Stead specialised in furniture making, sculpture and interior design, working primarily in wood. The property retains a largely complete bespoke interior decorative scheme of fixtures and fittings designed and carved by the artist, while the sawmill and outbuildings preserve equipment and fittings for woodcraft and engineering works. The buildings sit in the small village of Nether Blainslie, positioned at the end of a main street characterised by a cluster of 18th and 19th century houses and cottages built against the street line.

The buildings are constructed in rubble whinstone with tooled sandstone to the openings. The roofs are pitched with grey slate covering. The farmhouse has straight stone skews and a stone chimney stack on the roof ridge, marking where the west wall formerly ended. The farmhouse roof was largely replaced in the early 1990s following a fire.

The house is roughly six bays wide. The two western bays are a 1988 addition, while the single eastern bay (slightly lower in height) was originally part of the adjoining barn. Many window openings have been enlarged with replacement lintels and cills fashioned by Stead. Attached to the south elevation is a timber and glazed sunroom added by Stead, featuring a monopitched roof, rubble base and bespoke carved panels. This sunroom is set over a historic well covered by a circular wood-carving and glass top used as a fixed table. The northwest corner of the house extension has a carved skewputt. Various stone-built single-storey outshots project from the north elevation. The central outshot predates the mid-19th century and has a monopitched roof. That to the left of centre has a flat roof covered in heather grass, with overhanging eaves supported on handmade shaped timber brackets.

The interior (as seen in 2019) displays a largely complete bespoke decorative scheme by Tim Stead dating from 1981 until 2000. Most fixtures and fittings—including doors, window cills, stairs and roof beams—were designed and carved by Stead. The flooring in the main living space and circulation areas is formed from off-cut slivers of wood. Fitted furniture including seating, desks, shelving, cabin and four-poster beds as well as kitchen and bathroom units have been incorporated into the fabric of the house. The main living space features a stone fireplace surrounded by a modulated timber screen with incorporated hearth seating.

A rectangular-plan steading range stands to the north of the house. It has a curved east end wall bearing cast metal axeheads by Stead. The south elevation of the steading range has been remodelled by Stead with added window openings fitted with carved timber mullions and concrete cills. The entrance doors are carved timber and half-glazed with shaped brackets below the overhanging roof eaves. In the north wall a pair of carved timber doors opens to reveal a recessed space that was used as a background when displaying his pieces for photographs. The interior (as seen in 2019) contains internal timber doors designed by Stead.

The buildings are understood to date to the early 18th century. The village of Nether Blainslie appears on Roy's Military Survey of Scotland (1747–55) and is mentioned in the Old Statistical Account of 1783. Nether Blainslie and the footprint of the Steading are first shown in detail on the 1st Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1859, showing the farmhouse and attached barn (which became Stead's sawmill). The single-storey steading building (now workshop) first appears on the 2nd Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1897.

From 1981 the Steading was the home and workshop of Tim Stead, his wife Maggy and their family. Stead continually and organically reworked the interior of the farmhouse until his death in 2000. Every July Maggy and their children Sam and Emma departed to France for a month, and Stead used this time to work on the house, surprising them with new additions on their return.

Stead also made changes to the exterior fabric, enlarging windows and adding rooflights. Light was very important to him as an artist; he wanted occupants to be able to view the night sky when lying in bed. He extended the buildings with a two-storey extension on the west end of the farmhouse, a timber-frame sunroom on the south elevation, a small flat-roofed addition on the north elevation, and an experimental heather roof.

Stead died in 2000 after a long illness, diagnosed in the early 1990s. He continued working on the house until his death, but the illness impeded his work at the previous pace. Consequently not all rooms were finished with his artwork. This is most notable in the exposed ceiling beams at ground floor level of the 1988 addition and in the upper floor of the original farmhouse (as the roof was replaced after being destroyed by fire in the early 1990s). Some beams are only partially chiselled away by the artist.

Apart from minor changes such as the installation of a shower room on the ground floor and removal of some fixed shelving on the west wall, the interiors have been largely unaltered since the artist's death in 2000.