Abbotshill, Abbotsford Road, Galashiels

Abbotshill is a villa located on Abbotsford Road in Galashiels, designed by William Hay in 1874. This irregular-plan building features two and three stories, with a four-bay principal block at the front and a long, offset two-storey block at the rear. The architectural style incorporates baronial, Romanesque, and Jacobean elements, including a slender entrance tower and a large cast iron conservatory with an apsidal end. The villa is set on a large sloping site surrounded by informal gardens and is constructed from squared stugged buff sandstone with ashlar dressings. Notable features include a base course, a first-floor string course, and an eaves cornice, along with Jacobean strapwork pediments and bay windows that have columned mullions.

On the north (entrance) elevation, the fenestration is irregular, featuring an off-centre four-stage tower topped with a crow-stepped cap-house and a corner turret. The entrance at the base is framed by granite columns and a carved over-door.

The garden (east) elevation showcases advanced crow-stepped and finialed gables on the outer bays, with two-storey advanced bay windows that are canted to the left and square to the right.

The rear (west) block is a two-storey extension that extends north of the principal block and includes a modern single-storey infill behind a high wall.

The villa has plate glass and four-pane timber sash and case windows, a slate roof with fishscale slates on the turrets and bays, and shouldered and corniced wallhead and ridge stacks. Cast iron rainwater goods are also present.

Inside, the villa has been subdivided but retains a highly decorative interior scheme, featuring elaborate plasterwork, ceilings, marble and stone chimneypieces, and stained glass. A stone stair with an unusual foliate wrought iron balustrade adds to the interior's charm.

The boundary walls and garden features include rubble boundary walls at the rear and sides, a low sandstone wall along the road, and a shouldered stone gateway dated 1883 in the boundary wall. Additional features include rubble garden steps and terraces, a dilapidated octagonal timber summerhouse, and a stone sundial.