Spitalhaugh House

Spitalhaugh House is a large country house of predominantly mid-19th century date, incorporating an earlier house built in 1678 for Richard Murray. It was enlarged and reconfigured in the mid-19th century for Sir William Fergusson, surgeon to the Prince Consort and Queen Victoria. The building exemplifies the Scottish Baronial style and forms a picturesque composition dominated by a four-storey square-plan turreted tower with a crowstepped gable at its centre.

The house displays an irregular plan with multiple bays and considerable Scottish Baronial detailing including turrets, wings, castellations, crowstepped gables and mouldings. It is constructed of polished sandstone ashlar with moulded ashlar dressings, stugged ashlar quoins, a base course and string courses.

The south principal elevation features an advanced two-storey canted bay with castellated parapet at the centre. Single-storey gable-ended wings with pitched roofs and ogee-capped corner turrets flank this central feature, adorned with various moulded dormers, panels and niches, and a stepped pyramidal finial to the left gable end. Two-storey wings with castellated parapets and canted ends extend five bays to the right and four bays to the left. The tower rises behind with a statue of St Andrew to the south on a corbelled base, flanked by recessed segmental-arched windows. The tower incorporates a date stone of 1677 commemorating the earlier 17th-century house at the core of the building.

The west entrance elevation features a basket-arched entrance porch to the canted end bay, with an armorial panel and hood-moulding above flanked by ball-finials. To the left is a three-arched arcade with castellated parapet returning at the north-west angle, adjoining a gabled outbuilding with a tall octagonal stack to its apex.

Throughout the building are predominantly 12-pane glazing to timber sash and case windows. The roof is covered in grey slate. The building displays a wealth of tall octagonal-shaft stacks, one featuring a hexagonal moulded pattern to the shaft and castellated coping. Cast-iron rainwater goods complete the external detailing.

The interior of the house contains numerous fine elements. The entrance vestibule contains nine carved stone reliefs set into the walls, two displaying the Fergusson family crest, with painted cartouches set in the cornice. The main hall features a carved stone fireplace dated 1658 depicting figures and armorials, created by the renowned local stonemason James Gifford and brought from his house at West Linton. This fireplace comprises three carved stones with figures, animals, armorials, finials and scrolls, with linked numerals dated 1864 added to the ends of the lintel stone by Fergusson. The hall also displays carved timber panelling, probably of 17th-century date, with fluted pilasters and arcaded motif, alongside an intricately carved timber staircase balustrade. The principal ground-floor public rooms feature compartmented ceilings with decorated ribs and floral mouldings. An east room contains a finely carved Jacobean oak fireplace.

The stable is a single-storey, four-bay rectangular-plan structure incorporating 17th or 18th-century fabric. It features an ornamental castellated outshot with steps on the south elevation and harled rubble walls with coped and shouldered ends and a pineapple finial to the north. The interior retains four cast-iron stalls with acorn-finalled posts, some timber panelling and corner feeders. Evidence remains of earlier usage as a dwelling, including fireplace remains at first-floor height at the south end.

A single-span segmental-arch bridge, dated 1851, serves the south driveway over water. It features a parapet and panels with initials to the south side reading WF & HHR (William Fergusson and his wife, Helen Rankin of Spitalhaugh), and initials of Charles Lawson, the local quarrymaster and builder, to the north side.

The estate of Spitalhaugh was owned by the Earls of Morton from 1313 to 1671, after which a house was commenced by Richard Murray, brother of Sir Archibald Murray, third baronet of Blackbarony. William Fergusson expended considerable sums enlarging the property in the Baronial style and added the bridge serving the south entrance drive.

The various elements that comprise the house are held together by the four-storey turreted tower dominating the centre of the composition and by the horizontality provided by the unbroken run of castellated parapets, which when viewed from the open parkland to the south ground the building firmly in its setting.

Spitalhaugh House forms part of a group listing with Spitalhaugh Doocot House.