Hillslap Tower

Hillslap Tower is a 16th-century tower house built in 1585 for Nicol Cairncross and restored between 1978 and 1997 as a family residence, with later additions by Philip Mercer. The building features a four-storey and attic L-plan gabled tower house, along with a five-storey wing that has an extruded turret for a spiral staircase at the re-entrant angle. It is constructed from whinstone rubble with red and buff sandstone dressings, showcasing a variety of bolection, cavetto, and roll moulded openings, as well as rounded arrises, lintels, and rybats. The roof has coped skews with shouldered skewputts.

Notable architectural features include Tudor label mouldings at the entrance in the re-entrant angle, where the doorway lintel is dated with the initials of Nicol Cairncross and his wife, Elizabeth Lauder. Above the entrance, a squinch-arch supports a corbelled out stair. To the left of the entrance is a window with a single pilaster-framed surround, while to the right is a bolection moulded window. The ground floor has two gun-loops, one square-cut and one oval. The dormers have been renewed and display the Cairncross arms and Mercer crest.

Adjoining to the northwest is a rubble 'barmkin' and a two-storey round-arched gatehouse addition that contains a kitchen on the first floor, forming a courtyard. This section also features red sandstone dressings, a belvedered ventilator with a south-facing clock on the ridge, and a circular, squat, candle-snuffer capped outshot at the northwest angle. A stone forestair leads to the kitchen on the south elevation, with the Mercer crest above a roll-moulded, keystoned arch.

Inside, the entrance in the re-entrant angle is rebated for inner and outer doors, leading to a barrel-vaulted storeroom. The first-floor hall features a large corbel-lintelled fireplace, and there is a small chapel room off this space. Additional corbelled fireplaces are found elsewhere, including one with shafted jambs on the upper floor. A full-height stone spiral stair, mostly renewed, replicates the fragmentary winding newel that survives to the ground floor. The building predominantly has lead-framed glass panes set in original glazing grooves, with coped dentilled stacks and cast-iron rainwater goods.