Wash House & Stable Block, The Thorn, Thorn Street, Earlston

This is a circa 1830 villa with a wash house and stable block, situated on a sloping site in Earlston. The villa is built into the hillside, with two principal elevations facing south and west. The south and west sides are constructed from soft cream stugged coursed sandstone with polished ashlar dressings, long and short quoins, and decorative details such as a base course, dividing and eaves band courses, a deep cornice, blocking course, and quoin strips. The east and north elevations are rendered.

The south elevation, facing the High Street, appears as a single storey and basement, with three bays. It has cast-iron balusters leading to a central entrance with a pilastered doorpiece (repaired with rendering), a deep-set panelled door, and an umbrella fanlight above. Tripartite windows are located in the flanking bays, and single windows are present at basement level. The west elevation, facing Thorn Street, is two storeys high with three bays. It features a central architraved and corniced doorpiece with a boarded door and a letterbox fanlight, along with a single window on the first floor above. Single windows are placed in the outer bays to the left and right. The east elevation has a single window on each floor, while the north (rear) elevation features droved red sandstone dressings around the ground and first-floor windows. A secondary entrance and a single window are set within a depressed arch, returning to an adjoining terrace.

The villa has twelve-pane sash and case windows and a grey-purple slate piended roof. There are panelled and corniced stacks, tall moulded octagonal cans, and some original rainwater goods.

Inside, a glazed tripartite two-leaf vestiblue door is set in a depressed arch with an umbrella fanlight. Other interior features include moulded door and window frames, panelled doors and shutters, decorative plasterwork, cast-iron balusters and a timber handrail to the central stairwell, marble chimneypieces with a cast-iron grate, and a depressed-arch passage running west to east beneath the first floor of the adjoining property to the north.

The property is approached by segmental arched carriage gateways through high coped rubble boundary walls, with a corniced red ashlar pedestrian gateway to the southwest. Spearheaded iron gates and railings sit atop the boundary wall, and a white marble drinking fountain is set into the wall to the south, commemorating John Young, a doctor in Earlston from 1884 to 1934. The wash house and stable block are located along the north boundary wall, and are single-storey with a loft, featuring timber doors, brick piers and a slate piended roof. The stable’s south elevation was likely rebuilt in the early 20th century.

The villa occupies land once known as Thorn Park, named for an ancient thorn tree located there, as depicted on Ordnance Survey maps. In 1825, the land was leased to John Spence, a writer in Earlston, who built the house and associated outbuildings. The design likely accommodated both business offices accessed from the west and private living quarters accessed from the south. The property was later owned by doctors, continuing this dual-purpose arrangement.