Outbuildings, Walled Garden, Kimmerghame House

Main House

A baronial mansion designed by David Bryce and dated 1851, incorporating panelling salvaged from an earlier house. The building consists of a four-storey tower with low two-storey service wings. It is constructed of squared and snecked sandstone with chamfered arrises, and features roll-moulding to the principal windows of the entrance tower. String courses divide the floors of the two-storey wings at intervals, and the building displays fine heraldic panels and crowstepped gables. The house was partly destroyed by fire around 1947 and subsequently rebuilt.

Tower: North (Principal) Front

The north front presents two bays to the entrance court. The third floor is jettied on a moulded corbel course. The right entrance bay is gabled and advanced, with a round-arched doorway surrounded by roll-moulding and a rope-moulded hoodmould with knot label stops. A broad flight of steps with panelled and corniced piers, ball finials, and stone balustrades leads to the entrance, flanked by stone seats. Above the door, each floor contains a window. The window in the gablehead at the third floor has a Renaissance surround with framing colonnettes bearing annulets and a keystoned semicircular pediment; a stack rises at the apex. The left bay features a small window and a gunloop slit at ground level, with an armorial shield in a panel above. A window to the stair landing appears above this, and a corbelled bartizan projects at the fourth stage, topped with a conical roof and a small window. A further window to the right breaks through the eaves within a steep, scroll-adorned Renaissance pediment.

Tower: South (Garden) Front

The south front shows evidence of fire damage in its exposed wall, with one window inserted later. A broad wallhead stack flanks the gable, and another bartizan projects to the outer right. Single-storey flat-roofed additions and reworkings occupy the ground level.

Tower: East and West Side Elevations

A crowstepped gabled block abuts at ground level on the garden side, featuring a gunloop and a heraldic panel on its otherwise blank gable facing the entrance court. A recessed door flanked by windows opens to the side elevation, and a gabled conservatory addition adjoins the gable of the garden front. The tower itself displays a window to the left of the gabled addition at ground level. A carved heraldic cartouche appears above ground within rubble masonry to the centre and right, with more finished stone visible in the bay to the left. Above the two-storey wing, the side elevation features dressed masonry, irregular windows, and bartizans (as noted above).

Two-Storey Wings: Entrance Court

A principal three-bay wing extends to the left of the tower, facing the entrance court. A link bay with a wallhead balustrade and a semi-circular-pedimented bipartite dormer-headed window (dated) breaks through at the centre. The three bays comprise an outer left bay that is gabled and advanced, with a window to each floor; the first-floor window is pedimented in the same manner as that in the entrance bay's gablehead. An advanced and buttressed stack breaks the skew to the right in the re-entrant angle formed with the central and right bays, each of which displays out-of-line windows at ground and pedimented dormerheads to the first-floor windows. A gabled return to the right contains windows at ground level and a carved relief of a boar chained to a tree above the motto "J'espere" in the left gablehead, with a pedimented dormer to the right. To the outer left of the three-bay block, a recessed pair of single-storey service court bays presents two widely spaced windows, a battered corner buttress, and a stack that anchors the composition.

Two-Storey Wings: Garden Wing

The garden wing extends to the right of the tower with two low link bays, each containing a bipartite window and a door, with two steeply pedimented dormer-headed windows above. A taller pair of bays advances slightly to the right, with a rounded corner corbelled to a square at the first floor on the left. Paired gableheads feature a stepped corbel table with windows between which a nautical relief carving appears. A bipartite window occupies the ground level. Single-storey bays extend beyond, with closely paired windows to the first bay and a gabled outer right bay marking the end of the service court range.

Service Court

A range abuts the house with crowstepped and finial-topped gables facing the garden and the entrance court to the right. Two doors open to the court (one to a store) and two windows are set in the range. The court is framed by finely coped rubble walls and entered from the entrance court through a buttress-flanked gateway topped with a bold circular pediment and flanked by a balustrade. A pair of tall corniced ashlar gatepiers frames the vehicular entrance to the court. Beyond these, adjoining stables (listed separately) feature a circular tourelle flanking the entrance, conically roofed with a door facing outside the court and an arrowslit window within. The court is paved with cobbles.

Joinery and Roofing

Twelve-pane glazing patterns appear in timber sash and case windows throughout. Two later timber casements with small panes have been inserted. The roofs are covered with graded grey slates, with fishscale tiles on the bartizan roofs. Ball finials are leaded. Coped and crowstepped skews display a variety of finely carved finials including crescents, fleurons, fleurs-de-lys, balls, and cushion pinnacles, along with beak skewputts. Some good rainwater heads and downpipes survive. Stacks feature moulded coping.

Interior

The interior was not inspected in 1997. It is reported to contain wainscot panelling from the earlier house in the entrance hall and stair.

Garden Features and Boundary Walls

Screen Wall and Terrace Walls

To the right of the entrance court stands a screen wall with trefoil motifs flanking a carved panel and ball finials. Later terrace walls extend beyond, reaching a balustraded section. A balustraded wall with piers fronts a later conservatory. Low walls with moulded coping define the entrance court and surrounding lawns, adorned with decorative cast-iron urns. A pair of large panelled pedestal piers flanks the driveway, each crowned by a seated stone Florentine boar statue.

Garden Seat

A low ashlar banquette features moulded coping to its back and rises at the centre in a semicircular panel.

Sundial

A mid-nineteenth-century cubic sundial sits on a two-step moulded ashlar base bearing a baluster shaft with carved floral ornament. The cubic ashlar dial is topped with a copper gnomon on each face and crowned with a ball finial. It is sited beyond the house conservatory on a sunken garden.

North Gate

Designed by George Smieth and dated 1835, the north gate features fine battered ashlar sandstone polygonal gatepiers flanking the drive, with polygonal caps bearing quatrefoil panelled friezes. These are flanked by decorative iron pedestrian gates and further polygonal gatepiers detailed identically. A long sweep of fine saddleback coped ashlar quadrant dwarf walls displays impressive railed ashlar parapets, beyond which extend coped rubble boundary walls. A neighbouring lodge is listed separately.

East Gate

Four square droved ashlar piers flank and frame the drive, with cornices and squat pyramidal caps linking the drive piers. Coped stone quadrant walls connect these piers. A pair of vermiculated ashlar gatepiers with low pyramidal caps and polygonal pal stones complement this composition. Pair of dome-capped drum piers by Kimmerghame Bridge (listed separately) complete the gate system.