Sumburgh House

Sumburgh House

A former country house, now hotel, designed by David Rhind in 1867 with additions made in 1897. The building is an asymmetrical Scots Baronial composition of considerable complexity.

The original house comprised two storeys arranged in an L-plan, wrapping around a further two-storey L-plan entrance range to create a double-pile arrangement with wings extending from the east and south gables. The 1897 additions include single-storey and attic wings to the east, a southern L-plan wing terminated to the south by a two-bay pavilion, and a balustraded screen wall extending northwest to a gabled northern wing.

The walls are constructed of stugged, squared and snecked sandstone with polished and droved ashlar dressings and details. The wings employ coursed rubble walls with droved ashlar dressings. Architectural mouldings include a base course, a string course at first floor level, and stop-chamfered arrises to the windows.

The principal southwest elevation displays two storeys across three bays, with a three-centred arch to the entrance door in the centre bay. Above this is an architraved panel with a three-light window at first floor and an arrowslit in the gablehead. A two-storey, three-light canted window breaks the gable of the northwest range. A dormered single-storey and attic wing extends to the right, with a three-stage tower in the re-entrant angle containing narrow windows at ground floor, a single centred window at first floor with a staggered string course, and a band course with incised quatrefoils below the eaves cornice. The later wing incorporates a two-bay link to a pavilion gable with centred windows at each floor.

The northwest elevation shows the three-bay principal front of the original house, with a bipartite window in a dormer with gabled stone dormerhead containing a coat of arms, an additional dormer window, and a shouldered two-flue wallhead stack breaking the eaves. A single-storey and attic wing extends to the left.

The rear northeast elevation features the blank gable of the pavilion, gabled dormers breaking the eaves, and the balustraded screen wall linking to the northern wing. The southeast elevation comprises a two-storey, two-bay pavilion with an entrance door and a gabled stone dormer above, together with a two-storey, three-light canted window.

Throughout, the building is finished with modern glazing. The roof is covered in purple slate, laid in a fish-scale pattern at the ridge. The tower has a conical roof with diamond-pattern slates and a weathervane finial. Canted windows have piended roofs. Cast-iron gutters and downpipes with decorative hoppers and brackets run throughout. The gables and dormers of the original house are finished with finialled ashlar skew copes, whilst later work employs crowstepped skews. Stacks are constructed of stugged sandstone ashlar and rubble (bull-faced to later work), corniced, with circular and octagonal cans.

The setting includes a terrace and boundary walls. A ha-ha lies to the southwest of the principal front with a central ramp flanked by cast-iron urns on fluted pedestals. A coped flagstone wall runs parallel to the ha-ha with regularly spaced, battered, stugged sandstone piers (railings have been removed). A random rubble wall steps downhill enclosing the garden to the southwest. A series of random rubble walls enclose the policies to the northeast. Stugged sandstone gatepiers with pyramidal caps mark the principal entrance and farm access.