Biggar Park

Biggar Park is a country house with a complex construction history. The front range was likely built in 1798 for John, Lord Elphinstone, who had acquired the property the previous year; the property was certainly shown to exist by 1813.

The front range is in a late Georgian style and symmetrical, with a two-storey south facade. It features a shallow-advanced centre with a 19th-century square porch at ground level. Above the porch is a three-light window with a blocking course over the main cornice. A scrolled pedestal supports a ball finial. The ground floor windows are set in shallow arched panels, and the flanks are shallow-bowed. The house is constructed of rubble with contrasting ashlar dressings, and has a piended slate roof with stacks along the rear wall. The windows have been altered, mostly with tall lower and small upper sash windows, although the central vertical glazing bar has been retained in the flank windows. The interior is of a high quality, particularly in two public rooms and a shallow-domed hallway on the ground floor, with elaborate ceiling and cornice plasterwork, fireplaces, and timber panelling.

Extensive ranges to the rear are harled, making their precise appearance difficult to assess. However, they incorporate earlier fabric and handsome interior detailing suggesting a range of dates in the 18th century. The house is said to have been built by James Bertram, who inherited the property in May 1794, possibly referring to the former south range, which is similar in height and scale to the present front range. Slightly lower parallel ranges linking with a north range may have once defined an open court, as indicated on a map from 1813, in an area now partially top-lit and containing the staircase. Rooms in the north range contain features, such as door panelling and plasterwork, suggesting a date closer to the mid-18th century. The north elevation of the house has been significantly altered, and a pair of symmetrically placed wallhead stacks is an unusual feature. The windows are primarily sash windows, with slate roofs. A pair of low parallel blocks originally forming a service court are shown on the 1813 map, although they are not in their present form.