Stable Block (South Range), Glebe House, Carstairs

This is a stable block (south range) forming part of a larger estate, built in 1820 by William Burn. It’s located at Glebe House, Carstairs, and is included with the main house, surrounding walls, gate piers, and a walled garden.

The main building is a two-story, three-bay structure with an irregular plan. It’s constructed of stugged sandstone with rubble to the right return and rear elevations, and has ashlar dressings and a piended grey slate roof. Features include a base course, a wallhead course, stugged ashlar quoins with tooled margins to corners and window jambs, and chimneys with corniced ashlar stacks. The original windows, now fitted with out-of-character uPVC frames, were timber 12-pane sash and case windows.

The front elevation features a tripartite segmental-arched doorpiece with sidelights, a single-story flat-roofed porch with a diagonal buttress, and a canted window to the ground floor on the left side. There are single windows above the porch and to the right, and to both floors on the left. The right return elevation has two windows to each floor, with the window on the first floor right blinded. The left return also has two windows to each floor, the right one blinded. The rear elevation includes an advanced gable, a central window to each floor, a lower two-story harled addition advanced from the right re-entrant angle, and a single-story addition to the left re-entrant angle.

The interior of the main house includes an encaustic tile floor in the hall, slender decorative cast-iron balusters on a stone staircase and landing, some original fireplaces and joinery, and plain cornices.

The stable block, located to the rear, is a single-story, L-shaped building adjoined to the house by a high curtain wall. It’s constructed of rubble with ashlar dressings and a piended grey slate roof, featuring boarded doors and fixed-pane windows with timber louvres. The inner courtyard elevation has a square-headed cart entrance, several doors, and windows. A timber dovecot entrance at the eaves has six flight holes featuring openwork designs of a Christian cross, crescent moon, star, thistle, and a love-heart. A gable is masked by a lean-to with midden walls that project from the angles. The outer elevation has two blocked entrances and a two-leaf door with ventilators.

Two ashlar gatepiers with shallow pyramidal caps mark the entrance to the stable court, alongside a midden wall and a curtain wall extending from the rear elevation. A long, rubble curved retaining wall leads to a paddock, and is punctuated by two monolithic gatepiers with tall pyramidal caps. A rectangular-plan rubble walled garden, now ruinous, sits in a field adjacent to the property.