Gartur House

Gartur House is an earlier 19th-century classical house built in front of an 18th-century gabled laird’s house.

The laird’s house is a two-storey and attic, three-bay structure with its main elevation originally facing south. It is built of rendered rubble with ashlar dressings, and has an eaves band course. The south elevation features a former stair window at the center, now converted into a doorway with a glazed door, approached by a flight of steps with metal railings. A small window is located under the eaves at first floor level, above the doorway, and regular windows are present on each floor in the flanking bays. A piend-roofed dormer is on the left side, and there is a rooflight. The west end gable has a later bipartite window at ground level and a first-floor window to the left, with a small attic window above. The east end gable features a single-storey, flat-roofed porch in the re-entrant angle at ground level with a door and window, and two windows to the gable to the left. Above this are two first-floor windows (one small), and an attic window in the gablehead. The north elevation is masked by the taller addition of the classical front block.

The classical addition is a two-storey and basement, eight-bay sandstone ashlar block. It incorporates band courses above the basement and dividing floors, a first-floor cill course, an eaves cornice, and a parapet. The main north elevation has a slightly advanced two-bay centrepiece, and end bays featuring fluted panels to the blocking course. The ground floor windows are taller. A tripartite entrance is approached by a broad flight of stone steps, which oversail the basement recess. The entrance features a column-flanked semicircular-headed doorway, recessed two-leaf doors, a cornice, and a radial-glazed fanlight. Narrow single windows flank the entrance, and the entire composition is framed by pilasters. There are two windows at first floor level, with a decorative iron balcony supported by scrolled wrought-iron brackets. Regular windows are positioned in the flanking bays on all floors. The east and west end elevations each have a single central window to the ground and first floors.

Timber sash and case windows feature small-pane glazing patterns. Broad, corniced end gable stacks are present on the laird’s house. Squat, coped stacks are found along the cross walls of the addition and at the wallhead to the rear. The roofs are clad in grey slate, graded to the gabled roof of the laird’s house, with a piended roof to the addition.

The interior of the classical addition comprises four main rooms built on a grand scale and featuring good plasterwork and chimneypieces. These include an oval entrance vestibule and a cantilevered stone staircase.

Plain iron railings are present at the entrance steps and to guard the basement recess on the north elevation.