Dun-Eaglais And Garden, Station Road, Kippen

Dun-Eaglais is a mansion on Station Road, Kippen, originally built in 1902-3 by architect Charles E Whitelaw for Sir David Young Cameron. The house was designed in a Lorimerian style as a medium-sized two-storey structure in plain harled finish, adopting a 17th-century Scots aesthetic with gables and steep pitched slated roofs. It has proven a canvas for ongoing architectural enhancement, with extensive remodelling undertaken by A N Paterson and Sir D Y Cameron himself through additions and alterations in 1911, 1913, and 1923-4, executed in Scottish Renaissance and Arts and Crafts manner.

The original design was asymmetrical, presenting seven asymmetrical bays to north and south elevations, lit by multi-paned sash and case windows with gabled or swept dormer-headed windows beneath the central section's steep pitched slated piend roof. Subsequent additions comprise a two-storey south-west drum rotunda with entrance loggia added in 1911, a two-storey north-west addition containing a ground-floor drawing room dated 1923-4, a studio addition to the north-east added probably in the 1920s, and an extension of the south elevation at the east with a two-storey gabled bay, presumably also by Paterson.

The south elevation presents a rambling composition of eight asymmetrical bays. The original 1903-4 elevations are plain harled with dormer heads and an off-centre gable. The dated 1911 addition at the south-west corner by A N Paterson comprises a two-storey angle rotunda and arcaded entrance loggia. The rotunda features single-light windows and telescopes into an arcaded drum with a slated ogee cupola roof crowned by a leaded thistle finial. Windows are tall with modern glazing at ground floor and original 15-pane sash and case windows at first floor.

The entrance loggia is a single-storey two-bay composition in cream polished ashlar with circular piers and semi-circular arches topped by roll-moulded hoodmoulds with scroll label stops and asymmetrical treatment. The right-hand arch is embellished with a tripartite keyblock curving around the intrados, while attached half pilasters corbelled from the piers frame the spandrels. A shallow mutuled cornice sits above. The parapet carries a Scottish Renaissance style heraldic inscription panel with moulded coping that extends across the rotunda to the left as a first-floor string course. The loggia is clasped on the right by a curved bastion-like entrance bay with a door set in a re-entrant angle, featuring a continuous cornice and parapet. Within the loggia sits a salvaged medieval figurative sculpture mounted on a corbel stone, and a decorative brass Art Nouveau bell push is mounted on the door. Asymmetrical dormer-headed windows sit set back above from 1903, partly remodelled later.

The loggia links to a two-storey gabled central projection of the 1903 house with two narrow 12-pane windows and a single 18-pane window (the latter with decorative wrought-iron half grille bearing the initials 'DYC') at ground floor, and a single bipartite window above. Two bays to the right from 1903 include a later semicircular bay window at ground with a leaded roof to the left, with a pair of dormer-headed windows above originally from 1903-4, remodelled by Paterson later. A further bay added by Paterson, date uncertain, stands at the east in free Arts and Crafts Scots style, corbelled to a square at first floor with rounded angles. This bay features a polished ashlar architrave and apron panel around the first-floor window, ashlar skews and skewputts, a decorative masonry finial, a decorative rainwater head to the rhone pipe, and a similar decorative finial to a roof vent. The south-east angle is dramatically curved and slightly jettied at first floor, with a first-floor window at the angle featuring an ashlar cill and keystone, the cill bearing incised scroll detail, and a coped wallhead.

The west elevation displays the drum rotunda addition to the right, linked abruptly to the original gable with elaborate corbelling at first-floor level, skews with roll skewputts, and an apex stack. A two-storey angle tower from 1903-4 stands to the left of the gable, now offset as a result of Paterson's 1923-4 addition, with the first floor slightly jettied. Tall ground-floor windows feature modern glazing, while first-floor windows retain original 12-pane sash and case glazing, topped by a conical slated roof and decorative finial. The Paterson elevation is plain with modern glazing at a single ground-floor window.

The north elevation features a three-window gable front from 1923-4 with ground-floor windows of modern glazing and three 12-pane sash and case windows at first floor, the centre windows contained within a giant recessed arched panel. An inscription panel mounted below the first-floor cill adopts the manner of a marriage lintel with the owner's initials. Two bays of the original house at the centre display gablet dormers, with a studio at the left of single storey and basement height. The elevation is harled over a red sandstone basecourse beneath a steep pitched slated roof with coped Dutch gables. A large three-light mullioned and double transomed window is canted out on a shallow projection with leaded glass. An ingleneuk sits at the north-west re-entrant angle, with a single-storey pitched roofed entrance bay to the left featuring a roundel window. A gateway is attached at the east elevation with decorative wrought-iron gates, and a small harled and slated-roofed outbuilding with a gabled west elevation and apsidal east end stands to the east.

The interior features an entrance hall with Renaissance and medieval stained-glass panels mounted in leaded-glass windows behind the loggia arcade, an Art Nouveau oak staircase, and a bolection-moulded sandstone chimneypiece. The library, occupying the north-west and originally serving as the drawing room, features a decorative Crafts-style plaster ceiling in the drum tower addition with naturalistic botanic and bird motifs. The drawing room, located to the north in the 1923-4 addition, displays a decorative rowanberry cornice and retains original semicircular tables with tall pier glasses between the windows, though other furniture has been removed to the National Gallery of Scotland. The studio contains an open timber arch-braced roof resting on plain masonry corbels, a rococo-style chimneypiece, and a five-panelled door with egg-and-dart mouldings at the east leading to a basement stair that originally accommodated Sir D Y Cameron's printing press. One pane of the studio's leaded-glass window is etched with the signatures of friends and relatives of D Y Cameron. On the first floor, an Art Nouveau arcaded oak screen fronts the servant's stair to the east, while the bedrooms feature simple lugged chimneypieces, some with cavetto-moulded friezes, and decorative door knockers designed by D Y Cameron.

The garden features red sandstone rock-faced rubble walls enclosing designed garden spaces to the north and south of the house. A terrace garden to the north contains a circular pond with a bronze putti sculpture. Sculptural fragments of various dates collected by Sir D Y Cameron are incorporated throughout the garden, including a kneeling bronze putti on a column in front of the south entrance. Decorative wrought-iron gates and railings, probably designed by Sir D Y Cameron and executed by Andrew Rennie, a local blacksmith, are of individual designs throughout. A wide yew hedge planted to the west is supplemented with topiary elements.