The Croft, Balmoral Castle

The Croft at Balmoral Castle is a 2-storey, U-shaped Germanic house that was redesigned and extended around 1885, with elements from its original construction in 1858 still incorporated. The building features stugged and coursed granite with polished dressings, a base course, and a corbel course that divides the floors, along with a partially jettied first floor. The windows have timber mullions and transoms.

On the north elevation, which serves as the entrance, there are three bays. The central bay has a gabled stone porch with stop-chamfered arrises and a pointed-arch doorway that consists of a two-leaf, panelled door, with a narrow window on the return to the right. The right bay features bipartite windows at both the ground and first floors, with the first-floor window breaking the eaves in a gabled dormer head that has swept eaves. The left bay is advanced and has a bipartite window at the ground floor and a tripartite window at the first floor.

The east elevation is symmetrical and also has three bays. The central bay is slightly advanced and features a tripartite window at the ground floor and a bipartite window in the gable head. The flanking bays each have narrow bipartite windows at the ground floor, with the right bay being blind.

On the west elevation, the main house has an advanced gable to the left, which includes a blind arrowslit and a narrow window at the ground floor, along with a corbelled, raised chimney breast at the first floor. There is a single window on the harled elevation of the rear wing.

The south elevation features a gabled wing to the left with a raised, battered chimney breast and ashlar-coped skews, likely from the 1850s. The right gable has a small window at the centre flanked by blind arrowslits and a bipartite window at the first floor. A door is located at the centre in an advanced flat-roofed porch.

The building has large-pane glazing in casement windows, with two 12-pane sash and case windows on the rear west wing. The deeply overhanging eaves are supported by drop pendant timber brackets. The shallow pitched roof is covered with graded grey slates, and the principal gables feature scroll-flanked kingposts. The dormer head has cusp-headed barge boards, while the porch has buckle quoin barge boards, and there are coped gable heads and ridge stacks.