Skellater House

Skellater House is a tall, two-storey and attic, five-bay, T-plan laird’s house dating to 1727. Rear additions were made in 1857, and the house was restored in 1975-6 by builder Alastair Harper, with a link kitchen added in 2004, designed by Michael Rasmussen of Rasmussen Associates, Aboyne, and built by Mike Forbes, Aboyne. Further interior work was carried out by Mikhail Pietranek, Ballater. The house retains its original fine character. It has stone dormerheads flanking advanced gabled wings that create a U-plan front, with glazed arrowslits in the gableheads. The symmetrical entrance elevation to the southeast features a roll-moulded doorpiece with an oval transom light and an armorial panel dated 1770. The walls are constructed of harl over rubble, including large field boulders with small pinnings, with granite dressings and chamfered arrises. A panelled timber door, complete with decorative ironwork latch, provides access.

The rear elevation features an advanced gable incorporating a re-entrant angle to the right. A glass-walled kitchen link, facing southwest, was added in 2004, alongside a single-storey and attic gabled garage wing from the 1970s.

Replacement timber sash and case windows retain a 12-pane glazing pattern and incorporate secondary double glazing. The roof is covered with graded grey slates and stone ridge, with coped squared rubble stacks including thackstanes, ashlar-coped skewputs with moulded skewputts, and stone finials.

Prior to the 1975-6 restoration, the interior was gutted. In 2004, cornices, moulded skirtings, and architraves were reinstated. The main rectangular block contains two principal ground floor rooms, each formerly divided and of a single room depth. A central dog-leg staircase rises to the attic storey. An original granite fireplace remains in a first-floor bedroom. The hall floor is made of reclaimed pitch pine, and the rear hall is canted. A small space with a glazed arrowslit, accessed through the wall thickness in the southeast attic bedrooms, is also present.

Skellater Cottage is a single-storey (formerly with attic), three-bay, rectangular-plan traditional cottage. Constructed of coursed squared granite rubble with a slate roof, it features 12-pane glazing pattern in timber sash and case windows and a timber door. The interior includes a monumental fireplace arch.