Kirkton Cottage Including Boundary Walls, Aberfoyle

Kirkton Cottage is a single-storey, rectangular-plan cottage located directly opposite Aberfoyle Old Kirk. It was constructed around 1757 as the parochial school at a cost of £32-12-0 Scots pounds. The building was remodelled and extended twice in the later 19th century. It ceased to be used as a school when a new school was built to the west of the village in 1870. As the original parish school, Kirkton Cottage is one of only three structures remaining from the 18th-century Kirkton of Aberfoyle, alongside the Old Kirk and the much-altered former manse.

The earliest part of the building is the three-bay southern section, which features a central door flanked by two windows, likely enlarged and re-glazed in the 19th century, illuminating two rooms. Map evidence from 1858-63, and information from the current owner, suggests there may have previously been an entrance at the south gable, potentially a porch indicated by a small outshot on the map.

In the later 19th century, possibly before 1870, the school was extended with an additional room to the north gable, accessed by a projecting gabled porch on the east elevation, with a door to the south side and a window to the east. An attic room was also created, lit by a window in a gable to the right of the porch.

A further one-room extension was added to the north gable in the late 19th century, featuring a mullioned double window on the front elevation. A small, piend-roofed addition was then made to the rear (west) of this room in the later 20th century.

The two rooms in the oldest, southern section of the cottage have high ceilings; the south room retains a classical timber chimneypiece and a tall corner cabinet originally used to store school equipment. The central section, added in the later 19th century, features stone-flagged floors and a simple timber stair leading to the attic room. The ground floor has timber tongue-and-groove panelling, and in the alcove under the stair, there is an excellent example of a 19th-century timber box bed with a curtain rail above.

The cottage is mainly constructed of limewashed random rubble, with the north end harled. It has four-pane timber sash and case windows and timber-boarded doors. The roof is pitched, graded slate, with a gable-head stack to the south and two ridge stacks, rendered with circular cans.

Random rubble boundary walls enclose the house and an adjacent garden area to the southwest.