Benmore House Steading

Benmore House Steading

Benmore House Steading is located at the north-west corner of the present walled garden and forms part of the principal estate of north Cowal. The steading dates to around 1862 and represents a significant formal addition to an important designed landscape, created during a period when the estate employed well-known architects including Charles Wilson and later David Thomson.

The steading consists of three older ranges, characterised by crowstepped gables, gablets and towers. The main western elevation features an off-centre entrance through a round arch set within a crowstepped gable with a stepped string course. A circular ashlar tower stands to the side of the entrance. To the left of the entrance are three segmental cart arches and two crowstepped gablets that break the eaves line. Two further windows appear to the right of the entrance. The internal elevation of this range features a slate-roofed open verandah running along its length.

The northern range contains a three-storey square-plan gabled tower with a combined doocot and clock set into three faces. To the inside corner of this tower is a round-stair tower. The short southern range displays regular fenestration with ventilation slits on the southern elevation and a hay loft above what was originally the stables. The courtyard is paved with setts.

The estate was purchased in 1862 by Patrick, an American, who employed Charles Wilson to extend the house. The steading appears to belong to this same period. The first edition map shows buildings arranged around a slightly skewed central courtyard with a further wing extending east from the northern range.

In 1870, James Duncan, a Greenock sugar refiner, acquired the estate and commissioned further work around 1874, employing David Thomson, Charles Wilson's former partner. During this period the steading was extended with relatively minor additions: a low crowstepped single-storey block was added east of the northern range, the southern range extended, and a new eastern range built to form a second courtyard. Between the two courtyards a large stone midden was built, apparently constructed onto the former eastern range which became the central dividing range. An open verandah was built on the courtyard side of the western entrance range.

The steading deteriorated through the twentieth century, and the central dividing range was removed to form a large open courtyard. The building was restored in 1990-91, involving re-roofing, some rebuilding and removal of the central midden. The steading now accommodates office and storage facilities for the Botanic Garden. The present eastern range and the eastern part of the southern range are recent low lean-to buildings.

The steading is built of squared rubble with pink and buff sandstone dressings, roofed in grey slate. Doors are timber boarded and windows are predominantly timber sash and case. The steading retains a fine, unspoilt roofscape and stands as an important example of later nineteenth-century steading design in the Baronial style, distinguished by exceptional features such as the combined doocot and clock tower.