Pass House, Kilmahog

Pass House, Kilmahog

Pass House is a striking late Victorian house dating from the 1890s, built as a holiday home and situated above the Garbh Uisge river just below the Falls of Leny. The building takes full advantage of its scenic setting with dramatic views across the river.

The main building is a single-storey and attic structure with a roughly rectangular plan and multiple gables in a Free-style design. A prominent L-shaped crenellated tower of four storeys projects to the north-west, while a single-storey and attic service wing with a piend roof is set to the south-east. The tower includes a viewing platform and narrow turnpike stair, with accommodation provided at first and second floor levels. The majority of the house's accommodation is at ground floor level, including a drawing room, smoking room, dining room, and multiple bedrooms. Additional accommodation is provided in the attic and tower.

The north-west elevation features an advanced gabled entrance lobby with balustraded steps leading to an entrance door set in the re-entrant angle, with a roll-moulded architrave. The entrance and north-east roadside elevations are dominated by the four-storey tower, which is canted to the north-west with the stair housed in a setback section rising above the main tower to access the viewing platform. The north-east roadside elevation is relatively plain, with irregularly fenestrated single-storey gabled bays, a large buttress rising to mid-height, and a twentieth-century garage adjacent to the right outer bay. The elevation terminates to the left with the service wing.

The principal south-west elevation is set slightly raised above a terrace running its entire length. Balustraded steps and the terrace lead to French doors opening into the former smoking room. A large five-light canted window with piended roof lights the drawing room to the left outer bay. A three-light canted window with piended roof and finial is set on the angle, lighting the dining room. The wall head breaks at an off-centre point with an M-shaped gablet, behind which an obscured dormer window lights the former billiard room. Originally the sole attic room in the main house, the billiard room was converted in the later twentieth century, along with other attic spaces, to provide additional accommodation, though the large central cupola remains. The service wing is substantially set back to the outer right of the south-west elevation, characterised by its piend-roofed bipartite dormer breaking the eaves and swept eaves. The south-east window has a large dormerhead detailed with skewputts and a carved thistle finial, with the back door situated to its right.

The house is constructed of squared, snecked rubble with raised long and short quoins and stop-chamfered window margins in polished red sandstone ashlar. Roofs are primarily grey slate with large lead flat-roofed sections to the main body and a grey slate piended roof to the service wing. Windows are mainly timber sash and case with plate glass to lower sashes and predominantly nine-pane glazing to upper sashes, though some tower fenestration has modern uPVC glazing. Corniced red clay stacks serve the main house and brick stack with red clay can to the service wing. Deep eaves feature moulded bargeboards to gables, and predominantly cast-iron rainwater goods with decorative semicircular hoppers.

The interior features a three-quarter glazed timber-panelled inner door with cusped upper lights opening onto an inner lobby with a mosaic floor. A central corridor and hall run through the house, opening into a top-lit principal hall at the end. Half-panelling and dentiled cornices finish the lobby, central corridor, hall and principal rooms. Timber-panelled shutters are fitted to principal rooms, and timber-panelled doors throughout are furnished with moulded doorframes and black door handles. The narrow turnpike stair rises through an arch from the hall to the tower bedrooms and former billiard room. The ground floor interior is on a grand scale and well preserved, with timber panelling throughout.

The house occupies a prominent position along the A84 road, with the viewing platform to the tower and large canted windows to the south-east ground floor offering dramatic views across the river.