Creggandarroch, Shore Road, Blairmore

Creggandarroch, Shore Road, Blairmore

Creggandarroch (formerly Oakleigh) is an Italianate villa built in 1863 for A H MacLellan. Prominently sited well above the road and overlooking Loch Long, it is the premier villa along the Blairmore shore. The house was designed by the architect John Gordon and was published in one of the more popular pattern books of the later 19th century, achieving wide imitation. It possesses many features of architectural interest externally, but the interior is of particular merit, retaining much of the original ornate decorative scheme and a very good series of stained glass windows.

The main south-facing block consists of a central tall gabled section with a large round-headed stair window and an attic storey with arcaded bipartite and tripartite windows. In the apex to the front is a roundel containing the character Pi, with 3 similar roundels on the south elevation displaying the date AD 1863. Recessed to the left of this block is a slender square-plan belvedere tower and a two-storey gabled wing extending south. The round-arched entrance porch with a single corner column is located in the south-east corner. To the right of the central block is a two-storey bowed bay with five-light windows on either floor. Extending further to the right (north) is a further bay with a corbelled corner window, beyond which is a three-bay single-storey service wing.

As published in 'Villa and Cottage Architecture', Creggandarroch was significantly smaller than the present house, originally consisting of only two main floors and three bays wide. Later in the 19th century the house was substantially extended. The repetition of both internal and external details suggests the same architect was responsible for this work, which involved extending upwards to the rear to form a third floor housing a large billiard room, and extending to the north by one bay with a corbelled window on the north-east corner, increasing the size of the main reception rooms. To the east of the three-bay service wing a further gabled two-storey three-bay block was added, effectively doubling the size of the house. The main stair window appears in the original drawings as a single round-headed light; it is unclear whether this was built and later widened to allow more light or constructed as the present wide round-arched three-light. The lobby was also extended to the rear by the removal of a small bedroom and insertion of a colonnaded three-light stained glass window.

Further alterations were carried out in the 20th century, undoing much of the later work. This involved the removal of much of the large two-storey block to the north. The coach house to the north-east, which appears to have predated Creggandarroch, was recently removed in 2004.

Interior

The entrance is through a timber double door with strap hinges in the mosaic-floored open porch. The entrance hall has a floor of pine, teak, ebony and plane timbers, decorative corbels and a heavy dentilled cornice. To the rear is a tripartite colonnaded window with figurative upper panes and geometric lower panes. The main stair, made of a variety of timbers, has heavy baluster panels with pierced geometric pattern and finialled barleytwist newels. The doors are round-headed with inset gothic-arched panes of etched glass. The main stair window is the best in the building, depicting a tree of life with foliate, animal and astrological decoration. The ground-floor dining room is panelled to dado height with built-in furniture and an arched black marble chimneypiece. On the first floor the drawing room has extravagant plaster decoration as originally published, the extension matching the original and including applied columns and busts in the window-bay. The billiard room on the second floor has a timber-beamed ceiling. From this level a spiral stair leads to the panelled 'schoolroom' in the central tower, with further access to the belvedere.

Materials and Construction

The house is built in schist rubble with sandstone dressings. The roofs are covered with Welsh and Ballachulish slate, with bands of fishscale slates to the front roofs. Stone stacks and clay cans are present. Windows are predominantly plate glass timber sash and case.