Ardchullarie More

Ardchullarie More

This is a shooting lodge built in 1910 and designed by the Glasgow architects Stewart and Paterson for Colonel Archibald Stirling of Keir. The building exemplifies restrained Scots Renaissance detailing, characterised by crowstepped gables and carved and shaped dormerheads to the principal first-floor windows. The main house forms an L-shaped plan with an adjoining lower service and bedroom wing, creating an overall U-shaped arrangement. Wing walls from the house and service block link to a former stable block, shielding the rear of the house from view and creating an internal courtyard. Positioned on an elevated site above the A84 road, the main elevation faces southwest, providing views across Loch Lubnaig towards Ben Ledi.

The approach consists of a driveway that passes a rectangular-plan motor house before reaching an L-shaped lodge, and continues further to the main house itself.

The entrance (northwest) elevation displays a large armorial panel bearing the Stirling family motto "Gang forward" set above a bolection moulded doorpiece. The carved dormerheads flanking the pair of first-floor breaking eaves windows are decorated with strapwork to their upper parts and inscribed with the initials A.S. for Archibald Stirling. The adjoining wing wall features a large round arched gateway with oversized keystone and voussoirs, providing access to the courtyard. The northwest gable end of the former stable block is enlivened by a small capped stair turret positioned below the majority of the gable. The southwest (garden) elevation incorporates a large late twentieth-century conservatory centred at ground floor level with a balcony created to its roof. The central first-floor window has been lengthened to give access to the balcony. The dormerheads here are simpler than those to the northwest. The two-bay service and bedroom wing is set back from the main façade and extends to the northeast, creating a corresponding arm to the entrance wing. The wing wall to the southeast is lower than that to the northwest, with a doorway set at its centre. The stable block presents plain elevations to its southeast and northeast sides; stone dormerheads are not featured to the northeast as this elevation is largely obscured. The stable block displays dormerheads to the elevation facing into the internal courtyard, as family and house guests would have been familiar with this part of the building when mounting and dismounting their horses. The ground floor of the stable block has been reconfigured to provide modern accommodation. The rear elevation of the house facing into the courtyard is plain and unadorned; both gable ends are crowstepped, that to the service wing being set lower.

The exterior materials comprise painted white render with dressed sandstone to openings, margins, base course, eaves cornice, dormerheads, crowsteps and stacks. The main door is a four-panelled timber door with multi-paned letterbox fanlight. Windows are predominantly twelve-pane timber sash and case. Grey slate pitched roofs are employed throughout, with stacks arranged predominantly to gable apexes and a ridge stack to the service block. The stacks are rendered with exposed margins to the house, ashlar to the service and bedroom wing, and rendered to the stable block. Cast-iron rainwater goods with decorative hoppers are fitted throughout.

Interior

The interior has been designed to a very high standard, employing interesting Renaissance detailing. Common features to the majority of principal ground-floor rooms include moulded doorpieces with overdoors, parquet flooring, Jacobean revival cornice work, and a series of fine chimneypieces with cast-iron hob grates. The entrance leads into a panelled painted timber vestibule, which gives access to the central hall. The hall is painted panelled timber with a number of reeded ionic columns and pilasters, some framing the dogleg stair. The former smoking room features polished oak panelling with a bolection marble and lugged timber chimneypiece framed by a pair of ionic pilasters supporting a cornice. A corridor running from the hall provides access to the dining room, with further service rooms including the butler's pantry and kitchen set off from this. The butler's pantry retains its original cupboards, recently restored in 2004. The stairwell to the first floor is enclosed by an arcade of ionic columns with Jacobean style plasterwork. The hall corridor running to part of the first floor features a simple barrel vault. A series of bedrooms and bathrooms run off the hall with simple decoration and coomed ceilings.

Lodge

A symmetrical, simple single-storey L-shaped lodge, also built in 1910. A date stone inscribed "1763", reputedly taken from a former farm house on the site, is placed above the doorway. Bipartite windows flank the door. The door is timber boarded with a multi-paned fanlight, and principal windows are twelve-pane timber sash and case. The lodge features white painted render with exposed sandstone dressings to openings and margins. The pitched grey slate roof has modern ventilators and exposed rafters. Rendered gable apex stacks with cans are fitted. Cast-iron rainwater goods are employed.

Motor House, Kennels and Byre

A rectangular-plan multi-purpose building erected in 1910. Two large doors to the southwest gable provide access to a large space that would originally have been used to garage motor vehicles. The ceiling is timber boarded with a central ventilator connected to the ventilator of the gable apex. To the southeast elevation is a kennel with cast-iron railings to an enclosure. To the rear of the building is a compartment which housed a former byre or dairy. A stack to the rear possibly indicates that this may also have served as a bothy. The building features harled walls, with sections to the rear having deteriorated as of 2004. The pitched grey slate roof has coped ashlar skews with scroll skewputts. The rear of the building is missing its doors and windows and is in some state of deterioration.