Auchmar

Auchmar is a cream-pink harled house designed by Stewart and Paterson in 1932 for the Duke of Montrose. It was created as a modern family seat to serve as an alternative to Buchanan Castle. The house features bell-cast piends and steep gables, and sits on foothills overlooking Loch Lomond to the southwest, with the Burn of Mar sloping steeply down immediately below.

The 1932 design incorporated the buildings of a late 18th or early 19th century farmhouse and steading, which originally comprised a two-storey, three-bay rectangular house facing southeast and a single-storey U-plan steading to the rear—a typical layout for Buchanan Estate farms of that period. The modernisation scheme linked the southwest steading range to the original house, creating a service courtyard, with the original house becoming the service wing. A large two-storey and attic extension to the southwest provides the principal accommodation.

The northwest entrance front features a three-bay recessed section to the left, with a round-arched window lighting a corridor leading to the service wing. To the right, a projecting gable-end contains an offset timber-panelled door framed by a sandstone Doric portico, possibly relocated from another house. The southwest elevation displays a deeply projecting piend-roofed bay with a square bay window, a central gable with an offset square bay window lighting the entrance hall, and a two-storey square bay window to the right lighting the drawing room. Large windows, including two and three-light timber-mullioned windows to the upper storeys, take advantage of views over Loch Lomond.

The exterior is finished in roughcast with narrow stone margins. The pitched and piended roofs have bell-cast eaves and graded slates, with timber sash-and-case windows predominantly featuring eight and twelve-pane glazing, and mainly cast-iron rainwater goods.

Interior

The majority of original woodwork and plasterwork remains throughout. The reception hall has near-full-height oak panelling with foliate carving and some linenfold panels, a stone Tudor-arched chimneypiece, and an oak stair with turned balusters and newels. A barrel-vaulted corridor leads to the service wing. The lounge or library contains a herringbone pattern brick chimneypiece and dentilled cornice. The drawing room features an Adam-style timber chimneypiece with an egg-and-dart cornice. The dining room has a carved timber chimneypiece with tapered columns, original brick hearth, and narrow moulded cornice.

Outbuilding And Gates

To the immediate northeast of the house stands a small single-storey rectangular outbuilding with pitched slate roof, shown on the first-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858–63.

To the northwest, terminating an avenue on axis with the entrance portico, stand ornate wrought-iron gates incorporating the dates 1874 and 1924 and the initials of the 5th Duke of Montrose. The gates were presented to the 5th Duke by his tenants in 1924 to commemorate his 50th year as Duke. They are flanked by tall square-plan ashlar gatepiers with caps obscured by vegetation, with short rubble walls sweeping down to low square-plan piers with pyramidal caps. Just to the northwest of the gates are two earlier square-plan rubble piers with pyramidal caps.