Portend Farmhouse

Portend Farmhouse is an early 19th-century farmhouse, potentially incorporating earlier fabric, situated on the north shore of Lake of Menteith, west of the village of Port of Menteith. It has local importance as a good example of a relatively unaltered vernacular farmhouse. The original building was a 2-storey, 3-bay improvement period farmhouse, with a likely contemporary larder/dairy and a 20th-century addition to the rear.

The south elevation is near symmetrical, featuring a later central gabled porch with a door on the east side. A 2-storey bothy is set back to the right, with ground and first-floor windows in its eastern gable. There's a 20th-century single-storey kitchen to the rear, with modern glazing. Small, modern-glazed windows are found on the first floor to the rear of the house. A single-storey larder/dairy is advanced to the right; it has an entrance in its gable, providing access between the farmyard and the house. Inside the larder/dairy is a concrete floor with a slate shelf. The dairy/larder also has a central door with flanking windows on its west elevation, currently used for storage (as of 2004), and provides separate access to the house. The main house has a single ground floor window to the east and a first-floor window to the west.

The interior includes a 2-leaf timber panelled door leading into a hall and an unusual half-turn staircase with shallow treads. There are timber panelled interior doors, timber working shutters, and the principal reception rooms are on the first floor, featuring fine, early 19th-century timber fireplaces, deep skirting, dado, and picture rails. The bothy has access from the kitchen via a steep, boxed-in timber staircase leading to an upstairs room, with a pitch pine-lined sloping attic ceiling and a wooden floor.

The house is roughcast, while the larder/dairy is whitewashed rubble. The windows are predominantly 12-pane timber sash and case, with modern rooflights to the front and rear. Pitched roofs cover the entire structure. The house and bothy appear to have been reslated in the late 20th century, with graded grey slates on the larder/dairy and porch. The house has rendered coped gablehead stacks with circular clay cans, and timber bargeboards throughout. Some cast-iron rainwater goods are also present.