Champfleurie House

Champfleurie House, built in 1851, is a 2-storey villa over basement in Jacobean style with an asymmetrical, roughly L-plan. The northeast and southwest wings were added shortly after the main construction, between 1856 and 1897 according to Ordnance Survey maps. The house is constructed of coursed pinkish and cream sandstone with ashlar dressings, quoins, and canted bays. It features an eaves course, stone mullions to bipartite and tripartite windows, and chamfered reveals. The canted bays carry blocking courses and ball finials to the north, south, and west elevations, with gabled and finalled dormerheads and gables topped by apex stacks.

The entrance elevation faces east and is dominated by a 3-storey circular entrance tower over basement set in the re-entrant angle of the L-plan. The tower has string courses and eaves courses, with stone-balustrated steps leading to the entrance, which is fitted with dies and ball finials. An architraved doorcase is surmounted by a keystone heraldic plaque bearing a lion and hand with sword, a Latin inscription, and the date 1851. The doors are panelled 2-leaf curved doors flanked by narrow windows with stepped hoodmould courses. Narrow windows occupy the 1st and 2nd floors. The tower has an ogeed roof with fishscale slates, a lead apex, and a weathervane. To the right of the tower is a gabled and finalled bay with a bipartite window at ground floor and a window at 1st floor level, with a tablet in the gable. The northeast wing continues to the far right with a further advanced gabled bay containing one window to each storey. To the left of the tower is a single bay with a ground floor window and a dormerheaded window above, plus a rooflight.

The north elevation is asymmetrical with irregularly disposed windows. The north face of the northeast wing consists of a single bay with a gabled centre, a canted window to basement and ground floor, and a 1st floor window, with a tablet in the gablehead. Two gabled bays recessed to the right feature a bipartite window at ground floor to the far right. An octagonal corniced stair tower occupies the re-entrant angle with a string course, windows at the 1st stage, two windows above, and a polygonal roof. A single storey block over basement adjoins this angle, with a chamfered corner, string course, ashlar coped wallhead, ball finials, a door to the left, and regularly disposed windows.

The west (rear) elevation is asymmetrical, with a canted window at basement and ground floor to the left, two dormerheaded windows above, and a gabled bay to the right with the lower gabled southwest wing abutting.

The south elevation comprises a single storey over basement containing the 3-bay southwest wing to the left with regular fenestration. To the right is a 3-storey canted window breaking the eaves, flanked by basement windows, with a slightly advanced gabled bay to the outer right containing windows to each storey, with a tripartite window at ground level. The fenestration displays a variety of glazing patterns with plate glass sash and case windows. A grey slate roof crowns the building with gablet coped skews, bracketed skewputts, kneelers, and tall polygonal stacks on corbelled and moulded bases with decorated cans. Original rainwater goods remain in place.

The interior contains a main stair with cast-iron barley-sugar twist balusters, plaster cornices, and marble chimneypieces.

The lodge, situated within the grounds, is a single storey building in Tudor style. It is constructed of cream stugged coursed and squared sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings. Features include a base course and stop-chamfered reveals to windows and door with hoodmoulds. The west (entrance) elevation presents three bays with an advanced gabled and finalled porch to the outer right and a segmental-headed doorpiece with flush-panelled door to the west face, with small windows to the left. The north and south elevations are gabled, each containing a window. An east elevation has a projecting wing at right angles to the rear. Windows are 4-pane sash and case to the main elevations and 6-pane to the gables. The roof is of grey slate with a rendered stack to the centre and saw-tooth ashlar coped skews.

The gatepiers and boundary walls comprise corniced rusticated gatepiers with ball finials flanked by ashlar coped stugged, coursed and squared sandstone rubble quadrant walls, terminated by similar lower piers and joined to a semi-circular coped rubble boundary wall. The boundary wall was reduced in height in 1990.

Archival architectural drawings (now in West Register House, reference RHP 3987) show the house as originally built before the wing additions. These drawings are unsigned and undated but depict the basement, ground and 1st floors, and elevations of the south facade. The Valuation Rolls record that Robert Hathorn Johnston Stewart was the owner and occupier of the house up to 1867, and Captain Stewart's study is noted on the original ground floor plan. Historian C. McWilliam records that Champfleurie was an 18th-century name for Kingscavil and that R and J Adam designed a house for Alexander Johnston in 1790, though the present house bears no relation to that earlier design. Walls visible in the grounds to the rear of the house could possibly be the remains of an earlier structure.