Lodge, Belsyde House

This is a classically detailed house with lodge, gatepiers, and boundary walls, dating to 1788, with 19th-century additions and alterations around 1900. From 1855 to 1878, Belsyde was let to a Francis Home by the Ferrier family. The main house is a two-story, three-bay rectangular structure, accompanied by single-story pavilion wings and a porch. The walls are harled with painted raised margins, featuring base and eaves courses, and rusticated quoins to the pavilions. The west (entrance) elevation has a large, corniced porch at the center, featuring pilastered angles, a fanlight over the door, and a cast-iron lamp. Flanking the porch are windows at ground level, and above the porch is a window flanked by segmental-arched Venetian windows. Sundials are mounted on the corners of the west elevation at the first floor.

The north side elevation shows a two-story gable with a tablet bearing the Hamilton coat-of-arms to the right. The east (rear) elevation is two stories and an attic, with four bays, incorporating a projecting three-story WC block (a later addition) off-center to the left. Fenestration is regularly disposed, with dormer windows to the wallhead at the outer right and left.

The north pavilion has Venetian windows to the west, north, and east elevations. The gabled north elevation features a blind Venetian window set within a round-arched ashlar panel in a slightly advanced central bay, with a blocked door to the right and a timber porch to the left. The east elevation incorporates a narrow window to the left of the Venetian window and a tripartite piended dormer above. The south pavilion is a mirror image of the north pavilion, with a window in the blocked door. Modern glazing is present on the rear dormer and a rooflight is located to the right.

The house features 12-pane sash and case windows, and a grey slate roof with two modern rooflights in each wing and three in the main block. There are ashlar coped skews, skewputts, and sandstone stacks to the gables of the main block and wings. The interior includes a pilastered sideboard recess in the dining room and Adam-style chimney pieces.

The lodge is a single-story cottage with harled walls and raised margins. The east (entrance) elevation is symmetrical with three bays, a projecting porch supported on tree trunk posts, a modern half-glazed door, and pointed-arched windows on either side. The north side elevation contains two windows. The south elevation features a bipartite window in the center with a flat-roofed modern addition to the side and rear. Sash and case windows with 2-pane lower sashes and multi-pane upper sashes are present on the side, while the entrance elevation has casement windows with similar detail. The lodge has a piended slate roof, deep overhanging eaves, and a sandstone coped stack with molded cans to the center.

Gatepiers of sandstone with pyramidal caps flank a whinstone quadrant wall leading to the entrance. Balsyde estate maps, dated 1840, are held by Glen and Henderson. Valuation Rolls from 1855 to 1878 are documented in SRO VR 122/14. Ordnance Survey maps from 1855 and 1897 provide further historical context. The property is described in Lothian by C McWilliam (1978), page 101.