Belsyde House

Belsyde House is a classical style house built in 1788, with additional 19th-century pavilion wings and alterations around 1900. It is a two-story, three-bay rectangular building with single-story, single-bay wings and a porch. The exterior is harled with painted raised margins, featuring base and eaves courses, segmental-arched Venetian windows, wall-mounted sundials at the corners of the west (entrance) elevation at first floor level, and rusticated quoins to the pavilions.

The west (entrance) elevation has three bays, with a large, corniced porch at the centre, featuring pilastered angles, a fanlight over the door, a cast-iron lamp, and windows to the returns. A window sits above the porch, flanked by segmental-arched Venetian windows. The north (side) elevation displays a window to the two-story gable, incorporating a tablet with the Hamilton coat-of-arms to the right. The east (rear) elevation is two stories and attic, with four bays, including a projecting three-story WC block (a later addition) off-centre to the left. The windows are regularly spaced, with dormer windows at the wallhead to the outer right and left.

The north pavilion mirrors the south, featuring Venetian windows to the west, north, and east elevations. The gabled north elevation includes a blind Venetian window set within a round-arched ashlar panel in a slightly projecting bay at the centre. A blocked door is on the right, and a timber porch is on the left. The east elevation includes a narrow window to the left of the Venetian window, and a tripartite piended dormer over. The south pavilion is a mirror image, with a window replacing a blocked door, modern glazing to the rear dormer, and a rooflight to the right.

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

A separate lodge, a single-story cottage-style structure, is also present. It is harled with raised margins, with a symmetrical three-bay facade, a projecting porch supported on tree trunk posts, a modern half-glazed door, and pointed-arched windows to the right and left. The north side has two windows, and the south elevation has a bipartite window and a flat-roofed modern addition to the side and rear. The lodge features sash and case windows with 2-pane lower and multi-pane upper sashes, and casement windows on the entrance elevation. It has a piended slate roof, deep overhanging eaves, and a sandstone coped stack with moulded cans. Gate piers, topped with pyramidal caps, flank a whinstone quadrant wall to the entrance.

Belsyde House was let to a Francis Home by the Ferrier family from 1855 to 1878. Estate maps from 1840, valuation rolls from 1855-1878, and Ordnance Survey maps from 1855 and 1897 are available for reference.