Gate Lodge, Champfleurie House

Gate Lodge, Champfleurie House

Champfleurie House is a two-storey villa over basement built in 1851 in Jacobean style, with the north-east and south-west wings added shortly afterwards. The main building adopts an asymmetrical, roughly L-shaped plan comprising a two-storey wing with attic storey over basement to the north and a single-storey three-bay wing to the south-west. It is constructed of coursed pinkish and cream sandstone with ashlar dressings, quoins, and canted bays. The building features an eaves course, stone mullions to bipartite and tripartite windows, chamfered reveals, and canted bays with blocking courses and ball finials on the north, south, and west elevations. Gabled and finialled dormerheads and gables with apex stacks complete the composition.

The entrance elevation to the east comprises a three-storey circular entrance tower over basement set within the re-entrant angle of the L-plan. This tower is marked by string courses and eaves courses, with access via steps flanked by stone balustrades, dies, and ball finials. The doorcase is architraved and topped by a keystone heraldic plaque bearing a lion and hand with sword, a Latin inscription, and the date 1851. The entrance features panelled two-leaf curved doors flanked by narrow windows with stepped hoodmould courses, with further narrow windows at the first and second floors. The tower is crowned by an ogeed roof with fishscale slates, a lead apex, and a weathervane. To the right stands an advanced gabled and finialled bay with a bipartite window at ground level, a window at the first floor, and a tablet in the gable. Further right is the gabled bay of the north-east wing, with one window to each storey. To the left of the tower is a single bay containing a ground-floor window and a dormerheaded window above, with a rooflight.

The north side elevation is asymmetrical with irregularly disposed windows. A single bay forms the north face of the north-east wing with a gabled centre, a canted window at basement and ground, a first-floor window, and a tablet in the gablehead. Two gabled bays are recessed to the right, with a bipartite window at ground level at the far right. An octagonal corniced stair tower occupies the re-entrant angle, featuring string courses, a window at the first stage, two windows above, and a polygonal roof. A single-storey wing 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 level to the left, two dormerheaded windows above, and a gabled bay to the right where the lower gabled south-west wing abuts.

The south side elevation comprises a single-storey wing over basement with three bays to the left showing regular fenestration. To the right rises a three-storey canted window breaking the eaves, flanked by windows at basement level. An advanced gabled bay stands further right, with windows to each storey, including a tripartite at ground level. The building displays a variety of glazing patterns with plate glass sash and case windows. The roof is grey slate with gablet-coped skews, bracketed skewputts, kneelers, and tall polygonal stacks on corbelled and moulded bases with decorated cans. Original rainwater goods survive.

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

The Lodge is a single-storey structure in Tudor style. It is constructed of cream-stugged, coursed and squared sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings, featuring a base course and stop-chamfered reveals to windows and door, with hoodmoulds. The west entrance elevation has three bays with an advanced gabled and finialled porch to the outer right, a segmental-headed doorpiece with flush-panelled door on the west face, and small windows to the left. The north and south elevations are each gabled with a window. The east elevation contains a projecting wing at right angles to the rear elevation. The Lodge has four-pane sash windows and case windows, with six-pane sashes to the gables. The roof is 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 drawings held at West Register House show the house as originally constructed before the wings were added. Ordnance Survey maps indicate the wings were added between 1856 and 1897. The original ground floor plan identifies Captain Stewart's study, and the Valuation Rolls record that Robert Hathorn Johnston Stewart was the owner and occupier up to 1867. Historical research notes that Champfleurie was the 18th-century name for Kingscavil and that Robert and James Adam designed a house for Alexander Johnston in 1790, though the present structure bears no relation to that scheme. Walls in the grounds to the rear of the house may represent the remains of an earlier structure.