Publication Account
Date 1995
Event ID 1016713
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016713
This charming 18th-century house is a more modest affair than the great mansions of Foulis and Dunrobin, and it is representative of other laird 's houses on the east coast and a few on the west. It was built in 1720 as a two-storey house with wings and heightened to three storeys in 1757 when a new room was added above the stair tower. The latter date is on the corbel heads below a tiny pediment on the west front. Once known as Ardoch, it was formerly the seat of the Gordons of Ardoch, but later belonged to the Munros in the late 18th century and was renamed Poyntzfield, when a Munro married a Poyntz heiress. Its partial resemblance to Foul is Castle (no. 34), also a Munro house, is curious, and one wonders if the pediment, and the view room on top of the tower, were incorporated in deliberate imiation of the other house.
Poyntzfield has a main block of three storeys with two lower wings forming a courtyard in front, and is harled and painted . At the back is an octagonal stair tower, the view room at the top having an attractive ogee-domed slate roof. A drawing-room with decorative plaster frieze and an angled bay was added in the late 18th century; this is now the dining- room. Outside the front door are two carved stone pediments, formerly above former windows, one dated 1673, which have come from some other house.
There are two old sundials in the garden, one either side of the house. Along the north drive is a simple one-storey mill building with the crowstepped miller's house beside it. There is a herb nursery in the walled garden, open all year, from which the back of the house can be seen.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: The Highlands’, (1995).
