Kinlochmoidart House, West Lodge, Gatepiers And Flanking Walls

Kinlochmoidart House, William Leiper, 1882-4 Baronial shooting lodge built for the distiller Robert Stewart of Ingliston, one of Leiper's best and most complete surviving works for which his Dalmore House in Helensburgh (see North Clyde Estuary in this series) provided the template. The detail - in red sandstone, offset against local whin - is Old Scots, but the plan and composition are innovative, the fenestration sparing, and details such as the faceted tower and the position of the oriel and Romanesque-style windows, unorthodox. Still remarkably intact, the interior celebrates the late 19th-century Aesthetic Movement of the Godwin school, with gothic and some Jacobean references. The hall, landing and principal reception rooms on the first floor (where many of Scott Morton & Co's original furniture and furnishings survive) are richly polychromatic, with elaborately embossed wallcoverings, fabrics of various textures and colours, stencil decoration, gilding, leaded glass, decorative tiling, dark panelling and other finely crafted woodwork. Extensive service quarters extending as low crenellated and crowstepped wings incorporated a hydroelectric generator and refrigeration plant. The architect of this highly sophisticated country house responded to the drama of the setting but not to the prevailing weather, and by the 1980s it was saturated and gravely at risk. Now, thanks to a government-funded scheme of repairs carried out by Simpson & Brown Architects, 1986-96, it has been restored and converted to holiday lets, with minimal changes to its character. West Lodge, W. Leiper, c.1884, anticipating the house with crowsteps and other red sandstone detail. Other estate buildings suggesting Leiper's input are more in the genre of the rustic ornamental cottage, some in the English Arts & Crafts manner. The former Dairy, with lopsided treetrunk porch beneath teardrop ventilation slit, has a charming terracotta panel carved with cows set into one wall.

Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk

NM77SW 15.02 71172 72321

West Lodge [NAT]

OS (GIS) MasterMap, August 2010.