Inveraray, Newtown, Newton Row, Old Rectory

Photographic survey of buildings and sites in Inveraray and surrounding area, Argyll, by the Scottish National Buildings Record in 1962.

RCAHMS surveyed the Old Rectory, Newton Row, Inveraray on 24 October 1985 producing a strip plan and elevation at a scale of 1:100. The plan and elevation were redrawn in ink and published at a scale of 1:250 (RCAHMS 1992, 453A).

Old Rectory. The ashlar-built E front is of three bays, measuring l3.4m in length, and rises to gables with ashlar skews. The elevation corresponds to the drawing submitted by Peddie in 1817, except for the substitution of an Ionic doorcase, with rectangular fanlight, for the Doric one shown, but the proportions have been altered to make the upper storey higher, the ground-floor windows and doorcase being reduced in height, and the difference was emphasised by lowering the proposed ashlar band from first-floor sill-level to floor-level, flush with the cornice of the doorcase. The interior has a central hall, divided by a wide elliptical-headed timber arch with applied plaster ornament from a stair-hall at the rear, from which there rises to the garret a geometrical stone stair having a mahogany handrail, carried on curved iron balusters, whose spiral lower terminal is supported at the foot by curved iron brackets as in a balustrade in the courthouse .The principal (S) ground-floor room, which extends to the rear of the house, preserves a panelled dado although its chimneypiece has been removed, and this room, as well as the halls and the bedrooms on the first floor, have decorated plaster cornices, some with vine-scroll or fruit motifs in the ceiling-friezes. The house was occupied from 1848 to 1886 by Scipio MacTaggart, Sheriff-clerk of Argyll and Provost of Inveraray, and thereafter until 1952 by the priest-in-charge of All Saints' Episcopal Church (en.4).

RCAHMS 1992, visited May 1989