Drimnin House, Formal Gardens

Drimnin House, 18th century; rebuilt c.1852 How much survives of the old house of the Macleans of Drimnin - a typical three-bay West Highland laird's house with flanking wings of slightly later dates - is uncertain: 'last night Drimnin house was in flames and nothing now remains except two or three broken ruins' wrote Margaret Gordon to her brother in 1849. The interior must be post fire, and probably much of the external masonry too, for though the rebuilt house adopted a footprint similar to that shown in David Wilson's survey of 1836, and repeated other quirks, such as the off-centre position of the windows flanking the entrance in relation to the gabled bays, it is some 10 ft wider today and, behind the render, bears no trace of the Venetian windows shown in James Anderson's survey plans and elevation drawing of 1838. These relate to a proposed scheme of alterations for Sir Charles Gordon - a budget Tudor/baronial facelift. The postfire remodelling introduced spikey Jacobethan detailing and a platform roof. Inside, it acquired a distinctly un-Highland opulence thanks to the involvement of David Ramsay Hay, the leading Edinburgh decorator and protege of Sir Walter Scott, who had decorated Drimnin Chapel a decade or so earlier. Inner doors with etched glass panels bearing the Gordon crest lead into a hall painted to imitate marble, with a pair of scagliola columns and half pilasters screening off the staircase. On the first floor, the former drawing room retains its ornate gilded cornice and stencilled borders of grotesque scrollwork, recently restored by Owen Davison and Sally Cheyne, who uncovered the inscription:"John Brown Painter 22 July 1862 from D R Hay". The improving Sir Charles Gordon (d.1845), Secretary of the Highland and Agricultural Society, upgraded his servants' quarters, built a 'hygenic dairy' (now the laundry wing), and restored the 18th-century farm square that encloses the garden to the north. This, along with a pyramidal-roofed gazebo/apple house and surviving parterres, features on the Wilson survey of 1836.

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