Glasgow, 25 Mansionhouse Road, The Double Villa

Double Villa, 25 and 25a Mansionhouse Road, 1856, Alexander Thomson

As a developer, 'Greek' Thomson prepared a feuing plan for Langside in 1853 and this was the only house he built here. Unique asymmetrical plan, with separate entrance porches on opposite sides, designed to look like single large villa. Squared rubble, ashlar dressings and incised Greek and Egyptian detail under shallow-pitch broad-eaved slate roof. Responding to the change in relative importance of the dining room, now as much used as the drawing room for business entertaining, Thomson designed a new type of continuous glass window behind a freestanding stone colonade at the dining room. This was his first experiment in what could be called an inside-out curtain wall. His interior decoration for these rooms, with elaborate cornices and pine-panelled walls, included a 'sun' ceiling in the dining room and a 'moon' ceiling at the first-floor drawing room. Decoration restored at no 25a, 1995, Alexander Page and Mark Baines.

Taken from "Greater Glasgow: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Sam Small, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk

NS56SE 125 57591 61496

For 25a Mansionhouse Road, the SW half of the Double Villa, see NS56SE 2037

ARCHITECT: Alexander 'Greek' Thomson, 1856-7.

Built for Henry Watson, clothier. Appears to be a single Picturesque Grecian villa, but is in fact two houses of identical plan, with one rotated through 180 degrees, creating two pairs of identical asymmetrical elevations. Walls of honey-coloured Giffnock sandstone. Decoration mainly limited to capitals at dining room and drawing room windows. Plaster ceiling in drawing room decorated with Greek motifs.

R McFadzean, 1979; G Stamp, 1999