Kilmory Castle, Home Farm

NR88NE 30.02 87033 86649.

This home farm comprises a two-storeyed courtyard of buildings built by Joseph Gordon Davies (builder), London, for the Powlett Orde family in c.1840-1850. The courtyard is entered through a pend and has a bothy to one side. A barn takes up most of another side and there is a threshing machine in an adjoining room. There is also an upper-floor granary approached by external stone stairs. A house and milk shed occupy the side opposite the entrance, with byres and stables in the fourth range. A separate wing, probably dating from the 1880s, contains a seven-stall stable, a cart shed and a byre, as well as a building of similar date with a cobbled floor. This contains small stalls (possibly pig sties), each with a full-height door leading onto a yard. There is also a 1950s cattle shed. All buildings are built of rubble with slate roofs, except the 1950s cattle shed which is of brick with a corrugated-iron roof.

Information from RCAHMS (SS) 11 January 2006.

Single and 2-storey, rectangular-plan classical courtyard steading and isolated range to E. Squared and snecked rubble with droved ashlar margins (some raised), large dressed ashlar and some roughly-squared quoins. Keystoned Venetian windows; voussoired segmental cart arches; stone mullions. circular rubble-walled horse excercise ring enclosure to NW.

The Buildings of Scotland volume mentions a central circle of cobbles within the courtyard. Davis had worked at Kilmory Castle, to which the steading belonged, between 1828 and 1836, and the Clock Lodge at the entrance to the estate is also attributed to him. He was a London architect, brought up by Sir John Orde when he purchased the estate from the Campbells in 1828. (Historic Scotland).