Heritage Now #10

FEATURE

a substantial mansion, an entrance lodge, stables, garaging and the design of the garden. The large and impressive house was sited with the back drop of the gently rolling southern uplands in Scotland. Curving stone garden walls led to the north-facing entrance frontage. A main east-west orientated rectangular block was adjoined by a side wing for the kitchen quarters to the east. The drawing room, library and dining room faced south towards the gardens. The house was designed in the manner of an 18th-century Scottish classical mansion, in both the plan and the elevations. The external walls were built of a dark local whinstone with a lighter cream-coloured stone to the full-height quoins imitating pilasters, the window and door sur rounds, the cornice and stone balustrading. The colour of the light grey Aberfoyle roofing slates subtly complemented the colours of the stonework to the facades. On the symmetrical, seven-bay entrance front, a three-bay central projection rose to a wide triangular pediment capped with three urns. The handsome frontage presented an attractively designed entrance door casing and canopy and well-proportioned, multi-paned sash windows rising to a steep hipped roof with the architect’s favoured flat-roofed dormer windows. Exces

sively high and dominant chimneys loomed over the building in an almost threatening manner and were extraordinary even by the architect’s standards. The five-bay symmetrical garden front was de signed with a three-bay central projection. The façade was well composed with parapeted bay windows to the drawing room and dining room, and a central bay with a Venetian window to the library rising to a triangular pediment with stone balustrading either side. The kitchen wing, subservient to the main house, was well-judged with a lower eaves and roof height, and triangular pediments to the dormer windows. An examination of Prentice’s buildings must con clude that he was a confident and gifted architect with an independence of thought and approach. His Arts-and-Crafts houses were consistently excellent examples of their genre. He will perhaps be best remembered for his Cotswolds work which included his charming and sensitive ad ditions to such historic buildings as Court Farm, Orchard House and Abbot’s Grange in Broadway. Andrew Prentice’s life and works are described in the author’s monograph Andrew Prentice: A Scottish Architect in the Cotswolds (2024). For more details, contact acalder17@gmail.com

Symington Lodge, near Biggar, Lanarkshire, Scotland. The handsome front elevation was designed in the manner of an 18th-century Scottish classical mansion. The three-bay central projection rose to a wide triangular pediment capped with three stone urns.

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HERITAGE NOW (03/2024) WINTER 2024