Description

Mid 19th century. Single storey and attic, irregular-plan, gabled villa. Bull-faced, snecked red rubble sandstone, ashlar dressings. Slate roof. Base course, eaves course; single and bipartite windows with stop-chamfered ashlar jambs, 2- and 4-pane timber sash and case windows, dormerheaded windows with decorative bargeboards and finials; ashlar-coped skews with bracketted skewputts; tall, corniced linked stacks.

N ELEVATION: door to centre with lean-to bargeboard porch, bipartite window to right, 2 dormerheaded windows above (flat roof to left), gable advanced to left with canted window to ground, bipartite above and decorative panel to roofspace.

E ELEVATION: ground floor masked by large glazed addition, gable advanced to centre with window at 1st floor, gable to left with bipartite at 1st floor.

W ELEVATION: blank gable to left, bay to right with window at ground floor and dormerheaded window above, single storey bay to far right altered and raised to 2 storeys.

INTERIOR: dog-leg stair with simple timber balusters.

STABLE OFFICES: plain single and 2 storey building of red rubble sandstone construction and slate roof, converted for domestic use. GATEPIERS: 2 pyramidal octagonal gatepiers, painted bull-faced ashlar.

Statement of Interest

Ormidale was built for a Mr and Mrs Hering (formerly Baron von

Heringen) by the 11th Duke of Hamilton; the Herings' adopted a child, successively known as Marion Hamilton, Jeanie Hering and Mrs Adams-Acton, who was allegedly the illegitimate daughter of the 11th Duke and a local girl named Elizabeth Hamilton. Jeanie married the portrait sculptor John Adams-Acton, and through their influence, artistic figures such as Sir Noel Paton, Robert Browning and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) visited Arran. The pattern for fashionable middle class visitors continued and the development of tourism on the island can in part, be credited to the Adams-Actons. Ormidale is thus invested with a degree of historical importance.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q56619962

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  This Old House: Restoring, Rehabilitating, and Renovating an Older House
• 
  Cork: City and County (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2
• 
  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)