Description

Mills & Shepherd, 1906-07. Additions and alterations by Mills & Shepherd 1911 and 1926 (see Notes). Large 1- and 2-storey L-plan Arts & Crafts villa with distinctive 2-stage polygonal re-entrant entrance tower. Squared and snecked sandstone rubble with some ashlar margins. Casement windows. Timber cavetto eaves cornice. Piended roof.

FURTHER DESCRIPTION: N (entrance) elevation: re-entrant entrance tower with round-arched 2-leaf timber door flanked by narrow round-arched windows. To left; 2-bay section including tall stair window. To far left; 1926 3-bay extension with round-arched entrance pend to garden. At right angles to entrance tower, lower piended roofed projecting wing.

SE (garden) elevation: central projecting 5-light bay window with integral entrance porch with deep set part-glazed 2-leaf door and swept leaded roof. Canted oriel window above partly breaks eaves cornice (central 4-light piended dormer). Flanking widely-spaced single bays. To right, 1926 billiard room extension with round-arched pend, oriel window and lean-to glasshouse.

Predominantly small pane timber casement windows some with timber mullions and transoms. Red tile roof now weathered to grey/green. Variety of tall ridge and gable stacks. Cast-iron rainwater goods.

INTERIOR: good decorative scheme to ground floor rooms. Near full-height timber panelled hall with integral timber chimneypiece and turned baluster gallery. Fine timber panelling and moulded cornices to principal rooms incorporating simple timber chimneypieces with tiled inserts.

BOUNDARY WALLS AND GATEPIERS: to N (Hepburn Gardens). Semicircular coped section of wall curving inwards to form integrated gatepiers with moulded caps.

Statement of Interest

A good example of the work of respected architects Mills & Shepherd. The West House is a finely detailed Arts & Crafts villa with a largely unaltered interior scheme. and which retains its large garden plot stretching down to the picturesque Lade Braes Walk. The area is characterised by large Arts and Crafts villas (104/106 Hepburn Gardens also by Mills & Shepherd, see separate listing).

The Dundee architects John Donald Mills (1872-58) & Godfrey Daniel Bower Shepherd (1873-1937) established a partnership in 1900 that was to become prominent in the Arts & Crafts style. The practice would eventually surpass Gillespie & Scott as architects to St Andrews University.

The West House was originally built for Colonel Barry, a wealthy rubber manufacture and big game hunter. The builders where John Ritchie & Sons. Alterations and additions to the building were carried out by Mills & Shepherd and are evident on plans dated 1911, 1919, and 1925. It appears that an attic alteration, including the inclusion of dormer windows, was carried out between 1911 and 1920. The addition of a billiard room appears to have been carried out in 1925/6 as plans are marked 'proposed billiard room addition' for David Pirie Esq from this date. The plans are located in the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland collection.

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External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17804176

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

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  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Old House Eco Handbook: A Practical Guide to Retrofitting for Energy-Efficiency & Sustainability
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  A Buying and Owning a Listed Building: A Brief Guide