Description

1875-6. Single storey and attic, 8-bay, short terrace of cottages with rusticated porches and pavilion centre with timber verandah. Narrow bands of stugged ashlar with contrasting droved ashlar dressings 2 courses deep. Pointed-arch openings to 1st floor centre. Stone mullions, raked cills and chamfered arrises.

W (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: advanced gabled bays to centre (No 3) incorporating panelled timber door at left and broad window at right (altered from bipartite) under full-width verandah with bracketed cornice and cast-iron parapet; 1st floor with 2 original openings at left and centre, that to left with Y-traceried window (replaced) and that to centre with inscribed panel (see Notes), bay to right with later 5-light, dentilled and corniced, flat-roofed canted window. Bays to left of centre (Nos 4 and 5) unaltered survivals with paired panelled timber doors at centre under gabled open timber porch, narrow flanking lights and tripartites to outer bays with tripartite gabled dormers above flanking small modern rooflights. Bays to right (Nos 1 and 2) mirror those to left but with altered windows and additional out-of-character dormers.

Plate glass glazing in timber sash and case windows to Nos 4 and 5; out-of-character late 20th century glazing elsewhere. Grey slates with decorative terracotta cresting. Coped ashlar stacks with cans. Overhanging eaves with exposed rafters and plain bargeboarding.

INTERIORS: No 3 with moulded plasterwork cornices, timber dadoes, staircase with decorative cast-iron balusters and sandstone fireplace. No 4 with original fireplace, timber work and staircase with decorative cast-iron balusters.

BOUNDARY WALLS, GATEPIERS AND RAILINGS: low saddleback-coped ashlar boundary walls with battered ashlar gatepiers to No 3, and decorative cast-iron railings to No 5 (see Notes).

Statement of Interest

This remarkable group has had its considerable character eroded by out-of-keeping and materially alien alterations. However, there are remnants at the core of a symmetrical design and some fine details and local historic interest. The rear garden walls of Rickarton Cottages form a boundary with the category 'B' listed Church of the Immaculate Conception (Arbuthnott Place), with No 3 being the Presbytery. All of the cottages were originally church owned, number 4 being rented to the grandmother of the current (2005) owner from circa 1929-30, and purchased in 1958. The inscription on the commemorative panel at No 3 reads 'Erected as a memorial of William Rickart Hepburn Esq of Rickarton who died 30 May 1873'. William Hepburn was the proprietor of Rickarton House and estate on the north bank of the Cowie Water, some three miles north west of Stonehaven. The railings retained at No 5 survived wartime requisitioning (the fate of those formerly cresting the low boundary walls) due to the mill lade running along the side of Rickarton Cottages.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q56647127

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

• 
  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of History Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas
• 
  Gwent/Monmouthshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Wales)
• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  This Old House: Restoring, Rehabilitating, and Renovating an Older House
• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990: Updated version