Description

Circa 1894. 3-bay, 2-storey, rectangular-plan villa (later divided into 2 flatted dwellings); Scots Baronial detailing to principal elevation. Bull-faced and heavily tooled, coursed and snecked sandstone ashlar to principal elevation; random sandstone rubble to sides and rear. Projecting, chamfered basecourse; smooth ashlar quoins; moulded cornice; crowstepped gables and dormers with moulded skewputts; smooth ashlar window margins with roll-moulded reveals to principal elevation.

S (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: advanced, crowstepped, gabled bay to right with jettied corners; canted, 4-light bay window at ground floor; simple rectangular banded cornice above central windows; overhanging gabled corners above sidelights. Bipartite window at 1st floor with cable-moulded string course, machicolated bartizans and corbels, stone ball finial. Central segmentally-pointed arched doorway, splayed architrave, cable-moulded, pointed-arch hoodmould; small rectangular window to above. Bi-partite ground floor window to left; cable-moulded, stepped hoodmould, incorporating plain ashlar plaque centrally above window; gabled breaking-eaves, crowstepped dormer above, ball finial. Rounded left corner to ground floor; shallow curved corbel at mid-height. Single storey lean-to garage recessed to far right.

W ELEVATION: wide crowstepped gable. Door to far left; 1st floor window with projecting cill to far left; later 20th century, flat-roofed brick extension further to left.

N ELEVATION: window to ground floor left. Late 20th century, single storey brick extensions to remaining ground floor. Tall, central round-arched, leaded glass stair window to 1st floor.

E ELEVATION: wide crowstepped gable. Single storey, 20th century, rubble-built garage to foreground. External brick and concrete stair leading to late 20th century, timber panelled doorway at 1st floor, off-centre right; window to far right.

Predominantly plate glass timber sash and case windows with horns. Pitched roofs; grey slates; corniced ashlar stacks; circular and octagonal clay cans.

INTERIOR: access not obtained, 2004

GATEPIERS AND GATE: pair of smooth, square-plan ashlar gatepiers; projecting, splayed bases; 2 rectangular-banded recesses to heads, slightly splayed, piended caps. Decorative wrought-iron gates with floral design, plain ball-finialled railings.

Statement of Interest

Oakdene is a well-preserved late 19th century villa, with Scots Baronial detailing. Oakdene sits on the SE brow of one of the best preserved stretches of the Antonine Wall (SCHEDULED ANCIENT MONUMENT), known as Watling Lodge, and is roughly contemporary with the villa bearing the same name (see separate listing). The plot of Oakdene is marked on Mungo Buchanan's archaeology notes from 1893-1894 relating to the excavations of the gatehouse at Watling Lodge, noting that is was feued to a Mr Wilkie, and also mentions that stones from the wall were being used to line the driveway to the newly built house. The house first appears on the 2nd edition Ordnance Survey map, resurveyed in 1895-96. The plot of the house is today bordered to the north by the Antonine Wall scheduling.

Oakdene lies within the amenity zone for the Antonine Wall recommended in D N Skinner The Countryside of the Antonine Wall (1973), and which will form the basis of the buffer zone, yet to be defined, for the proposed Antonine Wall World Heritage Site.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17816654

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

• 
  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Churches: An Architectural Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
• 
  The Victorian House Manual (2nd Edition): How They Were Built, Improvements & Refurbishment, Solutions to All Common Defects - Includes Relevant ... ... Properties (Haynes Manual) (Haynes Manuals)
• 
  Yorkshire West Riding: Sheffield and the South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Northamptonshire: Buildings of England Series (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)