THE Edinburgh office of Strutt & Parker (0131–226 2500) has announced the sale of one of Scotland’s grandest country houses, the striking, Category A-listed Auchendennan House near Alexandria, Dunbartonshire, a beautifully restored, 54-room baronial castle on the south-west shore of Loch Lomond, where the lowlands of Central Scotland and the Highlands meet.
The agents quote a guide price of ‘offers over £3.75 million’ for the four-storey sandstone castle, set in 55 acres of formal gardens and parkland within Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park, commanding spectacular views across the lake towards Ben Lomond, 3,196ft high and the most southerly of the Scottish Munros. The castle, designed by the eminent Glasgow architect, John Burnet Snr, was built in about 1866 for George Martin, a Glasgow-based East India merchant, on the site of an earlier Italianate property of which no trace remains. Burnet also designed the quadrangular clock house, cottage and stables—all listed Category B. The magnificent library was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
In 1898, William Chrystal, a brilliant industrial chemist and a keen yachtsman, bought Auchendennan House and commissioned the architect Alexander Nisbet Paterson, who studied in Paris and began his career as an architect working with Burnet, to rebuild and extend the castle. In 1902, Paterson, with assistance from his chief draughtsman, Donald McKay Stoddart, added the distinctive porte cochère in Scottish Renaissance style, the oak-panelled entrance hall with its large carved fireplace and significantly altered, enlarged and embellished the interior with carvings and mythological inscriptions.
Esta historia es de la edición December 09, 2020 de Country Life UK.
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