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.
Denne historien er fra December 09, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra December 09, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
