Description
Dated 1786 on kitchen fireplace lintel, but probably
incorporating earlier fabric. 3-bay house with single storey
street elevation; classical details, off-set over basement
and recessed from roadway. Painted ashlar (flanks and garden
front rubble-built).
STREET (N) ELEVATION: giant stylised Corinthian pilasters
with thistle detail, flank bays; openings in lugged cavetto
architraves; short flight of steps to central door with
glazed upper panels and rectangular fanlight; continuous
frieze and cornice; coped end stacks; modern tile roof.
Pointed attic openings in gables. Garden front centre bay
has basement door below finely-executed Venetian window with
flanking giant Corinthian pilasters; also canted dormer;
margined ground floor windows in outer bays.
Interior altered when building became a bank in 1847;
central entrance hall became a public area, banking room on
left; stair rebuilt against right (W) gable and sealed off
from hall by doorway, fenestration altered on gable. Good
decorative detailing in principal rooms.
Set behind low coped wall with rusticated ashlar gatepiers,
iron railings removed. Large quadrangular garden to S
enclosed by tall ashlar-coped rubble-built walls. Recessed
low wing right, late 18th/early 19th century in appearance,
originally coach-house/stables, now contains domestic flat;
in corporates early walling at low level, to garden.
Statement of Special Interest
Built for Dr Clapperton, grandfather of Hugh, the explorer;
dated kitchen fireplace lintel is of unusual scale
(14' x 9" x 9"), Latin inscription on top surface states
that Dr Clapperton F.S.A. Scot established this, his home,
on the last day of April, 1786. Became the first home of the
National Bank in Lochmaben in 1847.