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Summary

Description

Later to late 19th century. 2-storey, 3-bay, L-plan lodge-style gabled house. Advanced gabled section to principal elevation; decorative detailing to porch. Snecked stone; long and short red sandstone dressings and quoins.

SW (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: central door; advanced pitched porch; timber bargeboards and king post; pierced timber detailing within gable of porch. Timber arch below porch roof to SW and NW; pierced timber detailing within spandrels. Timber posts rest on one circular red sandstone column and 2 semi-circular red sandstone pilasters.

Ground floor bipartite window to left; 1st floor dormer window above. Wing advanced slightly to right; central ground floor bipartite window; 1st floor bipartite window above.

NW ELEVATION: plain gable elevation.

NE ELEVATION: advanced wing to left with later lean-to. Section set back to right; door to left; window to right.

SE ELEVATION: gabled section to left; small 1st floor window to right. Bipartite ground floor window to right; 1st floor dormer window centred above.

Predominantly plate glass glazing with 4-pane timber sash and case windows to SE. Red sandstone mullions. Rooflight to rear. Timber door. Steeply pitched gableheads and dormers; timber

Statement of Special Interest

An unaltered house which formerly accommodated the hospital's steward. The steeply pitched gables and porch lend character to the house. The Argyll and Bute Hospital (the West House) is important as an influential asylum design. Built by the Edinburgh city architect David Cousins, the West House set the pattern for the subsequent asylums built during the later 1860's and early 1870's. Opening in 1863 as the Argyll District Asylum, it was the first asylum to be built in Scotland following the 1857 Act and provided for patients from the Western Isles and Highlands. The East House was a later development of the Argyll and Bute Hospital. It was built by Peddie and Kinnear to accommodate 120 'industrial inmates'. Firgrove is also a later addition to the hospital and may have been built in conjunction with the East House. The snecked stone and red sandstone dressings used at the East House is echoed here at Firgrove. Indeed, Firgrove may also have been built by Peddie and Kinnear. Sited uphill above Lochgilphead, the numerous buildings of the hospital sit in extensive grounds. Buildings on the site include a boiler room, employee's houses and the doctor's house. There was also a lodge, a poorhouse, and the Mid Argyll Hospital (formerly for infectious diseases, now the Accident and Emergency hospital) sits below the West House.

References

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