Description
James Pearson Alison, 1892. 2-storey, basement and attic, square-plan, late Victorian villa with timber-framed Arts & Crafts porch and stair oriel, single-storey lean-to to NE, deep overhanging eaves and multi-gabled roof, set on a steeply sloping site. Squared, coursed, tooled yellow sandstone with droved ashlar dressings and chamfered margins. Base course to basement. Some multipartite mullioned windows, with transoms to principal ground-floor rooms. Roll-moulded finials to gables.
SE ELEVATION: 3 bays. Projecting chamfered timber, gabled, bargeboarded porch breaking eaves of steeply swept roof to left; tall stack in roof. 2-storey central bay with 2 windows at ground floor and timber-framed, canted, gabled stair oriel with stained-glass window above. 2-storey and attic, asymmetrically gabled bay recessed to right with short gablehead stack; single narrow window to lean-to at outer right.
NW ELEVATION: 2 bays. 2-storey, exposed basement and attic, gabled left bay with 2-storey canted window to lower floors, tripartite stone-mullioned window to 1st floor, and single narrow window in apex. 2-storey and exposed basement right bay with tripartite window at basement, bipartite window at ground and bipartite gabled dormer breaking eaves at 1st floor.
NE AND SW ELEVATIONS: Roughly 2 bays to NE with blank wall to right; left bay with timber-boarded door to projecting lean-to at ground floor; centre bay with early-21st-century timber porch offset to right at basement; tall central stack breaking eaves with gablets at base. 2 bays to SW: 2-storey and exposed basement, gabled left bay with 2-storey canted window to lower floors; 2-storey, lower asymmetrically gabled right bay with bipartite window at ground.
Stained-glass stair window; plate glass in timber sash-and-case windows elsewhere. Grey slate roof. Ashlar-coped, kneelered skews. Coped stacks with some tall octagonal buff clay cans and some circular red clay cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods.
INTERIOR: Geometrically patterned ceramic floor tiles to porch and entrance hall. Timber dog-leg stair with turned timber balusters, moulded timber handrail and simple urn finials to newels. 9-panel timber doors, decorative cornices, and timber panelling around windows to principal ground-floor rooms. 4-panel timber doors, plain moulded cornices and some timber boarding around windows elsewhere. Some timber and some cast-iron fireplaces.
BOUNDARY WALL, GATE AND STEPS: Snecked, squared rubble walls with ashlar cope to NW, NE and part of SE boundaries; geometrically patterned cast-iron gate to N end of NW wall; curved stone stair leading to terraced garden.
LAMP POST: Adjacent to drive to S of house. Dated 1894. Cast-iron with foliate capital.
Statement of Special Interest
A virtually unaltered, large, late-19th-century villa in a prominent position above Buccleuch Road on the outskirts of Hawick, with strong profiles, a plan well adapted to its steeply sloping site, and fine exterior and interior detailing, it is a good example of the work of James Pearson Alison, Hawick's most prominent architect. Alison commenced practice in the town in 1888 and remained there until his death in 1932, during which period he was responsible for a large number of buildings of widely varying types and styles, including a considerable proportion of Hawick's listed structures.
The Arts & Crafts details of this house, particularly the porch and stair oriel, are strongly reminiscent of the style being employed by the English architects Richard Norman Shaw and William Eden Nesfield in the previous two decades.
The villa was originally called Dunira; the name was changed to Parkview in the first decade of the 21st century. Frank T Scott gives the client as Mr Stevenson, whilst the current owner (2007) states that it had a connection with the mill-owning McTaggart family.
It is likely that the panes to left and right of centre in the bottom row of the stair oriel, which are now plate glass, originally matched the stained glass of the panes to either side. The basement-level porch in the centre of the north-east elevation was added in the first decade of the 21st century, its design echoing that of the main porch.