Description
John Guthrie, dated 1880, with early-20th-century additions. 2-storey Italianate L-plan villa with fine cast-iron porch and brattishing, belvedere tower, deep overhanging eaves and multi-gabled roof. Squared, snecked, bull-faced yellow sandstone with polished ashlar dressings; some brick and whinstone to rear. Base course; shallow machicolations to tower. Corner pilasters to projecting bays. Some stone-mullioned windows, predominantly round-arched; predominantly raised polished ashlar window margins. Round-arched bipartite and tripartite windows to top floor of tower.
W (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: 3 bays. Gabled centre bay; projecting tripartite ground-floor windows to left and right, with bipartite window surmounted by gable breaking eaves at left and pedimented window to 1st floor of tower at right. Entrance to cast-iron porch to outer right, with recessed wall bearing roundel of cowled face beneath porch and panel carrying the motto 'UT MIGRATURUS HABITA' ('live as though you are about to leave') above.
S (GARDEN) ELEVATION: Cast-iron porch to outer left with 3 Corinthian colonnettes and filigree frieze and spandrels; 6-panel timber front door with rectangular fanlight; belvedere tower behind bearing 1880 date stone. 3-bay right section: recessed centre bay with projecting tripartite window at ground floor and tripartite arched window at 1st floor; projecting bays to left and right, with 5-light bow window at ground floor of left bay, slightly advanced quadripartite window at ground floor of right bay, and Venetian windows at 1st floor.
E ELEVATION: 3 bays, stepped back from S to N, with rectangular windows at ground floor and round-arched windows at 1st floor.
N (REAR) ELEVATION: Advanced section to right with small single-storey lean-to, irregular fenestration and gabled right end. Recessed section to left with timber-boarded back door with fanlight, tripartite window to right, and various small 20th-century extensions at 1st floor.
Predominantly plate glass in timber sash-and-case windows to principal elevations; predominantly 4-pane glazing in timber sash-and-case windows to rear. Welsh slate roof. Ashlar-coped stacks with tall ornamental circular clay cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods.
INTERIOR: Geometrically patterned ceramic floor tiles and timber panelling to entrance lobby, with glazed inner door in timber Venetian architrave. Central hall with 3-bay, muscular, fluted Corinthian arcade to timber staircase with blind arcaded timber-panelled balustrade, open to slender-columned, geometric-capitalled, arcaded gallery at 1st floor; stained-glass cupola above. Drawing room with scrolled broken-pedimented architrave to door, Lincrusta frieze, and ornamental cornice; some decorative cornices and ceiling plasterwork elsewhere. 4-panel timber doors throughout; some working timber shutters; some good built-in timber furniture. Some marble, some timber and some cast-iron fireplaces. Timber and slate shelving to pantry.
OUTBUILDING: Single-storey piend-roofed structure to E. Squared, coursed, bull-faced yellow sandstone with polished ashlar dressings; brick to rear (N).
BOUNDARY WALLS, GATES & STEPS: Some drystone and some random rubble walls enclosing gardens to S and E of house; chamfered timber gate in polished ashlar surround in S boundary wall leading to curved stone stairway.
Statement of Special Interest
A fine, virtually unaltered, late-19th-century villa with particularly fine exterior ironwork and interior detailing, situated in the hilly Sunnyhill area of Wilton that was settled by the wealthier professional classes and mill owners of Hawick during that period.
John Guthrie (1832-1903) was born in Jedburgh, but his family moved to Hawick in the 1850s. He took over the running of his father's plumbing and slating business, James Guthrie & Sons, with his brothers, but he also trained as an architect, and went on to supervise the feuing of Sunnyhill as well as designing several villas in the area, including Westwood. He was a prominent local figure, and was a founding member and president of the Hawick Archaeological Society.
The house was built for Thomas Purdom, Town Clerk, whose firm of solicitors continues to this day in premises on High Street. It is shown on the 2nd Edition Ordnance Survey map (1897) without the ground-floor centre bay and advanced right bay to the south elevation, although both had been added by the time of the 3rd Edition Ordnance Survey map (1917) when the plan was as it remains today. The top section of a stone stairway from the service area of the house indicates that there was originally a cellar, but this has been filled in.
The multi-pane first-floor glazing in the south elevation is not original: similar windows existed at the first floor on the west elevation up to the late 20th century, but the current (2007) owners replaced them with plate glass and 4-pane versions to match the original ones as shown in a circa 1890 wedding photograph supplied to them by a previous owner.