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Summary

Description

John Thomas Rochead, dated 1870, with 1990s extension to SW. Large, 2-storey, basement and attic, rectangular-plan, piend-roofed Greek Revival villa with stone-mullioned windows, deep overhanging eaves, decorative stacks, prominent porch, and additional storey at W corner giving the impression of a tower. Bull-faced yellow sandstone ashlar with tooled ashlar dressings. Deep base course; 1st-floor band course; 1st-floor cill course; 2nd-floor band course and continuous hoodmould supporting advanced masonry to W corner; eaves course. Raised cills.

NE (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: Roughly 2 bays. Advanced, gabled bay to left with stone urns flanking 7 stone steps to half-glazed front door in round-arched, shallow ridge-roofed porch (see NOTES) flanked by pink granite columns with acanthus capitals; bipartite, double-arched, keystoned window above; key-blocked oculus in apex. Tripartite mullioned windows to basement and ground floor to right; single and bipartite windows above.

NW (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: Left bay with tripartite mullioned windows to all floors. Slightly lower central section with shallow ridge-roofed, concave-corbelled canted window advanced at ground floor and basement. Raised right section with tripartite mullioned windows at basement, ground and 1st floors and 5-light mullioned window at 2nd floor.

SW (SIDE) ELEVATION: 3 bays. Quadripartite mullioned window at 2nd floor to left; 1990s function room extensions advanced to right.

SE (REAR) ELEVATION: Irregular fenestration, with tall round-arched stair window to centre, projecting single-storey 1990s extension to left, and projecting original wing to outer left.

Plate glass in timber sash and case windows at ground floor; 3- and 6-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows to upper floors. Grey slate roof with metal ridges; ashlar stacks with circular buff clay cans.

INTERIOR: Geometric and patterned ceramic floor tiles to deep lobby with half-glazed 2-leaf timber inner door. Highly decorative plasterwork to ceilings of ground-floor rooms and corridors. Marble chimneypieces and 6-panel timber doors to principal ground-floor and some 1st-floor rooms. Timber stair with decorative cast-iron balusters and polished timber handrail. Plaster cornices throughout.

GATEPIERS: 4 square-plan, stop-chamfered gatepiers capped with gables to all four sides, the outer piers connected to the inner ones by a low, coped, quadrant wall.

Statement of Special Interest

An extensive, imposing, later-19th-century, Greek Revival villa (now used as a hotel), prominently sited on a steep hill overlooking the Weensland Road (A698) that leads north-east out of Hawick towards Jedburgh, which was designed by the Glasgow-based architect John Thomas Rochead (1814-78) and retains many fine original interior features.

The house was built as Thornwood for Andrew Oliver, a Hawick livestock auctioneer. It retained its original name until at least the 1960s, when it became a hotel, but was renamed Mansfield House by the mid-1980s. There have been some alterations to the interior for the purposes of hotel use, but many fine features remain, and the principal rooms on both ground and first floors are virtually unaltered.

Rochead was born in Edinburgh and trained in the office of David Bryce, setting up his own practice in Glasgow in 1841. He became a very successful architect, and worked in a variety of idioms including Scots Baronial, Gothic, Greek Revival and High Renaissance. He undertook a number of commissions for villas for wealthy industrialists and businessmen from the early 1850s onwards, including several in Hawick in the 1860s.

The canted bay in the centre of the principal elevation carries the date 1870 in a semicircular panel above the window, crowned by voussoirs and a keystone. With its heavy concave corbelling supporting a shallow ridge roof, it bears strong similarities to the nearby Heronhill Lodge (see separate listing), which was the gate lodge to Heronhill House (now demolished), also by Rochead.

The identity of the carved, bearded head in the keystone of the porch is not known.

References

Bibliography

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