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Summary

Description

Possibly James Salmon or John Gordon (see Notes). Stair window dated 1867. Large impressive 2-storey eclectic Franco-Gothic former villa, now nursery, with dominant 3-stage entrance tower and high quality interior with many exceptional surviving features. Tooled ashlar with smooth margins. High quality stonework detailing. Chamfered openings with a variety of pointed arch, canted arch and square-headed window treatments. Base course.

FURTHER DESCRIPTION: Principal (West) Elevation: off-centre tower with doorpiece (now painted cream) with flanking pilasters with foliate capitals, semicircular fanlight, cornice and balustraded parapet. 2-leaf timber panelled entrance door. 3-light window with bracketted cill with stone mullions to top stage. Overhanging bracketed eaves. Decorative ironwork cresting. To left: slightly advanced single gabled bay with full height 3-light canted bay windows, those to ground floor with pilastered mullions with foliate capitals. To right: re-entrant elevation of tower and blank bay now infilled to ground with later single storey flat roofed addition.

Predominantly plate glass timber sash and case windows. Graded grey slates. Cast iron rainwater goods.

INTERIOR: many high quality features remain. Deep skirting boards, shutters, some 4-panel timber doors, variety of marble chimneypieces (some now painted), elaborate cornicework, many with detailing matching exterior stonework treatment. Principal rooms with elaborate corniced doorpieces. Imposing entrance hall with coloured encaustic tiled floor, marble chimneypiece with intergral overmantle mirror with classical detailing including flanking engaged columns with foliate capitals. Pair of columns with foliate capitals flank entrance hall. Consoles with 3-D classical heads in roundels below. Decorative timber staircase with balusters now boxed in. Stained glass stair window dated 1867 and depicting figure with lyre. Further octagonal stained glass window above. 1st floor principal room with pointed arch 3-light window with slender engaged columns with foliate capitals dividing and flanking windows and the whole with flanking mirrored panels.

BOUNDARY WALLS AND GATEPIERS: to W (principal entrance elevation) pair of ashlar gatepiers with overhanging pyramidal caps with ball finials. Low decoratively tooled ashlar boundary wall with later railings. To S and E decoratively tooled ashlar boundary wall with flat coping to E and stepped flat coping to S with pair of square plan pyramidal capped gate piers.

Statement of Special Interest

Originally called Highfield, Broompark Nursery is a good example of a 19th century villa which retains many of its particularly high quality interior features. A variety of marble chimneypieces remain as well as shutters, elaborate cornicework and exceptional detailing to the entrance hall and principal rooms including decorative doorpieces.

With its distinctive Franco-Gothic design, tall entrance tower and extensive boundary walls Broompark Nursery is an important feature in the surrounding streetscape. The eclectic detailing to the exterior stonework of the house itself as well the boundary walls and gatepiers sets this building apart, however, the level of individuality is given further importance by the detailing being repeated to a certain extent in the interior scheme. This suggests that the interior was specifically tailored and this increases its interest.

Alexander Dennistoun (who the area where this villa is situated was named after) bought large parts of this part of the East End of Glasgow around the 1850s and commissioned James Salmon in 1854 to create a plan for a villa suburb. Hence one possible attribution to Salmon. However similarities with details in John Gordon's Oakleigh Villa as advertised in Blackie's Villa and Cottage Architecture suggest he may have been the architect. The use of slender colonettes in the canted window and the portrait roundels in particular suggest his hand. Glasgow has a notable collection of mid-19th century villa suburbs, many of them planned by leading architects of the day, such as Pollokshields, laid out in 1849 by David Rhind. The plan was only partly realised and Broompark Circus and Circus Drive are the only survivors of this ambition.

Although Broompark Nursery does not feature in Blackie & Son's Villa and Cottage Architecture of 1868 it is of a similar type to those in the publication which acted as a patternbook for fashionable house designs of the period.

Plans held at the Nursery, dated June 1950 and drawn up by the Health and Welfare Department, show the floor plan and it is presumed that this was when the building was converted from a private residence to a nursery. A photocopy of a historic photograph also held at the Nursery depicts the building shortly after it was built and shows the original railings and the conservatory which was replaced by the flat-roofed addition to the right of the principal elevation.

References

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