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Summary

Description

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1906; completed by Alexander David Hyslop after 1908; interior restoration by H Karlin, 1983. Two-storey and attic with part basement, four-bay, stepped-plan, Elizabethan style house high up on sloping site. Cotswold stone, irregular snecked rubble with ashlar quoins and dressings. Tudor-arched doorcase with heavy hoodmould and undersized label stops. Horizontally-aligned windows; hoodmoulds; chamfered reveals and stone mullions.

South (entrance) Elevation: advanced gabled bay to left of centre with steps up to covered porch with narrow lights flanking Tudor-arched entrance with very deep-set segmental-headed timber door and ironwork gates, and seven-light window above. Further advanced higher gable to outer left with six-light window to ground and five-light window above, tripartite window in gablehead and broad shouldered stack on return to right. Bay to right of centre with two small windows flanking monumental chimney stack (almost crowstepped to right) with further small window to left at first floor and flat-roofed, canted eight-light stair window to right. Bay to outer right with (possibly later) single-storey projection with two small windows and bipartite window on return to right, and deep blocking course giving way to steeply piended roof adjoining blank gable with small gablehead stack.

North (Garden) Elevation: bay to left of centre deeply recessed with boarded timber door to centre, bipartite window to left and four-light window to right under advanced flat roof, two tripartite windows to first floor and massive chimney stack in re-entrant angle to left; flanking advanced gable bays enclosing small paved terrace, left gable with hoodmoulded six-light window to ground and five-light window above, slightly broader right gable similarly fenestrated but with further small light to outer right low down at first floor and bipartite window in gablehead, large stack on return to left. Taller and further recessed gable with raised basement to outer right, bipartite window to left at basement, tripartite window above, five-light window to centre at first floor and bipartite in gablehead.

East Elevation: simple two-bay elevation with flat-roofed canted nine-light drawing-room window and tiny window high up at first floor to outer right, and tripartite windows to each floor in bay to left.

West Elevation: raised basement to towering elevation with irregular fenestration to centre gable, blank bay with projecting full-height chimney stack (with tiny glazed opening) to left and lower gable to right with steps up to door with plate glass fanlight and diminutive piended dormer window behind. Low service buildings in re-entrant angle to left behind later paired, segmentally-arched garage openings in screen wall.

Multi-pane leaded glazing to casement windows with twelve-pane glazing pattern in timber sash and case windows to west. Small grey slates. Coped ashlar stacks with some cans. Cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers.

Interior: decorative scheme in place to principal rooms but not all original. Panelled hall with timbered ceiling and ingle (to south), brick lining to sides probably original. Dining Room (to west) panelled; fluted pilasters flanking fireplace with timber mantel shelf and panelled overmantel; broad panelled door (with Arts and Crafts style door furniture) to Morning Room with broad-beamed fireplace. Drawing (Sitting) Room (to northeast) with 1983 panelling and sympathetic modern ashlar and granite? fire recess. Book Room panelled with grey plaster, roll-moulded, Tudor-arched fireplace to apparent extension. Timber panelled dog-leg staircase with simple straight balusters and top-rail, small mezzanine and fireplace ingle.

Terraced Garden: stone balustrade and parapet to small terrace with steps down to altered formal garden.

Statement of Special Interest

Auchenibert house was built for Francis James Shand, the manager of the Nobel's Explosives Co. Ltd of Glasgow. Letters to Shand from Mackintosh confirm that he designed the house and correspondence from W. S. Moyes, a draughtsman working at Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh at this time, states that Mackintosh was the sole designer (Mackintosh Architecture).

Mackintosh is believed to have had a disagreement with Shand and a result left the project in 1908 before it was finished. Two years after the house was finished Shand employed another architect, Alexander David Hislop (1876-1966), to make alterations to the building including a single storey extension to the drawing room (Stirling Archives).

In 1998 the owners of the house reinstated a number of typical Mackintosh features including panelling to the Drawing (Sitting Room). The owners believed the original timber to have been removed to the cloakroom of the Buchanan Arms at Drymen (1998). The work by the owners in 1998 also revealed panelling covered with heavily painted wallpaper and a beamed chimney breast to the Morning Room. Earlier research has noted a number of Mackintosh features conspicuously absent, but some of these are now apparent. Both Windyhill (LB12450) and Hill House (LB34761) have Dining Rooms with dark stained panelling to picture rail level, this is in fact also the case at Auchenibert in both the Hall and the Drawing Room (carefully reinstated). Furthermore, Mackintosh was fond of grey plaster for fire surrounds and this material can be seen in the Book Room. This fire surround is housed in what appears to be an extension, and therefore may have been removed from elsewhere or brought in after Mackintosh's involvement.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) was born in Glasgow and is regarded internationally as one of the leading architects and designers of the 20th century. He became known as a pioneer of Modernism, although his architecture took much inspiration from Scottish Baronial and Scottish and English vernacular architectural forms and their reinterpretation. The synthesis of modern and traditional forms led to a distinctive form of Scottish arts and crafts design, known as the Glasgow Style. The Glasgow Style, developed in partnership with contemporaries Herbert McNair, and sisters Francis and Margaret Macdonald, Margaret becoming his wife in 1900, and is now synonymous with Mackintosh and the city of Glasgow.

Mackintosh's work is wide-ranging and includes public, educational and religious buildings to private houses, interior decorative schemes and sculptures. He is associated with over 150 design projects, ranging from principal designer to projects by the practice of John Honeyman & Keppie (from 1901 Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh). The most important work during this partnership was the Glasgow School of Art, built in two phases from 1897 and culminating in the outstanding library of 1907.

Auchenibert was designed following Mackintosh's most significant domestic commissions, Windyhill (1900-1902) in Kilmacolm (LB12450) and The Hill House (1902-1904) in Helensburgh (LB34761). The style of Auchenibert however, with its Tudor architectural features, differs greatly from these earlier commissions and is not typical of Mackintosh's work. The client Shand had a preference for English architectural styles and it is thought that this had a strong influence on the brief for the house (Stirling Archives).

Mackintosh left Glasgow in 1914, setting up practice in London the following year. Later he and Margaret moved to France, where until his death, his artistic output largely turned to textile design and watercolours.

Category of listing changed from B to A in 1999.

Listed building record revised in 2019.

References

Bibliography

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