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Stables and coach house, now also in use as offices, a fire station and an exhibition space, built by William Smith in 1857 with later additions and alterations. They are substantial, symmetrical, Scottish Jacobean stables, retaining fine early fittings, and are sited to the east of the current Balmoral Castle (NO29NE0023). The coach house comprises four linked ranges, and there are two-storey U-plan outer ranges to the north and south with a single-storey central range and linking screen walls to the west and a two-storey bothy to the east dividing the courtyard areas. The buildings are constructed from squared and coursed granite with polished dressings, probably re-using masonry from the earlier castle. The grey slate roofs are crowstepped to the outer, chimneyheaded gables, and have gablet coped bay gableheads, scroll-bracketed skewputts, a coped ridge and wall and gablehead stacks. There are granite setts to the courts. The principal west elevation facing the castle is 13-bay, with short returns of the U-plan north and south ranges as mirrored three-bay offices with corner towers. Each has a gabled entrance bay at the centre with a short flight of granite steps to a boarded door with two-pane fanlights. The first floor is jettied on a corbel course overstepping the door, with a window and Jacobean curvilinear gable with ball finial. The flanking bays have a window to each floor. Round towers break the eaves to the inner corners with arrowslit windows, blind and glazed, winding around and conical roofs with finials. Single-bay gabled returns to the outer and inner elevations have a window to each floor. The screen walls linking the central loggia have parapets, and are each two-storey in height with a Tudor carriage arch abutting the east corner of the offices. The central range is headed on the west elevation by a three-bay Tudor-arched loggia that is advanced beyond the screen walls, and has stop-chamfered arrises to arches and a stepped parapet with a clock at the centre. The east elevation consists the mirrored end returns of the north and south ranges, the former groom and stablehand accommodation. Each is five-bay with a gabled bay at the centre, windows in recessed panels at the ground and the first floor is jettied slightly on a corbel course with a window and ball finial. There are doors in the flanking bays, that to centre the blinded with a first floor window above and a window to each floor in the flanking bays. The gabled return of the south block is blank, and the gabled return of the north block has two windows at the ground and two blind windows at the first floor. The free-standing block at the centre has four bays to the east, with louvred hayloft windows at the first floor and a tall, open lean-to at the ground. The door is flanked at the ground by windows to the centre of the three-bay west, courtyard elevation. A hayloft door above has a gabled dormerhead, and there is a window to each floor in widely spaced outer bays, blank gabled returns and a pedimented and louvred ridge ventilator at centre. The north stable range has a long central range with a lean-to later timber store/workshop addition spanning the ground floor to the north, near-filling the recess, and six small windows above. The courtyard elevation is nine-bay with three regular groups of stable doors and a hayloft above (one now blocked as a window) with gabled dormerheads, windows and a segmental-arched doorway at the ground in flanking bays and windows or louvred openings at the first floor. The south coach house range has a flat-roofed, later timber fire appliance garage and covered port set in the recess of the south elevation, masking the ground floor. There are nine windows above, seven segmental coach arches to the courtyard, five retaining chevron-boarded two-leaf doors and two with fixed boarding and small doors, and a window above to each bay. The ridge has circular metal ventilators. The centre range is largely blank with later French windows to the south, a door and blind door to the east gable. It was formerly the riding school, and is now converted as an exhibition space, with a long glazed lantern to the west ridge, capped by original pedimented, louvred timber ventilators. The pony stables (NO29NE0064) and former telephone exchange (NO29NE0062) are to the east of these main stable buildings.
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Historic Environment Records (HER)