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House, still in residential use, and a steading. The house was probably built by William Smith in 1877, with additions by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson, 1902-04, and further alterations in 1923-24. Baile-na-Coille was built for the Queen's servant, John Brown, but was incomplete at his death in 1883. It is a gabled, Germanic style, rectangular-plan two-storey house with projecting service bays enclosing a small court to rear. The house is constructed from stugged, squared granite with a base course, rock-faced quoins and polished margins. A corbel course divides the floors, giving the appearance of a jettied first floor. There are sweeping eaves and cusped barge boards to the gabled dormerheads, pendant finialled timber brackets to eaves and scroll-flanked kingposts to the shallow-pitched broader gables, and multi-light windows with timber mullions and transoms. The grey slate roof has coped stone stacks to the gableheads and ridge. The north-east elevation is three-bay, with a central, projecting stone porch with stop-chamfered arrises, a pointed-arch doorway with a panelled door and a cornice and corniced parapet, with a decorative light brattishing. There are flanking tripartites, with the one to the east set in an advanced broad gabled bay. The first floor has a bipartite and two dormerheaded windows. The north-west elevation has an off-centre advanced gabled bay with two narrow windows at the ground and a bipartite at the first floor, flanked by narrow windows. The outer bay to the north has a projecting corniced window with a blocking course at the ground (1902), a stone mullioned bipartite to the front, single windows on the return elevation and a dormerheaded cross window above. The outer bays to the west have a first floor cross dormerheaded window and a harled lean-to abutting the blank outer wall. The south-east elevation has narrow windows to the centre, flanked on either side by cross windows at the ground and with dormerheaded windows above. The broad outer gabled bays are slightly advanced, one with a tripartite window at the ground, a corbelled chimneybreast raised from the first floor at the centre dividing two narrow windows. The other is mirrored, but now with a projecting window (1902) in place of the tripartite. The south-west elevation has a gabled end of a short wing to the west with a small window at the ground and a bipartite at the first floor. A central courtyard recess has a window orielled across the re-entrant angle at the first floor, a bipartite and a small window. The opposing short wing has a panelled door with a two-pane fanlight and a blank first floor that is jettied on a cavetto corbel course. The courtyard is partly enclosed by stone screen walls with rounded coping, continuing from the wallplane. The steading to the south-west is a single-storey and loft, L-plan building constructed from stugged, coursed granite. There are a pair of two-leaf boarded timber sliding doors to the north-east elevation, other timber boarded doors, a timber external stair to a boarded timber loft door at the south-east and a piend-roofed dormer to the north-west. The grey slate roof has some rooflights and raised skews with plain skew putts. There is also a small, square-plan, timber game larder to the south-west of the house, with vertical battens, a pyramidal roof and ball finial.
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Historic Environment Records (HER)