Glencripesdale House

Glencripesdale House, or Glencripesdale Castle as it was sometimes referred to, was the centre of the 26,000 acre Glencripesdale Estate, and was situated along the south side of Loch Sunart, a sea loch in the west highlands of Scotland.

Glencripesdale was a grand house built for, and uniquely designed by, the Newton brothers in 1874 and featured 28 bedrooms. Twenty of these bedrooms were large and for the use of family and guests, with the remaining eight for servants quarters with multiple beds, some in dormitory style rooms. The house is believed to be the first in Scotland to be built of the as then state of the art material, Concrete. Materials had to be floated along the loch due to the lack of access to the site from nearby roads, mainly by steam ship. The cement was mixed with pebbles off the shore

Because the house was largely served by sea, due to the remote nature, the house featured its own private Dock for steam ships of up to 100 tonnes, such as the SY Kelpie, the Newtons 100 ft Steam Launch.

The Factors house, or Land Agent as he would be known in England, situated a few miles East up the coast at Laudale, still exists and is a substantial dwelling in its own right having been built with 9 bedrooms, and has been enlarged further over the years.

Glencripesdale House featured a very distinct and unusual blend of architectural styles including, among other things, white harled walls, Gothic windows and a large tower which resembled a lift-shaft crowned with crowstep gables.

The house was a blend of new building methods, “traditional” Scottish Baronial elements and a general appearance suggestive, perhaps, of a monastery in parts. Whilst unconventional in style, the result was considered pleasing. With two of the three Newton brothers being clergymen, some have remarked that the ecclesiastical flavour of much of the building is perhaps attributable to their career choice. There is a suggestion that they actually designed the house themselves using a church plan as a basis. Another suggestion is that the architect Temple Lushington Moore may have helped design the property, having already designed a large country house Holmwood, Redditch for Canon Horace Newton.

A guest of the family Elizabeth Inglis noted on a visit to Glencripesdale approximately ten years after the house was built that the approach route from the loch was suitably atmospheric:

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Wikipedia