M316 Additions to Auchenbothie Mains, Kilmacolm

As well as the gate lodge to Auchenbothie House and the house known as Mossyde, or Cloak, Hugh Brown Collins commissioned Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh to design alterations and additions to Auchenbothie Mains, the principal farm on his Auchenbothie estate. The pre-existing farmstead comprised a large quadrangle of farm buildings with an L-plan farmhouse attached at the N.E. corner. 1

Plans for an addition to the farmhouse containing a laundry and bathroom, and for alterations to a group of labourers' cottages forming the S.W. corner of the quadrangle, were prepared in late 1911 and early 1912, and approved by the county planning authority on 9 April 1912. 2 The drawings were signed by Mackintosh, and he is named as architect in the authority's register of new buildings. The work to the labourers' cottages may have gone ahead at this time, but the proposals for the farmhouse were revised the following February, and new drawings were approved on 8 April 1913. 3

The farmhouse extension approved in 1912 had two storeys, although a sketch in The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, shows an alternative treatment with the N. end dropping to a single storey. 4 Both the sketch and the plans approved by the county show the extension with a distinctive row of squarish ground-floor windows with grid-like glazing facing the farmyard. They also show the N.W. corner cut off at an angle where it abuts the lane leading N.E. from the farmyard to the Port Glasgow Road. In the revised scheme of 1913, the distinctive windows were omitted. The N. end of the extension was fixed at a single storey, but widened and given a double-pitched roof, and the N.E. corner was canted to match the N.W. With a chimney-stack between them, these canted corners make a gable with a curious semi-octagonal plan, which has no obvious rationale now that the position of the lane has been moved. The 1913 drawings show the gable with crow steps, also faintly indicated on a related drawing in The Hunterian, 5 but they are not present on the building as it now stands (2010).

On the S. side of the house, the 1911 drawings show a small, single-storey porch, but in this position today there is a two-storey gabled addition with a slightly jettied upper floor. This is presumably the 'porch and bathroom at Auchenbothie Mains', designed by Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh, for which Collins sought approval in April 1914 (the architects' drawings do not appear to survive, but a plan of the farm drawn in March 1955 shows that the addition did indeed contain a porch with a bathroom above). 6

Mackintosh's partnership with Keppie had been dissolved at the end of 1913, so if he was responsible for the addition, it was probably the last architectural job he undertook before his departure. It was possibly for this addition that the wright James Grant was paid £87 on account in June 1914, as recorded in Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh's job book (the final measurement of his work did not take place until 15 August 1916, when it was valued at £274 7s 5d ). 7 This is the only reference to Auchenbothie Mains in the job book, but the firm's cash book records a number of payments received from Collins: £40 on 23 March 1911, £48 2s 7d on 7 July 1911, £10 on 10 October 1912 and £20 on 30 September 1913. 8 Some of these payments may relate to Mossyde, but some may be connected with Auchenbothie Mains.