LUSSET HOUSE
ACCESS : This is a private house, but part of it is clearly seen from Old Kilpatrick Station.
B-listed. Lusset Road & Mount Pleasant Drive, Old Kilpatrick Conservation Area.
https://w3w.co/earlobe.spelling.dolly
Canmore, quoting the listing description tells us that it was built around Circa 1865-80. A 2-storey symmetrical villa with early French Gothic detail, of William Leiper school. Basically square plan traversed by central lozenge with taller roof. Stugged and snecked rubble, ashlar dressings, plinth and 1st floor cill course; tall windows with plain incised roll-mouldings; plate-glass sash and case glazing; slated roofs; E-W cross-roof more steeply-pitched than shallow piended main N-S roof which has broad overhanging eaves; pair of tall coped stacks clasping central roof forward of ridge of main N-S roof. with the west elevation having 3-light, full-height semi-circular bowed projection at centre, with conical slated roof swept back over E-W high pitched roof to bow on E elevation. Window of flanking sections pushed out to outer angles, quirkily treated: at ground (identical N and S) squat angle shaft on chmferted plinth emerging from ground floor base course, rising above to three-quarters of the height of opening, shaft ringed midway, and with bulbous naturalistically sculptured capital: stilted chamfered (polygonal) section above to lintel of ground floor window. Further section corbelled out to carry urns at 1st floor cill level; 3-light canted window turns 1st floor angel, centre pane recessed, mullions with tall slim colonettes; timber pendant on soffit of deeply-projecting eaves.
Sounds intriguing. But as a private dwelling there is little to see from beyond except that tantalising view over the wall from the Station platform.
An article in the Herald enthuses about it. There is a certain chameleon-like quality to Lusset House - the green exterior turns red every autumn, courtesy of the Virginia creeper covering the front elevation and most of the nearside gable.
Built around 1875 for a shipbuilder in Old Kilpatrick, West Dunbartonshire, the detached blonde sandstone villa is strikingly symmetrical, with a two-storey bay window in the front and decorative columns on either side.
So far, so engagingly charming, but while the bodice-ripping facade is the stuff of Victorian novels, the inside is on the hot side of cool - and what a lot of interior
you get for your money. Anchored by a 40ft-high sweeping staircase crowned by
a necklace of Moorish windows, .....
CANMORE : https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB18987
LUSSET ROAD & MOUNT PLEASANT DRIVE, OLD KILPATRICK CONSERVATION AREA APPRAISAL : https://www.west-dunbarton.gov.uk/media/4313721/old-kilpatrick-conservation-area-appraisal-190917.pdf
