A bespoke, eighteenth century mansion house seeks a strong minded buyer with definite ideas on interior design.
It seems fitting that East Dunbartonshire's only grade A-listed building, the Factor's House at Dougalston in Milngavie, is being restored to its former glory by one of Scotland's oldest construction companies.
John Dickie Homes has applied for planning permission to restore and extend the 10-room mansion to incorporate an indoor heated swimming pool, gym, conservatory and garages.
Now all it needs is a buyer with a desire to input the internal design and specifications.
Asking price? A cool #1.75m.
John Houston, managing director of John Dickie Homes explains: ''At this premium price, we anticipate the buyer will be looking to stamp his or her own personality on the house and so we are hoping to attract interest at this stage in order to tailor the final internal design to the buyer's needs.''
Built in 1770 by Glasgow tobacco lord, John Glassford, the Factor's House sits in twenty acres of secluded gardens and woodlands off the main Dougalston Road in Milngavie.
Originally intended as a banqueting hall, it enjoyed a louche reputation as John Glassford's gaming house, where he entertained friends in lavish style. The house is believed to have been linked via a 300 metre tunnel to the Dougalston Estate Mansion which was demolished in the nineteenth century.
Damaged by fire in 1830, the
Factor's House rose from the ashes in 1870.
The last long-term owners were the Connell shipbuilding family who
lived in the house for most of the past century.
The house was still occupied as recently as 1992, but lay empty for four years until it was bought by John Dickie Homes in 1997.
Since then, the company has repaired and upgraded the external fabric of the building, completely replacing the existing roof with new slates, leadwork and gutters.
Extensive stonework repairs have also been carried out. Plans also include the building of an extension to the main building and a new stable block, as well as upgrading the 500ft driveway and access road off the main Auchenhowie Road.
When completed, the house and garages will cover 8,500 sq ft and the stable block, 3,500 sq ft.
Restoring the Factor's House is a new departure for John Dickie Homes, a privately owned company, specialising in designing and building quality homes at the premium end of the
market.
Established 120 years ago, the company builds just 75 homes every year, selling from #380,000 up to #500,000
Although this restoration of a private mansion is a first for the company, it was instrumental in the refurbishment of the listed former Mearns Kirk Hospital in Newton Mearns.
The John Dickie Construction
Company has worked on a number of listed buildings, including St Francis Friary in New Gorbals, the Bank of Scotland head office in Glasgow and a residential development in Bath Street, Glasgow.
Architects GD Lodge has many years experience of restoring and upgrading listed buildings and was involved in the part restoration of House for an Art Lover at Bellahouston Park, Glasgow.
Period properties in romantic woodland settings are not unique but add an interior expressly tailored to the owner's specification, close proximity to Milngavie and Glasgow city centre, and the Factor's House is ready for its 21st century renaissance.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article