Binoculars in the window seat and a 50th anniversary copy of John Alec Baker’s superlative The Peregrine disclose the preoccupations of this building’s occupant. The insightfulness of that intimate and clarifying book perched on the sideboard irresistibly invites parallels with the design of this exceptional house by Ann Nisbet Studio. 

The greater part of this project is a precise new intervention into a old patchwork enclosure, an elegantly arranged home nested within the previously derelict Cuddymoss. The lesser part comprises a pitched roof volume jutting northwards from the ruin, dipping down via a finely made glass link to contain a living room with large picture windows surveilling the surrounding grassland and sky. The surrounding area is known as Threepwood; derived from threap-wood; a Scots term meaning ‘disputed lands’, and there is a conscious acknowledgment of happenstance and the contingent in Ann Nisbet’s approach to the existing ruin.  

The initial discussions between client and architect were discreet and protective of the ruin’s location. 15 months elapsed between the first conversation and the acquisition of the site during which time the discussion ranged from travelling in Japan, notions of custodianship as opposed to ownership, the monitoring and ringing of birds of prey. Ann spent days on the site, acquainting with the detail and texture before doing any sort of design work.

The architecture is carefully observant of the original walls — set back, and in a beautiful and unusual detail the openings expose the entire depth of the pre-existing ingoes. In one case, on the east gable, a barely intact window frame has been retained, with the new glass line set well inboard to retain without alteration a barn owl’s favoured nighttime feeding roost. Elsewhere the project is a clear layer of modification, a superimposition of immaculate detailing where constituent materials of the ruin remain visible: whinstone from one of three quarries all within a short walk from the site, brick from extinct foundries in Dalry, irregularly mixed and shuttered ‘agricultural concrete’ and sandstone cannibalised from who knows where. 

As Ann observes 'the sandstone is in all the wrong places in the building' — the implication being that the material was available at the time, and this trumped any considerations of its ‘proper’ use. The building tells a story and continues to do so but the new intervention never becomes confused by sentimentality. A crisp new opening has been formed through the south elevation, demarcated by a projecting box frame, while another has been closed up with exactly matching Dalry brick found by the client (and by chance) while monitoring kestrels in a disused quarry.

The interior of the home follows the natural contour; longitudinally through the main volume and transversally to the projecting living room: rock levels within and around the ruin were accurately gauged and, to avoid breaking out, the floor steps accordingly. 'As you walk through the building you experience the levels of the external landscape — through the stepping up and down of the building'.  

If the success of this wonderful house can be pinpointed it is in this receptiveness: exactitude in observation and the manifestation of an old sensibility — working with the land and using what is to hand.