Glenbuchat Heritage

59 Badenyon, Jean Farquharson

JEANNIE´S HOUSE: single storey and attic, 3-bay farmhouse. Snecked rubble with squared rubble quoins and margins. Stone and timber mullions. Symmetrical S elevation with pitch-roofed timber porch to centre bay with flanking bipartite windows giving way to bipartite dormers and central cast-iron rooflight.
3-pane upper sashes over tall 2-pane lower sashes, 4-pane glazing pattern to rear, all in timber sash and case windows. Grey slates. Coped ashlar stacks with clay cans; ashlar-coped skews.
INTERIOR: ground floor with cast-iron stove built into open hearth to W room, and timber fire-surround with tiled cheeks and cast-iron grate to E; timber dog-leg staircase with ball-finialled newel post.

JEANNIE´S MOTHER´S HOUSE: single storey, 3-bay cottage with centre door and flanking windows, corrugated iron roof with 2 traditional rooflights. Rubble with remains of thin lime render and large granite lintels reducing toward top. Interior cleared but retaining flat-arched double-lintelled stone hearth and remains of boarded timber panelling.
Individually these buildings display a variety of interesting traditional detail including distinctive Glenbuchat Estate architecture (as at Dulax, Baltimore, Belnaglack and Newseat), early steading and dwelling layout, and rare retention of little-altered interior detail.

As a group they represent the story of the Glen. Badenyon developed from castle site to large settlement with its own limekiln and threshing mill, succumbing eventually to steady decline and depopulation throughout the 20th century. Declining farmhouses and steadings, as at the adjacent separately listed Begg´s House, are now commonplace throughout Glenbuchat parish. Jeannie´s House is a rare survival, it is one of the last inhabited farmhouses (although no longer a working farm) not yet subjected to modernisation.

It is not known when the castle became derelict, but seemingly before 1696 when the Poll Book lists 8 poleable persons living at Badenyon as tenants, and one widow. Little visible evidence of the castle remains apart from a large wall forming an impressive terraced bank, and probably the steading door hinge, described in The Book of Glenbuchat as ´a very fine wrought-iron hinge band, 1ft 11 ½´ in length, ending in a trefoiled point: this is evidently old work, taken from a door of consequence, and is probably a relic of the castle´. It was previously recorded as part of the steading at Begg´s House, but has always been situated at this earlier steading, and was recently carefully reinstated after replacement of the timber door.

Glenbuchat was purchased in 1901 by James W Barclay, a keen reformer, who replaced many of the old farmhouses during the early years of the 20th century. Jeannie´s House was the home of Jeannie Farquharson, a spinster famous for riding around the Glen on a motor bike. Her mother lived in the earlier cottage known as Jeannie´s Mother´s House. The group was purchased from the estate in 1970, and remains in the ownership of the same family today (2006).