category A listed building. and the grounds are included in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland. Architecture Considered one of the finest examples of Neoclassical architecture in Britain, Cairness House shows the influence of the French architects Étienne-Louis Boullée and Claude Nicholas Ledoux and has many parallels with the works of Sir John Soane. The design incorporates a complex mixture of Masonic and pagan symbols as well as many numerological and architectural conceits. It is a calendar house, and its ground plan shows an adjoining "C" and "H", variously standing for Cairness House and Charles Gordon. Constructed in finely detailed granite ashlar, Cairness House consists of a main block, flanked by two raised "bookend" wings. A tetrastyle pedimented Roman Doric porch sits at the centre, its unjointed columns hewn from menhirs taken from a nearby druids' stone circle. A pair of lower pavilions with representations of the Masonic Altar and Royal Arch adjoin at the back. From these pavilions extends a huge semicircular service wing, with a central bell tower above a lunette arch, enclosing a courtyard at the rear of the house. The centre of the courtyard is dominated by a round ice house modelled on the Temple of Vesta in Rome. The main roof is surmounted by 51 cast-iron chimney pots in the shape of fluted Doric columns. The interiors are boldly neoclassical with fine examples of simulated marble walls, pendentive or coffered ceilings and Greek key friezes. The Egyptian Room was the first of its kind in Britain and contains elaborate hieroglyph plasterwork; it is the earliest surviving Egyptian Revival room in the world and may have been used as a meeting room for the Rite of High Egyptian Masonry founded by Count Cagliostro. The Entrance Hall features a columbarium fireplace with anthemion antefixes. James Playfair also drew plans for gates and a pair of small lodges for the entrance to the driveway which however were not built until the house's centenary in 1891. The gates, railings and lodges come under a separate Category A listing by Historic Environment Scotland. The pillars on either side of the gates feature a pair of Greek sphinxes. References External links Listed houses in Scotland Tourist attractions in Aberdeenshire Country houses in Aberdeenshire Category A listed buildings in Aberdeenshire Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes