Mount Annan House's sad fate

We often assume that the impressive mansions which form the focal points of many country estates have graced the landscape from time immemorial, or have at least some centuries behind them. And some indeed do and did. Others however had a surprisingly brief existence.

Mount Annan House was a case in point. In 1875, at considerable expense, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Alexander Pasley-Dirom of Mount Annan, a veteran of the Indian Mutiny, razed the old mansion house on the property to the ground to make way for a new home, which would more adequately express the position and status of the family. Designed by architect John Starforth and built of freestone, it was a three-storey structure with a two- storey wing and a dominating 60-foot square tower, which could be seen for miles around.

It could be said that the seeds of the mansion’s fate had already been sown. The family had already shown a preference for Cleughheads, the dower house on the Mount Annan property, and Pasley-Dirom, aged 44 at the time, had no male heir to inherit the property and maintain the family line. He died childless three years later at Cleughheads, and was succeeded by his 13-year-old niece Edith Leonora Dirom, on whose death in 1887 ownership of Mount Annan passed to her aunt, Madeline Elizabeth Murdoch, a widow, who adopted the name Pasley-Dirom and took up residence at Cleughheads where she died in 1896, at the age of 68, to be succeeded in turn by her eldest surviving son Patrick Alexander Murdoch, a physician, and his eldest son John Patrick Alexander Pasley-Dirom.

The mansion house of Cleughheads continued to be the preferred family residence during this period and Mount Annan House was normally rented out. In August 1926, when occupied by Jessie Brook, the widow of Edward Brook of Hoddom Castle, the mansion was engulfed by a fire which started in a flue connected with the kitchen and spread rapidly. One of the house guests motored to Annan to wire to Dumfries and Carlisle for assistance. Fire brigades from Dumfries and Carlisle duly arrived but were handicapped by an inadequate supply of water. An attempt to take water from the nearby river failed when a fire engine sank in soft ground before the river could be reached. The house was totally destroyed, the massive tower falling with a terrific crash in front of over 2,000 bystanders. Damage estimated at over £20,000 was said to be covered by insurance but the family decided not to rebuild the mansion, clearing the site instead.

Mount Annan House had stood for just over half a century, during which time it had only been occupied intermittently by the Pasley-Dirom family. There were other country mansions in Southern Scotland, such as the magnificent Langton House and the modern Wells House, which failed to reach a 50th anniversary landmark. But those are tales for another day.

For more on Mount Annan House, and other lost mansions in the region, read Dan’s Farewell Grandeur – Lost Mansions and Houses of Southern Scotland (2024), available from local bookstores, Amazon and online at mansionhousechronicler.bigcartel.com.