The drawing room
Deep red walls under a coffered and strapwork ceiling, a carved overmantel bearing a shield, and two Chesterfields drawn up to the fire. The bay window looks straight down the lawn.
The house and its provost
Built by the man who
built the town
Woodside began as a modest gabled villa in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1893 it was taken in hand by Colin Grant, one of Arbroath's most energetic provosts, the man behind the town's parks and seafront, its hospital and its library, who commissioned the Forfar architect A A Symon to remake it.
What Symon added over the next three years is what you see today: a tall square entrance tower set off-centre, sculptured dormerheads, strapwork and stepped string courses, all in the Scottish Renaissance manner that was fashionable in the 1890s. The listing record notes, drily, an "important surviving interior". It is still here.
A house built by a man who spent his life improving a town, and who clearly saw no reason to stop at his own front door.
The house now takes one party at a time. There is no reception desk, no neighbours through the wall of an evening, and no one else on the drive. You are given the keys, and for a week the place is yours.
The Listing Record
- Designation
- Category B listed building
- Reference
- LB6471 · Historic Environment Scotland
- Listed
- 7 August 1992
- Entry
- Woodside House, including sundial to south
- Origin
- Mid-19th century two-storey gabled villa
- Altered
- 1893–96 by A A Symon of Forfar, for Colin Grant
- Fabric
- Stugged and snecked ashlar, polished dressings, slated roof
- Of note
- Three-stage entrance tower, sculptured pedimented dormerheads, strapwork
Scientia et Ars Sumus
The device takes its two figures from the stained-glass window on the main staircase: Letters, holding an open book, and Art, with palette and brush.
The motto, we are knowledge and art, was chosen for the house in 2026 in their spirit.
The ribbons on this page are drawn from the Grant tartan, in memory of the provost who built the house.
The portcullis, emblem of Arbroath since its medieval charter.
