BALLOCH

Balloch's origins are medieval. At the south of Loch Lomond, which cuts a deep gash 23 miles up into the Highlands, the moated site of Balloch Castle, 1238-1390, once a stronghold of the Earls of Lennox, can still he detected. Centuries later, when mountain and flood drew romantically inclined travelers north, the beauty of he location and the opportunities for tourism which it offered became apparent.
As early as 1817 there were steamer excursions on the Loch aboard the Marion. In 1841-2 a toll suspension bridge was built to cross the Leven where the old Ferry House Inn stood on the east bank.

Balloch Hotel is still there, (now called Balloch house)a black-and-white concoction of old and not-so-old building. In 1850 the railway arrived to ensure the village's future. Today, the tourists come by train, bus and car, and the Leven is full of small craft - a bright riverside scene worlds away from the industrial wasteland that begins only yards downstream. From the old bridge at Balloch Hotel, now a lattice-beam structure of 1908, to the Lomond Road Bridge, 1934, several large houses have taken advantage of riparian sites. On the west bank is the Tullichewan Hotel, 1893, a largeArts & Crafts style villa with half-timbered bracketed bayed gables, red brick chimneys, tile-hung walls and a big English roof. To the south, off Lomond Road, sits Fisherwood, 1910, equally English and picturesque.

In Drymen Road - an attractive, suddenly suburban, tree-lined avenue - is Roselea, 1888, distinguished by decorative bargeboards and segmental lintels to its ground-floor windows. Outstanding, however, are Warwick House and The Cottage, 1930, both mansarded cottage villas with charming porches, canted hays and swept dormers.

Balloch Castle, 1808-9, Robert Lugar John Buchanan of Ardoch, an original partner in the Glasgow Ship Bank, commissioned this castellated mansion from the London architect Lugar; with Tullichewan and Boturich it was one of three such projects Lugar carried out in Dunbartonshire - designs which, when published in 1811, became highly influential on the development of the secular Gothic Revival. A free symmetrical composition, battlemented and turreted a very good specimen of the Castle-Gothic - Balloch swallows up an earlier plainer building. The principal facade has an unusually slow concave curve ending in a bellcoted clock tower, 1830, over the services wing. Castle, garden and estate are today part of a beautiful 200-acre Country Park which stretches along the south-east shore of Loch Lomond. In the Castle, Page & Park have designed a crisp Interpretative Centre, 1986.

Boturich Castle, from 1830, Robert Lugar Boturich, another of the homes of John Buchanan of Ardoch, sits above the loch about a mile north of Balloch Castle. Lugar's rebuilding, 1830, of the 15th-century castle scarcely imparts a satisfactory unity, though it must he likely his intentions were never wholly realised. Yet, there are picturesque corners. Scott, Stephen & Gale had a hand in matters, too, in 1834, while the octagonal entrance tower was not added until 1850.