There is very little information on Thomas Hunter of Glencarse (d. 1815). He was the son of James Hunter of Inchture and had four brothers and four sisters. He had made his fortune from farming and purchased the estate at Glencarse.

In 1790, the Adam office made designs for a house for Thomas Hunter in Glencarse. The designs were for a simple villa-style house comprising a three-storey building with flanking single-storey pavilion wings and enclosed yards.

The Adam office made at least two variant designs for the house and it is not clear which specific design was executed, or if a later variant design was made. One design (SM Adam volume 36/102, 105 & 107) shows the principal elevation with projecting single bays, with a sphinx over the central bay, and enclosed yards that extend directly from the projecting wings, whilst in the finished drawings (SM Adam volume 36/103 & 106), the projecting bays to the main house are omitted, there is a pediment in place of the sphinx, the enclosed yards are recessed far behind the wings, inline with the main house and steps have been added to the flanking wings. In any case, the house was so significantly altered between the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries that it lost the original footprint and planform of the property as well as its external decoration.

The entire elevation has been rendered with rusticated quoins at its corners and moulded architraves to the windows. In 1889, the rear central bow was raised in height with a small conical-roofed cupola with a balustrade and parapet, the east wing was enlarged in height and width and brought back to align with the external rear wall of the house, and the pedimented front of the east wing was raised in height. In 1923, the rear of the west wing was altered to match the east, and the fronts of both wings were remodelled and linked by a pilastered addition across the ground floor of the main house which had been altered with new elliptical-arched windows and a central Roman Doric portico. The pedimented gable of the west wing was also enlarged, and further extensions were added beyond the east and west wings at this time.

Literature: Scots Magazine, Volume 77, 1815, p. 480; B. Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 1, 1858, pp. 601-2; A.T. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, Volume II, Index, 1922, p. 15; D. King, The Complete Works of Robert & James Adam and Unbuilt Adam, Volume 1, 2001, pp. 106, 144; Volume 2, 2001, p. 21; J. Gifford, The Buildings of Scotland: Perth and Kinross, 2007, pp. 391-2

Louisa Catt, 2023