Publication Account
Date 1996
Event ID 1018561
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018561
The town-house, which is built in a castellated style and dates from 1816, stands in the NW angle of High Street and Bridge Street. Its architectural prominence is enhanced by its position at the centre of the village, which wwas laid out on a grid-plan in 1764.
The gabled two-storeyed main block is rectangular on plan, measuring 12.6m from E to W by 7.5m, and an ornate steeple measuring 5.2m by 5.7m projects from its E end. The building is constructed of finely-wrought grey-brown granite ashlar, except for the inserted masonry surrounding the round-headed ground-floor windows of the S front, which is of light-brown granite. These windows have been inserted into an original four-bay open arcade, shown in a mid-19th-century painting of the building, which presumably gave access to a market-area. At first-floor level there are three square-headed windows with heavy label-moulds, below a crenellated parapet. The N front is much plainer in character, and all three windows at first floor level are blind.
The steeple has segmental-headed and broad-chamfered embrasures to S and E at ground-floor level, the former being the main access-doorway and the latter a blind window. At first-floor level the Sand E fronts have paired lancets with traceried heads surmounted by hood-moulds. At the next level there are pairs of small round-headed blind windows, above which are circular clock-faces set within stepped labelmoulds. The crenellated parapet is supported by tripartite corbels and has corbelled angle-turrets decorated with blind dumb-bell loops. The octagonal belfry stage, which is set within the parapet-walk, has pointed windows in each face, alternately louvred and blind, which are surmounted by a bold moulding and a diminutive crenellated parapet. Within this there is set the stepped base of the octagonal spire, whose faces are decorated with a horizontal moulding near the base, quatrefoils in alternate faces and a crenellated band towards the middle.
Internally the main block possesses few early features, and modem partitions have been inserted towards the E end of both floors, those at first-floor level cutting across a circular plaster centrepiece and cornice. The ceiling of the main first floor room has been lowered. Fireplaces in the W wall on both floors have been removed and blocked. The steeple has a spiral stair which gives access to the first floor, and above this level a smaller spiral stair in the NW angle rises to the spire. The belfry houses a bell, 0.8m in diameter, which was cast by Thomas Mears of London in 1818.
HISTORY
The village of Strichen, which never achieved burgh status, was founded by Alexander Fraser, Lord Strichen, in 1764. The town-house was built at a cost of about £2,000 for his grandson's widow, Mrs Emilia Fraser, in 1816, during the minority of her son who later became the 12th Lord Lovat. It was designed by the Aberdeen-based architect John Smith, known locally as 'Tudor Johnny' due to his preference for late Gothic forms, who subsequently designed the classical Strichen House for the same clients. Shortly before 1875 the ground floor was fitted up for use as a female school, and the upper floor served as the town hall.
Information from ‘Tolbooths and Town-Houses: Civic Architecture in Scotland to 1833’ (1996).
