Field Visit
Date 21 March 1928
Event ID 1098508
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1098508
The Palace, Culross.
This house which is sometimes called ‘the Colonel's Close' was built between 1597 and 1611 by George Bruce of Culross, later of Carnock. Despite its present rather dilapidated condition it is one of the most interesting domestic buildings in Fife. Situated less than fifty yards to the west of the Town House, it faces the street and the filled-in harbour formerly known as the Sandhaven,* and runs back to an extensive garden on the hillside that confines the greater part of the burgh to the shore. The garden is terraced, the lower part of it being forced soil. The buildings stand on the northern and western sides of an enclosure and on their southern and eastern sides respectively is an outer courtyard, which probably assumed its present dimensions when a neighbouring property was acquired. They surround an inner courtyard near the north-western corner of the main enclosure.
The Palace has grown by stages, the oldest part being the central wing on the west side of the outer courtyard. Whether this represents the whole of the original house is not quite certain, but its plan undoubtedly suggests that it has been in the first instance self-contained and that it lay fronting a small courtyard on the south, which had a smaller building, perhaps a lodge or a stable at the southeast corner. In the early 17th century there was a radical reconstruction. On the north an extension was erected, housing a turnpike and providing additional offices on the lower floor while a long gallery, the northern end of which covered part of the original structure, was runout towards the south. A further addition which can be dated to 1611, is the large isolated block on the north of the outer courtyard, mainly domestic but including a stable and byre at the eastern end. The last addition was a wing thrown out on the northside of the oldest part beside the turnpike. These changes reflect the rise in circumstances of the owner, Sir George Bruce, a commercial magnate of the time. Third son of Edward Bruce of Blairhall, he engaged in commerce and worked collieries and salt-pans to such profit that he was enabled to acquire the estate of Carnock, embracing the greater part of the parishes of CuIross and Carnock. He was knighted, by James VI and died in 1625 (cf. p.74).
The outer courtyard was entered from the south between a pair of modest 17th-century piers, only one of which remains. This courtyard measures 73 feet 6 inches from north to south and 54 feet from east to west. On the western side a forestair now rises westwards to a landing on which is the door that gives admission to the gallery, the platt being supported on two almost straight arches. Immediately beyond the landing lies what was the original house, three-storeyed and rubble-built. Its windows are small, and have the arrises of their margins rounded. Three of them are dormers facing south and having pediments enriched as shown on Fig. 175. The central pediment contains a shield, flanked by the initials G.B. and the date 1597, and bearing: Within a bordure a saltire and chief, for Bruce. A fourth donner on the north has been done away. with when the extension adjoining the turnpike was added; its position, however, is shown by the roof trimming.
There is nothing to show how admission was had to the ground floor of the original house. But after the reconstruction it was entered from the inner court on the north and also from a door set at the southern end of a passage which runs through its centre. This passage is flanked by two unvaulted chambers, the eastern one of which was the earliest kitchen. The northern extensions contained a vaulted chamber on either side of the turnpike, the one on the west being the new kitchen, behind which lies the bake-house, also vaulted. A feature of some interest is the water inlet which enters the kitchen beside the fireplace and is continued in a channel into the bake-house. The well in the inner court may not be original. There are two flues in the bake-house, the east ern designed to heat the oven.
The built-up entrance to the first floor of the original house can be seen at the north end of the landing. Beside it, also built up, is what has been an entrance to the long gallery, the inference being that these doors opened from the landing of an earlier forestair running north, and that the existing arrangement dates only from the later 17th century. Direct access to the original house from the south had of course been superfluous ever since the erection of the turnpike. The gallery, which was originally a single apartment, had a length of 46 feet 8 inches and a breadth of 13 feet 9 inches. At either end is a fireplace, the northern having a garderobe with soil-vent alongside. The ceiling was of pine boards decorated with conventional patterns in distemper, executed about the first quarter of the 17th century. The painted boards have been taken down and are stored at the northern end of the gallery. The lighting was mainly from the west, where there are four large windows breaking upward into the roof, but there were also similar windows, now built up, to the east and in the south gable. The gallery is subdivided, but this subdivision and the present finishings must be assigned to the late 17th or early 18th century, when much of the joiner-work appears to have been renewed.
A door near the south end of the long gallery opens into the first floor of the little south eastern "lodge," a single chamber which can also be reached directly from the landing of the forestair. Beneath it is a living-room, an arrangement which is not earlier than the 17th century, while the space beneath the gallery itself is filled by a single long unvaulted apartment. The door at the north end of the gallery leads into a small panelled room in the eastern part of the original house. A lobby, partitioned off the west side of this room, communicates with the turnpike, while a door on the north leads into one of the most interesting chambers in the palace - an early safe or strong-room. Elaborate precautions have been taken to make it fireproof, for it has a vaulted ceiling, and the floor, which is tiled, lies above a vaulted chamber, while the entrance is massively constructed in stone and is fitted both with a wooden door and with an inner door of sheet-iron. The fireplace, set in the gable, was originally larger. Above it are bookshelves, and the side walls have been partly wood-lined. There are two windows to the east. Beyond the lobby on the west, and above the kitchen premises, lay two chambers en suite. Only the more southerly of these remains, a living-room of fair size with a low ceiling.
On the second floor there are garrets above the kitchen block and above the strong-room, but in the eastern part of the original house there is a living-room with a remarkable coved ceiling painted in distemper. The ceiling is divided into sixteen panels, all treated in the same style. It is considerably dilapidated and only some of the panels are decipherable. They bear inscriptions, a Latin text or maxim at the top of each picture and an English couplet along the foot, similar in tenor to those illustrated. Thirteen of the inscriptions - some imperfect - appear in Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., ii (1854-7), pp. 340-1.
The isolated block to the north of the outer courtyard consists mainly of living-rooms, but has no kitchen provision, so that it must have been served from the already existing offices. The block contains three storeys, the first floor being level with the lowest terrace of the garden behind. The masonry is of rubble, with the dressings of the voids rounded at the arris. The top windows are dormers with triangular pediments containing respectively, three roses, a conventionalised fleur-de-lys, the initials S.G.B., for Sir George Bruce, grouped round a rosette, and a quatrefoil with the date 1611. The ground floor contains a chamber to the west and another to the east, the latter subsequently adapted for use as a byre. Between these a straight stair rises to the first floor and gives access to the garden. The chambers on the first floor are living-rooms, one lying on either side of the stair and a third, which also served as a passage, over its lower end. All these are wood-lined, and the lining has borne a painted decoration now almost destroyed. The passage-room contains a fitted dresser. The top floor is inaccessible, as the wooden newel-stair leading to it is unsafe. The stable building is two-storeyed, the upper floor being the hay-loft. The palace is uninhabited, but the roofs and walls are kept weatherproof. The floors, however, are in a bad state, several being unsafe.
PEDIMENTS IN GARDEN. In the revetment wall at the back of the garden are three 17th century pediments. The one in the centre bears the Crown and Hammer of the Incorporation of Hammermen, the western one is uninscribed while the eastern one bears an illegible device.
RCAHMS 1933, visited 21 March 1928.
