Field Visit
Date 11 June 1925
Event ID 1098581
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1098581
Carslogie House.
This ruin stands 200 yards east of the farm house of Carslogie and one and a half miles west of Cupar. Although the house was occupied down to last century, its remains are in a bad state and in parts dangerous. The plan shows an oblong, measuring 49 ¼ feet from east to west by 29 ¼ feet, while on the north there has been a projecting wing, apparently a later erection, now removed. The building has been at least three storeys and an attic in height and has had on the west an enclosure, the gateway of which can still be traced. The masonry throughout is of rubble with freestone dressings. The house has been ascribed to the 16th century, mainly on the evidence of a dormer pediment, now lying within the ground floor, which bears the date 1590 and the initials of George Clephane of Carslogie and of his spouse Katherine Orme (2). The internal arrangement, however, would suggest a rather later period. There are, it is true, many indications of an extensive alteration, but these, so far as they can be dated, are of the 18th century. The cart-shed 150 yards to the north-east contains a lintel inscribed, 17 DC IC 10, for David Clephane and his wife Joanna Colville. This probably came from the house.
The entrance is centred in the north wall, and within the wall-thickness on the left hand an 18th-century stair leads to the first floor. The lowest storey is vaulted in ashlar and comprises four store-rooms, grouped in pairs on either side of a central passage; a fifth compartment has subsequently been contrived by enclosing the farther end of the passage. The store-rooms are fitted with aumbries and are lit from narrow windows. Their doorways are rounded and quirked at the architraves. The upper floor has apparently been divided by a partition, each chamber having a fireplace, which was afterwards contracted. With two exceptions none of the windows seems to be original. The western chamber was provided with a close garderobe entered from the embrasure of a window. In the jamb on the opposite side of the same window is an ogival headed and giblet-checked aumbry. The floor above has been similarly subdivided, but the two chambers, each of which had a close garderobe, must have at first been on different levels, since the eastern floor has obviously been raised. Fireplaces and windows here are mainly of the18th century, but there are traces of the earlier ones.
DOVECOT. A short distance to the west of the farmhouse is a single-chambered rectangular dovecot with crow-stepped gables, measuring 23 ½ by 18 feet externally. There is one string course, stepped at the flanks. The nests are of stone.
HISTORICAL NOTE. There is a family charter by Duncan, Earl of Fife, in the reign of Robert I, confirming to John Clephane the lands of Carslogie ("Clesclogie"), which had been held by his predecessors (1). In 1582 George "Clepane" of Carslogie disposed of these lands to George "Clepane" junior and his wife Katherine Orme, the latter having in life-rent the dominical lands "with their fortalice" (2). In Sibbald's time (1710) Carslogie was the seat of Mr. David Clephane (1).
RCAHMS 1933, visited 11 June 1925.
(1) Sibbald's History of Fife, Etc. (ed. 1803), p. 394. (2) Reg. Mag. Sig., s.a., No. 420.
