Field Visit
Date 31 July 1928
Event ID 1098629
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1098629
Donibristle.
The house of Donibristle, situated within fifty yards of the shore of the Firth of Forth and immediately west of Dalgety Bay, has been three times destroyed by fire. All that now remains are the two front service-wings, which are still inhabited, and the connecting subterranean passage. These must have been built about 1720, as the architectural detail is similar to that on the adjacent stables, which bear the date 1723 and the initials of Charles, sixth Earl of Moray, and his Countess, Anne, daughter of Archibald, ninth Earl of Argyll. According to a plan of 1768, preserved at Donibristle, the design of the main house, which stood on the high lawn north of the wings, resembled. the letter H. The angles are now marked on the turf. On the lawn stands a bronze figure, described by Thomas Kirk in 1677 (1) as part of a fountain "in the middle whereof stands a Mercury, with one foot on the back of a tortoise which turns up its neck and spouts water up to a great height, and washes the Black's skin." As Kirk does not mention it, the iron screenwork between the wings, and therefore the wings themselves, must be later than his visit. It includes in monogram the initials C.A.M. (supra). Of this screenwork, which is illustrated in Fig. 200 [SC1110326], an authority on the subject says: "The most stately array of ironwork in Scotland, ... is that to the terraces and steps at Donibristle, . .. the central feature being a large arch of latticed and trellised iron with leaf clusters, rising from stone piers, and surmounted by a high lantern-like structure sheltering an "M" under a coronet between leonine masks. Crowning this is a fine finial of tulips, also repeated over the stone piers" (2).
RCAHMS 1933, visited 31 July 1928.
(1) Kirk's. Tour, &c., p. 16. (2) J. Starkie Gardner in Victoria and Albert Museum Handbook: Ironwork, iii, p. 76.
