Field Visit
Date 3 August 1929
Event ID 1099031
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1099031
Largo Tower.
This structure stands to north of Largo House, and has obviously formed part of a more extensive building which had consisted of a rectangular main block, lying east and west, with the tower at the south-west corner. While most of the main block has been removed, some idea of its size and character can be gathered from the remnant of its southern wall, which has been adapted to serve as part of the garden enclosure. It is of rubble with traces of older building in its foundations, and extends from the tower for a distance of 63 feet eastwards, at which point the original south-eastern quoins appear.
The tower is of rubble, harled, and has an external diameter of 16 ½ feet with walls 3 ½ feet thick on the ground floor and 2 feet 10 inches thick on the first floor. It still stands to a height of four storeys with a single chamber on each floor. The chamber on the first floor is round and is lit on the south by a small window with a quatrefoiled gun-hole in the breast; there is another similar opening below a window facing north-west. A mural closet exists in the north-east and has a chamfered loop of inverted key-hole pattern, partly grooved for glass. The two upper floors are inaccessible, and the topmost is now a dovecot; each has been lit by two larger windows, one facing east and the other west. Only the ground floor is vaulted. It has been entered by a door from the south, but an opening in the north, now built up, may have been a door communicating with the ground floor of the main house. Windows and door are treated with roll-and-hollow mouldings, suggesting a date in the late 16th or, more probably, the early 17th century. Above the south door of the tower a panel, inserted in modern times, records that “these are the remains of the royal residence granted with the lands of Largo by James III in the year MCCCCLXXXII to his Admiral Sir Andrew Wood"; also that "Sir Alex. Durham, Lord Lion King at Arms, acquired the Estate of Largo MDCLXI." (See, however, HISTORICAL NOTE.)
HISTORICAL NOTE. The lands of Largo were granted in feu-farm to Andrew Wood in March 1482-3, and in 1491 a re-grant included a licence to build a "tower or fortalice," Wood having already erected such a building as a protection against piratical descents (1). The present tower, however, is at least a hundred years later, as its detail clearly shows. In 1513 the lands were erected into a barony in favour of Andrew Wood, when the principal messuage was ordained to be "the Hall-wallis" with the lands to north and south of it (2). Whether this description implies the erection of the main building, of which so little now remains, cannot be said. The plan, however, and its relation to the tower, suggest a much later date, and it will be remembered that the foundations of the south wall contain traces of a yet older building. In 1618 the lands passed to Peter Black (3), whose initials are on the church tower [NO40SW 11], and this date would suit the present tower. Black resigned the property in 1633 in favour of Alexander Gibson, junior, of Dury, and from the Gibsons it came in 1663 to Sir Alexander Durham, Lyon King of Arms (4).
RCAHMS 1933, visited 3 August 1929.
(1) Reg. Mag. Sig.,s.a., Nos. 1563, 2040. (2) Ibid., s.a., No. 3880. (3) Ibid. , s.a., No. 1916. (4) Ibid., s.a., Nos. 2222, 342.
