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Field Visit
Date 10 June 1927
Event ID 1099036
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1099036
Strathendry Castle.
Behind Strathendry House, a mile and a half west of Leslie, is a good late 16th-century tower, which has been restored and is still occupied. It is oblong on plan, measuring 39 by 26 feet externally, and contains three storeys and an attic. The stair-tower, which projects 13 ½ feet from the middle of the north wall, probably replaces an original but smaller stair in the same position. The masonry is of rubble with dressings at quoins and voids. Most of the windows have at some time or other been enlarged. The eastern gable is surmounted by a bartizan, with open rounds at the angles, set forward on a corbel table of later 16th-century type. The gables are crow-stepped.
There are two entrances, one from the north and the other from the south. The latter, which is obviously not original, is surmounted by a panel, halved horizontally and containing in the upper part, as a charge, three hunting horns flanked by the initials T. and F., the latter for Forrester; the lower part now contains a shield, the under part of which is indented and bears: On a chevron(?) three buckles, while the upper part shows the initials I.L., the latter probably for Lumsden. This arrangement no doubt represents a marriage. The northern entrance, set in the western side of the stair tower, displays a monogram of the initials S.E.D., probably for Sir E. Douglas, a younger son of Douglas of Kirkness, who married the Forrester heiress and so acquired the property. The monogram is flanked by the date 1699.
The basement floor has been a single vaulted chamber, but has latterly been divided into three parts, while the vault above the central division has been removed. The western division shows traces of two original windows – mere slits, while in the eastern gable there seems to have been a kitchen fireplace. On each of the upper floors - save the third which has been thrown into a single chamber - are two rooms, both modernised, the only features of interest left being a moulded fireplace of stone and a wooden moulded mantelshelf, both of which date from the end of the 17th century.
DRAW-WELL. In the courtyard on the southern side of the tower is a draw-well.
DOVECOT. An oblong late 17th-century dovecot, built of rubble, stands 100 yards north-east of the tower. It measures 20 ¼ by 14 feet externally.
HISTORICAL NOTE. "Strathendry an old building, the possession antiently of the Strathenries of that Ilk. Then anno 1496, Forrester, a son of Carden's married the heiress, and it continued in the name of Forrester, till King Charles II's time, that a younger son of Kirkness married the heiress and got the estate: and his son Mr. John Douglass is the present possessor” (1). Thomas Forrester of "Strathanrye" is on record in 1516 as sheriff-depute of Fife (2).
RCAHMS 1933, visited 10 June 1927.
(1) Sibbald's History of Fife, etc. (ed. 1803), pp.372-3. (2) Sheriff Court Book of Fife (S.H.S.), p.40 .
