Field Visit

Date 28 May 1928

Event ID 1099306

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1099306

RCAHMS County Inventory: Fife, Kinross and Clackmannan

House, Chapel Gardens, Wemyss Castle.

In the gardens, facing the sea at the western extremity of the policies, are the remains of a good 16th-century house, which has been four storeys and a garret in height. On plan it is oblong with a stair-tower projecting from the middle of the south front, the tower being rounded in the lower part and corbelled out to the square at the top storey, where there was a little chamber. On the east side of the tower there is a single 'shot-hole,' built up. The masonry throughout is of coursed rubble, probably once harled. The windows, where unaltered, are chamfered at jamb and lintel. The crow-steps, where these remain, are gableted. The skew-puts of the wing have been carved with human heads. Against the west gable and along the western part of the south wall are traces of a timber construction, a gallery with a roof, which lay at the level of the hall or first floor. The entrance to the house lies in the stair-tower. On the ground floor are two vaulted chambers. The eastern one, measuring 16 ¾ by 15 ¾ feet, was the kitchen; the western one, 23 feet long and 15 ¾ feet wide, was a cellar. Within the vault there has been an entresol floor. On the first floor the staircase opened into a transverse passage, latterly communicating with the garden behind. On the west of the passage lay the hall, which retains a vestige of the fireplace in its south wall and, beside the fireplace, an aumbry with ogival head. Breaches in the south and west wall presumably represent accesses to the hanging gallery. On the east side of the passage lay a second chamber. The second floor has been subdivided, but so little of it remains that the detailed arrangement cannot be determined. From this floor a little stair led up to the chamber at the top of the stair-tower.

RCAHMS 1933, visited 28 May 1928.