Field Visit
Date 21 June 1989
Event ID 1112752
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1112752
Fingask Castle is a stepped L-plan tower-house of late 16th-century date which was extended in 1674 and subsequently restored, remodelled and enlarged in the 18th and 19th centuries; a number of these additions were removed about 1925. The tower itself (1594 on skew) stands three storeys and a garret in height and is of a random rubble build with sandstone quoins and dressings; the entrance-doorway, which has been remodelled, is in the E re-entrant angle and is defined by a stout edge-roll (the yett is preserved within). A triangular-pediment is in re-use at third floor level in the wing, and at the S angle of the wing, at first-floor level, there is a perpendicular wall dial. There are several wide-mouthed gunloops at ground-floor level. The ground-floor is vaulted; the kitchen was in the wing and the fireplace, wrought with a bullnosed moulding, has a salt-box in the jamb. The first and second floor interiors have been remodelled; the drawing room, however, retains its 18th-century panelling and the fireplace, which may be earlier, is wrought with a stepped, stout edge-roll moulding. Opening from the drawing room there is a mural chamber or strongroom. In 1674 the tower was converted to the T-plan by the addition of a block to the W re-entrance angle; the evidence for the date comes from a dormer-pediment in re-use in the main blocks which bears the date and the initials of Patrick Threipland and Eupheme Conqueror his wife; a second pediment, bearing the same initials but the date 1676, is in re-use at the back of the garage block to the NNW of the house.
The lands of Fingask are on record by 1164; in 1399 the estate was the property of a branch of the Bruces of Clackmannan and in 1672 it passed to the Threipland family.
Visited by RCAHMS (IMS), 21 June 1989.
Liber de Scon; Reg Reg Scot; J B Paul 1906.
