Standing Building Recording
Date 2008
Event ID 576944
Category Recording
Type Standing Building Recording
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/576944
NT 67931 78951 Dunbar Town House was the town’s tollbooth for civil administration and housed the town’s gaol in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The building is rectangular in plan and has two storeys with two vaulted prison cells, above which is a dormered attic. A semi-hexagonal stair tower is capped by a slated peined roof with a lead-covered spire. The masonry is of local red sandstone and is rubble-built with cream-coloured sandstone edging on the lower portions of the tower and crow-stepped gable. The building was stripped of its harling in c1920 leaving the fabric exposed to the elements, resulting in serious erosion over much of the exterior.
A survey of the building, including laser scanning, has shed new light on its development. Three floor joists have been subjected to dendrochronological dating and a felling date of between AD 1524 and AD 1539 places the construction of the Town House in accordance with the earliest historical reference for the building of AD 1539. The timber was imported from Scandinavia and correlates well with numerous other ‘imported’ timber chronologies in Edinburgh and the Lothians for this period. The Statutory List dates the structure to the early 17th century, a date which can now be revised in the light of these results.
Internal recording was confined to a rear outshot building recorded by RCAHMS as a late 17th- or early 18th-century addition. There is no conclusive evidence to confirm or refute this. Dendrochronological dating is currently being carried out on a number of internal oak floor joists and timbers which were found and are being replaced in the tower wall plate. These dates will determine the felling date of the timber and establish if the timber was imported. It is hoped that the results will support the established phase development model for the site.
Archive: RCAHMS (intended). Report: SMR and RCAHMS
Funder: East Lothian Council
M Cressey and K Hicks (CFA Archaeology Ltd), 2008
