Watching Brief

Date 10 July 2010 - 28 March 2011

Event ID 934366

Category Recording

Type Watching Brief

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/934366

NT 67931 78951 The Category A listed 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 there is rubble-built 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. Repairs and re-harling work were carried out 2007–8 and an external survey carried out. Three floor joists were subjected to dendrochronological dating and a felling date of between AD 1524 and 1539 places the construction of the Town House in accordance with the earliest historical reference for the building of AD 1539.

A major programme of interior alterations and refurbishment, July 2010–May 2011, led to further building recording and a watching brief during the installation of a stair tower, a new lift shaft base and the creation of a new doorway in the N gable. The survey confirmed the presence of three blocked fireplaces. The presence of a cast-iron fire back suggests at least one of the ground floor fireplaces is 19th-century in date. The one located in the N gable is of potentially early 16th-century date and has a large lintel surmounted by a segmented stone relieving arch. On the first floor, hidden behind the concrete wall of a 1927 fireproof strongroom, was a massive fireplace more in keeping with a great hall. This fireplace had been reduced in size by the insertion of a smaller fireplace with stone surrounds. These stones were heavily inscribed with names and 18th-century dates, and were probably associated with the inmates of the gaol. The strongroom had earlier formed one of two prison cells. The N gable was found to have been constructed of a rubble core within the rubble-built walls of the ground floor vault and external wall. The cobbled surface of an earlier, but post-18th-century, yard was also recorded.

Archive: RCAHMS. Reports: East Lothian Council and RCAHMS

Funder: East Lothian Council

CFA Archaeology Ltd 2011

Information also reported in Oasis (cfaarcha1-102804) 15 January 2013