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Struthers Castle

Country House (16th Century)

Site Name Struthers Castle

Classification Country House (16th Century)

Canmore ID 31183

Site Number NO30NE 2

NGR NO 37733 09695

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/31183

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Administrative Areas

  • Council Fife
  • Parish Ceres
  • Former Region Fife
  • Former District North East Fife
  • Former County Fife

Archaeology Notes

NO30NE 2.00 37733 09695 Struthers Castle

NO30NE 2.01 37717 09708 Dovecot

(NO 3771 0971) Struthers (NR) (Ruins)

OS 6" map (1920)

Struthers Castle. The remains of a large 16th century house, with outbuildings, which incorporates older work as shown by the double gable on the east. There have also been extensive alterations, probably in the early 18th century. There is not sufficient evidence to show what the form of the first building was, but the 16th century house is L-shaped on plan with the re-entrant opening eastward. The gables indicate that there were three storeys and a garret.

The dovecot is contemporary with the house and is complete, but has a modern roof.

RCAHMS 1933

The building measures 146ft E-W by 87ft N-S and is four to five storeys high.

D MacGibbon and T Ross 1887

"The park around the house of Struthers which is enclosed by a stone wall, contained 200 acres."

NSA 1845 (J Crawford)

Struthers Castle is as described by RCAHMS, the walling being of rubble and 1.5m thick. To the west of the castle stands a masonry pier, 2.0m square, and fragmentary remains of walling, apparently the outbuildings referred to. The dovecot, of rubble, is a rectangular building with a single string course. It is now unroofed.

Visited by OS (DS) 25 October 1956

NO 3774 0970 Generally as described above. To the South of the Castle are the remains of enclosures outlined by scarps from 0.5m to 1.2m in height.

Earthworks surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (WDJ) 16 October 1962

Architecture Notes

See also:

REFERENCE:

Estate plan of 'Struthers Park'

1821

Deposited with Scottish Record Office

December 1993

REFERENCE:

Scottish Record Office

Plan

RHP 23145

Jean-Joseph Couven of Aix

(1701 - 1763)

Activities

Field Visit (8 June 1925)

Struthers Castle.

Struthers Castle, situatead on an open plateau four miles south of Cupar, is represented merely by a few fragments. It has been a large 16th-century house without buildings behind, but incorporates older work, as the double gable on the east shows, while there has also been extensive alteration, probably in the early 18th century.

There is not sufficient evidence to show what the form of the first building was, but the 16th century house may be definitely described as L-shaped on plan, set with the re-entrant opening eastward. The gables indicate that there were three storeys and a garret. The south gable is buttressed externally. The east gable is densely covered with ivy. At either side of it are staged piers, which have been surmounted by turrets, probably roofed; turrets supported on piers are not common in Scotland, and their application to work of this class is extremely unusual and possibly unique. A buttress staged like the piers, but with tabled top, now rises isolated above the foundations of the outbuildings.

The entrance has been in the western wall, but was built up when the neighbouring 18th century windows were inserted. The upper part of the southern gable has been rebuilt, and there are numerous 18th-century alterations in the lower part also. Of the outbuildings little remains but part of a vaulted cellar.

DOVECOT. The dovecot is contemporary with the house and is complete but has a modern roof. It is an oblong structure, 26 ¼ by 15 ½ feet, with crow-stepped flanks, on which the string-course breaks upwards. The entrance, a doorway chamfered at jamb and lintel, faces south, and there is a small window in the eastern wall. The nests are of stone.

HISTORICAL NOTE. In 1392, Sir William Keith, the Marischal, exchanged with Sir William Lindsay of the Byres, the lands of "Uchterutherstruther" and Wester Markinch in Fife for the barony and castle of Dunnottar, then belonging to Lindsay who had married Keith's daughter. Thereafter the former place, generally in the shortened form of "the Strother" or "Struthers," was the principal seat of the Lindsays of Byres, and so became in time a property of the Earls of Crawford of that line. - Scots Peerage, Reg. Mag. Sig.

RCAHMS 1933, visited 8 June 1925.

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