Collairnie Castle

Collairnie Castle.

The steading of Collairnie farm, which is four miles north-westof Cupar, includes in its buildings the remains of Collairnie Castle, a 16th-century tower of unusual design and of special interest because of its painted ceilings. It is L-shaped on plan with the main block on the west and the re-entrant angle, in which the turnpike rises, opening to the south-east. The main block has been reduced in height, re-roofed and partly rebuilt for use as a hay-barn, so that little evidence remains on which to form an opinion as to its date and original arrangement, although the indications on the mutual gable point to there having been three storeys and perhaps a garret. The length is indeterminate; the width, taken internally, is 18 feet 10 inches. The wing, four storeys and an attic in height, is dated 1581 and, with the turnpike in there-entrant angle, may be later than the rest of the building. Its roof has been gabled at a considerably higher level than the gable of the wall on which it abuts, so that its upper storey must have been free-standing. On what has been the mutual gable are the remains of a gutter formed of slabs, with cannon-shaped outlets at either end, which must have carried off the water from the roof of the main block.*

Both in wing and in main block the masonry is of rubble with freestone dressings; a bold cable-moulding runs along the front and round the turnpike at first-floor level. The windows have rounded or boldly roll-and-hollow moulded margins, and those of the three lower floors have gun-loops in the breasts, while other gunloops beside the entrance cover the approach. There has been no parapet-walk, but turrets, borne on a moulded encorbellment of four members, project from the eastern angles of the wing. These turrets are oversailed by a modern roof, lower by two courses of masonry than the roof which it replaced. The latter has had dormers on north and south, and there may have been a third in the head of the turnpike.

At ground-level are two entrances. One, which may be of later date, is a simply moulded doorway in the turnpike, and opens at the stair-foot, through which there has been access to the basement of the main block. The other is more ornate. Set beside the turnpike, where apparently it has always stood, it gives access merely to the cellarage. Its architrave is moulded, the outer member being fretted, and the lintel has the date 1581 between D.B. and M.W., for David Balfour and his wife. Above the door and enclosed by a border enriched with a bold dog-tooth, is a panel-space, from which the original panel has been removed and replaced by a triangular pediment taken from elsewhere. The pediment carries a shield bearing: On a chevron anotter's head erased, for Balfour, with a cinquefoil in base for difference; another cinquefoil placed above the shield is merely decorative. Flanking the shield are the initials H.B. for Henry Balfour and the date 1607.

Measured externally, the wing is 22 feet square on plan. The basement floor seems originally to have consisted of two cellars opening from a passage. The western cellar, which is vaulted, remains, but the eastern one has been thrown into the passage, and its vault, if it was ever vaulted, has been removed. The western end of the passage opened into the main block. The stair is unusual, ascending in a direction opposite to that in which the hands of a clock move, an arrangement probably due to alteration. At the first-floor landing the present access to the wing chamber is of later date, but the original entrance, now boarded up, lies just beyond, beside a door which opens to the main block, and has a dog-tooth ornament on the architrave. At this level the chamber in the wing measures 14 ½ by 14 feet. Internally it has been completely remodelled in the 18thcentury. The walls have then been panelled or lined; the plaster cornice and a fireplace in the west wall remain, though in bad condition. A second door, which has an architrave enriched with the dog-tooth ornament opens into the main block through the west wall.

Above this room, on the second and third floors respectively, are two other chambers, the ceilings of which are painted in tempera with the heraldic decorations described below. The fourth floor consists of an attic, with a modern roof, and has little circular chambers, known as "studies," contained within the turrets. These are provided with small oblong loops for observation, and each seems also to have had a window.

Collairnie is in bad repair, although the roof is sound. The painted ceilings are decaying fast and are in danger of being completely destroyed.

[see RCAHSM 1933, 102-104, for a detailed description of the Tempera-Painted Heralidic Ceilings]

RCAHMS 1933, visited 16 June 1925.

*In Swan's History of Fife (1840), ii, p. 93, is an illustration showing a main block of usual proportions. The house occupies the north-west corner of a barmkin enclosure which has, apparently, two circular towers on the south.

The castle was home to a branch of the Barclay family, and two main phases of construction are indicated by inscriptions. On the lintel over the main entrance is the date 1581 and the initials of David Barclay, which suggests that the castle was either built or extensively remodelled at that time. But within the panel over that entrance is what appears to be a re-set dormer gablet with the date 1607 and the initials of Hugh Barclay, suggesting there was further remodelling.

On the evidence of a basket-arched fireplace in the surviving part of the castle, it continued to be occupied into the eighteenth century. In 1789 it passed to a son of the Balfour of Fernie family, a family with which the Barclays had already inter-married, and it may have been soon after then that it was abandoned as a primary residence. A new house was built a short distance to the south around this time, which was considerably expanded in 1849 to the designs of Alexander Blyth.

In 1844 an extensive farm steading was built by the mason Archibald Mitchell, enveloping the south and west sides of the castle, and the main body of the castle was truncated and adapted as a barn. The latter operation involved extensive modifications, with the construction of several new openings and quoins, all marked by droved ashlar. It may have been around the same time that the ashlar turrets at the eastern angles of the chamber block were cut down and covered by swept roofs, while the stair turret was given a double-pitched roof.

In its completed state the residential element of Collairnie was of L-shaped plan and, although it has been so extensively modified that it is difficult to be certain if that plan was the consequence of one or more building campaigns, that state was probably reached in 1581, in the time of David Barclay. The main block was aligned from north to south (in fact from north-east to south-west), and appears to have been of three main storeys, possibly with a garret within the roof. There is inadequate evidence for the use of the ground floor, but the indications of the much-modified tall windows at first-floor level suggest they lit a spacious hall, while at second-floor level there were at least two chambers on the indication of the adjoining doors off the stair well. There was evidently a shallow transverse section of roof connecting the roof over this range with west flank of the chamber tower, which rose to a greater height than the main block. The chamber tower projected from the east side of the main block's northern end, and the two parts were both served by a spacious circular stair in the re-entrant angle between them. The principal entrance was in the south face of the chamber block, though a later door has been formed at the base of the stair.

Both the chamber tower and the main block were unusually finely detailed. Apart from the moulded reveals to the doors and windows, there is a heavy cable moulding around the stair tower and south face of the chamber tower, and several features were framed by revived dogtooth mouldings. There are heraldic plaques above the entrance and at the head of the stair tower. At the lower levels there was an impressive display of wide-mouthed shot-holes, with that adjacent to the entrance being of quatrefoiled form. The eastern angles of the chamber tower were capped by turrets, and it may be suspected that there were others to the main block.

The aspirations of its owners for Collairnie are now perhaps best seen in the painted heraldic ceilings above the second and third floors of the chamber tower. Despite now being largely decayed beyond recognition, it is recorded that these were decorated with the arms of a large number of local land-holders, amongst which branches of Barclay and Balfour families were given particular prominence.

Views taken before the construction of the steading show that, as would be expected, the main courtyard of the castle was to its south, and that there were circular angle towers to the southern angles of the enclosing wall, with a gatehouse between.

M Bath 2003; J Gifford; D MacGibbon and T Ross 1887; RCAHMS 1933; Tranter 1962

Information from the HES Castle Conservation Register, 5 July 2022