Prestonpans, Northfield House

Within a pleasant garden 300 yards north-west of Prestonpans station lies the mansion of the Marjoribanks of Northfield, a building of the late 16th or early 17th century (fig. 153 [SC 1127060]). It is two storeys, an. attic and garret in height and is L-shape don plan (fig. 154 [plan]). The masonry is roughcast, but the freestone dressings are exposed; the roof is slated. The ground and first floor windows have backset margins; the attic and garret windows, the former constructed in stone the latter in timber, have simple triangular pediments. At attic floor level, circled turrets with conical slated roofs project from the exterior angles and are borne on continuous corbelling. The south entrance has a moulded Renaissance architrave, cornice and triangular pediment with flanking and central finials. The architrave is inscribed ‘EXCEP . THE . LORD . BVLD . INWANE . BVLDS . MAN’. The inscription is interrupted by a panel bearing a shield charged per pale, a star below a cushion in chief (for Marjoribanks), and a star below three crescents on a chief (for Simpson). Above the shield are the initials I M separated by a star (Joseph Marjoribanks), on either side of the shield are initials M S (M. Simpson); below the shield is the date 1611.

The building measures 37 ½ feet along the west wall by 74 feet along the south wall, and these walls vary from 2 ½ feet to 4 feet in thickness. The re-entering angle, lying to the north, contains a comparatively modern turret, within which is a geometrical stair; this turret probably replaced one earlier and smaller containing a wheel stair with a solid central newel. The original entrance was through the turret but is now disused. The eastward portion of the main wing has been altered very shortly after completion to contain the scale and platt stair and the south entrance. The eastern windows and turrets do not line with those on the west, but the architectural detail throughout is identical; moreover while there is a kitchen in the shorter wing a second is formed in the addition. The rearrangement of the east end with the transference of the kitchen and the proportions of the two parts of the building, suggest that there has been a substantial extension or reconstruction towards the east, but there is no evidence of this in the actual building.

The south entrance admits to a small lobby, from which a good scale staircase rises to the first floor; on the east of the lobby is the later kitchen with a fireplace and oven in the east gable. West of the lobby and entered from it are two intercommunicating cellars, and the western communicates with the shorter wing through the well of the stair turret. The kitchen and cellars have semicircular barrel vaulted ceilings. The basement floor of the short wing contains the earlier kitchen on the north, with fireplace and presses in the north gable and a slop drain adjoining; en suite with this is a second and smaller chamber on the south. The upper floors are modernised. On the first floor of the main wing there is a fine painted ceiling of timber in the dining room concealed by a modern plaster ceiling. The upper landing of the staircase has a ‘honeycomb’ paving beneath the modern floor, and the doorways opening off this landing have moulded stone architraves.

The building is inhabited and is in good preservation.

DOVECOT. South-east of the mansion is its dovecot, a contemporary structure circular on plan.

SUNDIAL. On a rockery in the garden is a tablet-shaped sundial dated 1647 and inscribed with initials G.M. and M.R.

HISTORICAL NOTE. Joseph Marjoribanks, an Edinburgh merchant, acquired lands and houses on the south side of the vill of Salt Preston from George Hamilton portioner of Salt-Preston, and a mansion and house with a garden in the same place from George Achesone another portioner and Barbara Congleton his wife (1).

RCAHMS 1924, visited 8 July 1914.

(1) R.M.S. s.a. No. 1637.

Photographic survey by the Scottish National Buildings Record in 1956.