Dysart, 43-47 East Quality Street, The Towers

225. Houses in Dysart.

This little seaport contains a number of houses of the late 16th and the 17th century (Fig. 254). Pan tiled and harled, colour-washed or painted, they give a distinctive note to the town. Many have been altered and are now featureless, but others retain something of their original character, the following being of particular interest.

(1) [NT39SW 18] On the foreshore between St. Serf's tower and the sea, is a very picturesque harled tenement covered with a pan tiled roof (Fig. 254). It forms the front of a small court, the rear of which is a structure of the warehouse type. The entrance to the court is boldly moulded and bears on the lintel: MY HOIP IS IN THE LORD 1583. There has been an inner court, probably a stable court, behind the warehouse, and the entrance to it is an ashlar archway of 17th-century date. The front portion is an unpretentious dwelling, two storeys and a garret in height, but its crowstepped gables and heavy chimney-stalks, set at either end and corbelled out on the seaward wall, give it a character of its own. The skewputs are original and bear on north-east and south-west a male head, with moustache and beard, covered with a close bonnet and wearing a ruff; on south-east a female head with ode, wimple, and ruff. The rooms on the upper floor have been panelled and lined with pine in the 17th-century mode.

(2) [NT39SW 19] A small L-planned house, 100 yards east of St. Serf's Tower, has harled walls, slated roof, and crow-stepped gables with some good corbelling on the north gable beneath a stalk. Above a door on that face there has been inserted a panel containing a shield bearing three fleurs-de-lis and the date 1582.

(3) [NT39SW 16] "The Towers", East Port, is a tall harled house comprising a main block and wing, the latter projecting eastward to the street and containing the entrance. A panel above the entrance is initialled, apparently, C.R and RL. and dated 1589 (Fig. 257 [SC 1110374]).

(4) [NT39SW 124] Above the entrance to a modern house in Main Street is a pediment with side scrolls inscribed, GIF . THANKIS . WNTO . THE . LORD. The scrolls converge to a fleur-de-lis finial and enclose a square-petalled flower above a hammer, with tongs below; beneath the tongs is a fleur-de-lis flanked by the initials I.W. and I.K. above the date 1585.

TOLBOOTH. [NT39SW 4] Contemporary with the above is the tower of the Tolbooth (Fig. 255 [SC 1110376]) dating, as a panel on the front testifies, from 1576. The tower is roughly square, with a stair-turret projecting from the north-east angle and has a forestair built against the south side. The forestair is an addition and on the parapet is a panel with a shield bearing a palm tree; below the shield is the date 1617. The upper part of the tower has been reconstructed in the 18th century and provided with an ashlar bell-chamber, covered with an ogival roof in stone.

RCAHMS 1933, visited 28 May 1925.

Photographic survey of the exterior of The Towers and an adjacent building, Dysart, Fife, by the Scottish National Buildings Record/Ministry of Work in August 1963.