Strathmiglo, High Street, Town House

Photographs of buildings in Strathmiglo, Fife, by the Scottish National Buildings Record 1956-1957.

This steeple is situated on the N side of the High Street, in the centre of the village and about 80m W of the supposed site of a tolbooth of 16th-century origin. It was built in 1734 as an addition to the S gable of a building which had been acquired some years earlier for use as a town-house. This hall was rebuilt in the 19th century and has since been converted into a private dwelling. Incorporated in the SE quoins of its crowstepped S gable there is a head from a skewputt of 17th century type.

The steeple, which is 5.05m square on plan, is constructed of sandstone rubble with dressed margins and string-courses which define its five stages. Its walls are slightly battered in profile and the spire rises to an overall height of 21.7m. In the main (S) front there is a round-headed doorway giving access to a ground-floor cell which is lit by a slit-window in the W wall. A forestair which rises E of the doorway returns to a first-floor entrance in the E wall. Access to the hall was provided at this level by an internal doorway, now blocked, in the N wall of the steeple.

There are windows in the S wall at first- and second-floor levels, the former now partly blocked. Above it there is an armorial panel, apparently integral with the building, which bears the date 1734 and the name and arms of the Honourable Margaret Balfour of Burleigh, the superior of the burgh. At third-floor level on each front there are original moulded surrounds enclosing square clock-faces which were renewed in 1921. The fourth stage has paired belfry-openings of lancet form and is surmounted by a corbelled balustrade with panelled angle-pillars, which encloses an ashlar-built broachspire of slightly bell-shaped profile.

The interior retains few early features. The wooden stairs to the upper floors have been largely renewed and the floor-levels somewhat altered, most noticeably at second-floor level where the original joist-holes are still visible. The belfry houses a bell 0.76m in diameter, bearing the motto TEMPUS FUGIT (Time flies'), which was cast for the burgh in 1766 by Lester and Pack of London.

Built into the sill of the first-floor S window there is a quadrangular pyramid-capped sundial which surmounts a foliate capital supported by a short length of semi-circular shaft. This is said to be a remnant of the burgh's mercat cross.

Information from ‘Tolbooths and Town-Houses: Civic Architecture in Scotland to 1833’ (1996).