Earlshall Castle

Earlshall Castle, Fife

Earlshall Castle, Fife - 1888

--EARLSHALL, FIFESHIRE.

Situated about one mile distant from the village of Leuchars, this is a fine and very perfect example of the sixteenth and seventeenth century mansion-house. The main building is on the L plan, with a large circular tower at the north-east corner, thus making it a combination of the L plan and the plan with diagonally opposite towers, while from having a courtyard attached, it might almost be classed witli the castles with quadrangles. The house is three stories high, with attics, the wing having an entresol in addition. The staircase is placed in a separate tower at the re-entering angle, and is continued to the top, where the stair turret terminates with a platform roof and parapet, com- man ding a view of the comparatively level tract of surrounding country, with the German Ocean stretching to the eastwards.

In continuation of the western front there is a high enclosing wall, extending 35 feet southwards, which connects the main building, with a square tower three stories high, attached to which on the south are later buildings, the whole forming a courtyard, enclosed on the east with a low parapet wall. A large garden, protected with walls high and strong is attached to the house, and is entered from the courtvard. The west front of the house is on the line of the west wall of the garden, as seen in the view from the north-west.

The west curtain, through which is the arched entrance gateway, has had a parapet and walk on top, with a round projecting bartizan in the centre, commanding the entrance. The corbelling of the turret rests on a shaft rising out of the frame of a panel containing the arms of the founder, Sir William Bruce of Earlshall. The stone ridge of the roof is ornamented with small pinnacles at intervals. Such ridge ornaments are not unusual in Scottish buildings, and are frequently designed in imitation of crescents, thistles, etc. This house was built for comfort rather than defence, still, the parapet and battlement walk just referred to, with the shot-holes at the gateway, and the absence of large windows on the ground floor (which is all vaulted), indicate that a considerable amount of security was considered desirable.

There is a kitchen in the wing opposite the entrance door, but in the later building on the south side of the courtyard, a new and larger kitchen superseded this original one. The fireplace of the later kitchen is very spacious, being about 13 feet square, and is provided with a stone drain, seat, and window.

On the first floor, entering from the wheel stair, is the hall, 37 feet 6 inches long by 18 feet 6 inches wide. A fine fireplace and grate, with plaster pendant from the ceiling. On the fireplace lintel are the Bruce and Leslie arms, with the initials of Alexander Bruce and his wife, Elizabeth Leslie.

The hall has been divided with a screen. A garde-robe and a small anteroom in the wing enter off the westmost division. At the east end of the hall is a private room, and beyond this, in the round tower, there is another apartment, probably a bedroom. Between the two, in the thickness of the wall, a turret stair leads to an entresol above.

On the upper floor is the painted gallery or withdrawing-room, occupying the whole length of the house, and measuring 50 feet 6 inches long by 18 feet 6 inches wide, and about 13 feet high. The walls and ceiling of this room are most elaborately decorated in black and white. Some idea of the style of decoration will be obtained from. A painted frieze, consisting of pilasters with flat arches, runs along the top of the wall (being very much the same idea as is carried out in plaster-work at Winton House), and the spaces between are filled in with maxims in good Roman letters. Of these only a few are now legible, out of some twenty or thirty which once existed.

Above this frieze, and without the intervention of anything like a cornice, the flat-arched ceiling formed of deal boards begins. It is carried up into the roof, and formed on the rafters and ties. Its decora- tion consists of alternate rows of round and square panels running from end to end of the hall, and separated from each other by ornamented spaces. The round panels contain the arms, with the mottoes of many Scottish families, as well as figures of Classical and Scriptural fame. The square compartments contain representations of animals, such as the Lion, Chameleon, Sphinx, and Hydra; one is labelled "SVYN BAIB," and represents a sow and her pig. The names of all the subjects are marked in Roman letters. The mantelpiece is also decorated with painted scroll ornaments. Above it, and projecting in a very irregular way into the arcaded frieze, is a moulded panel containing the Bruce and Meldrum arms, above which are the initials of William Bruce, and beneath the letters M.M.

We see that the house was begun by Dominus William Bruce in 1546, and finished by his grandson. The initials M.M. are those of Margaret Meldrum of Seggie, the wife of the latter.

The date 1620 occurs on the ceiling, with the initials W.B. and D.A.L. These are explained by the inscription on a tombstone in the neighbouring Norman church of Leuchars, which runs, "D. Agnes Lyndesay, Lady of William Brvce of Erlshall, who in her life was charitable to the poore, and profitable to that hovse, dyed 1635, of her age 68, and waiteth in hope. D.A.L." She was Sir William's second wife, and evidently had her share in the finishing of the house, as her initials occur again, with those of her husband, on the west dormer window, and on two entwined heart-shaped shields over a garden gateway.

Some of the entresol rooms have also been profusely decorated in colour, but they are now in a very faded condition.

It is most unfortunate that the beautiful ceiling of the gallery, containing as it does quite a treatise on Scottish Heraldry, and throwing, with its wise proverbs and quaint conceits, many side-lights on Scottish character, should be allowed to fall piecemeal to utter ruin. A good deal of it is entirely gone, and the remainder is in a very fragile condition. The wood-work of the ceiling and roof is rotting from the effects of damp, while the whole has been most rudely patched up with wooden straps nailed across the ceiling in the most unsightly fashion. Before it entirely disappears, it would be well that an exact copy of it should be made by some competent artist, for reproduction in the publications of one of our Archaeological Societies. There are a few old relics lying about the house worthy of better preservation, such as the works of a clock dated 1600, a very primitive billiard-table, and various pieces of old panelling.

About one mile distant from Earlshall stood the castle of Leuchars (of which not one stone remains standing upon another), supposed to have dated from the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, and to have been the residence of the Earls of Fife. Hence the name of this house. It is probable that the old castle latterly became known by the same designation, for in 1497 (that is, fifty years before this house was begun)

Sir Alexander Bruce and his wife Janet Stewart of Rosyth, received charters of the lands of "Earlshall." This Stewart connection probably accounts for the arms of that family being quartered with those of the Bruces on some of the dormer windows.

THE CASTELLATED AND DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE OF SCOTLAND BY DAVID MACGIBBON AND THOMAS ROSS, 1889--