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Summary

Description

R C Carpenter, 1850-4, continued by W Slater, subdivided 1972. 2-storey with basement and attic, 3-bay, square-plan parsonage. Domestic gothic with crowstepped gables and stone gabled dormers. Squared and snecked rubble with long and short work quoins: eaves course, stop-chamfered arrises, segmental-arched stone-mullioned and transomed bipartite windows.

N (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: 3 pointed arch, full-height panels recessed at ground and 1st floor. Small bipartite window to left at basement level, flight of stone steps entered from right lead to pointed arch doorway with hoodmould and block label-stops, at centre, timber bipartite door partly blinded with small foils in tympanum, small quatrefoil opening to left, paired bipartite windows in bay to right, bipartite window to outer left; 1st floor with bipartite windows to centre and left, paired bipartite windows to right; smaller bipartite window in gablehead.

S ELEVATION: 3 recessed panels as N elevation. Steps to basement with centre door, bipartite window to left and right; ground floor with bipartite window at centre, paired bipartite window in bay to left and quadripartite window in bay to right with corbelling to balcony above (decorative cast-iron railings); 1st floor with bipartite windows to centre and left bays, paired bipartite window with balcony in bay to right; small quatrefoil-glazed oculus to centre of gablehead with 2 small windows above at wallhead.

E ELEVATION: basement with small window to right of centre and 2 windows to left; bipartite window to left of centre with quatrefoil-glazed oculus to right at ground and 1st floor; 3 crowstepped gabled dormers above.

W ELEVATION: evidence of blocked openings to basement; ground floor with blinded tripartite window to right, adjacent small window to left and blinded tripartite window to outer left; 1st floor with centre bipartite window and adjacent quatrefoil opening to right; 3 gabled dormers above at wallhead.

Timber windows. Mainly 2-pane lights above transoms with plate glass lower glazing; plate glass glazing in sash and case windows to basement. Red and Grey slates. Coped ashlar stacks with cans, ashlar crowsteps and cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers.

BOUNDARY WALLS AND RAILINGS: coped random rubble boundary walls. Iron spearhead railings to basement recess.

Statement of Special Interest

Built at the expense of semi-invalid Rev George Hay Forbes, brother to the Bishop of Brechin and Provost of Burntisland 1869, The Parsonage was intended to be part of a group comprising church, schools, parsonage and baptistery. The church with huge spire would have been reminiscent of Lancing College, Sussex (by the same architect) but was never completed and it, together with the baptistery was demolished 1875. Bailie Erskine reports that carved stones and pillars were used in a chapel elsewhere (possibly St Margaret's, Leven), the land being sold to the North British Railway Company.

Reference to publication of periodicals, tracts and a Scottish Episcopal Church Magazine by the Episcopal foundation at Nyssa House, Burntisland indicates another name for what was to become the Pitsligo Press, set up by the Rev Forbes in the basement of The Parsonage. The Pitsligo produced publications in 24 languages. The only other remaining building from the original design is the school, now used as a Pipe Band Hall (listed separately). Eastlake describes the buildings as "Early Scots Middle Pointed. Designed to include a church, schools, parsonage and baptistery. The three latter are complete and the church is in progress. The style of the house is after the ancient Scottish model, with stepped gables, etc. The baptistery, which forms a distinct building at the west end of the church, is octagonal, and groined with stone. The design of the church is on a grand scale, with nave, aisles, apsidal chancel, and north-west tower and spire. It is to be erected at the cost of the encumbent."

References

Bibliography

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