Post Office, Wemyssfield, Kirkcaldy

Post Office, Wemyssfield, Kirkcaldy

This is a two-storey building with attic and single-storey sections, designed by Robert Matheson of HM Office of Works between 1900 and 1902. It occupies a prominent corner site and is built in Jacobean-Baronial style with an angle tower. The structure combines squared and snecked cream sandstone with brick to the rear, featuring droved and stugged ashlar dressings. It has a base course, dividing cornice, cill courses and part eaves cornice. The building is distinguished by crowstepped gables, voussoirs, and semi-circular pediments to the first-floor bipartite windows. All windows to the south, east and west elevations are transomed unless otherwise noted, with chamfered and moulded arrises and stone mullions throughout.

The principal elevation faces south onto Hunter Street. It features a slightly advanced gabled bay at the outer right, with a finialled pedimented doorcase to its left. This doorcase displays banded pilasters and bears the inscription "POST OFFICE" on its lintel, with a carved tympanum showing the royal cipher and finials. Behind a roller shutter sits a deep-set, part-glazed two-leaf timber door with a semi-circular fanlight. A window occupies the ground floor to the right of this bay. The first floor displays two pedimented bipartite windows and a small bipartite window with strapwork pediment in the gablehead. The central bays contain a bipartite window and flanking windows at each floor. The first-floor centre window is of six parts and breaks the eaves with a pediment bearing armorial panels, surmounted by a crown finial with flanking lion finials and a flanking stone balustrade. A polygonal, timber-louvered, finialled air vent sits at the centre of the roof ridge. A three-stage engaged round tower rises at the outer left, featuring an architraved and pedimented window at ground level (converted from a door and not transomed), a canopied window at first floor, and ropework moulding below a corbel to the third stage, topped with a conical roof and weathervane finial.

The west elevation on Wemyssfield contains six single-storey bays to the centre, each with a window and a continuation of the dividing cornice forming a pedimented hoodmould. A slightly advanced bay at the outer right has a window not transomed above letter boxes, with cornice and balustrade. Two small conical-roofed air vents sit at the roof ridge. Flanking this central section are two slightly advanced two-storey gabled bays. The right-hand bay has a bipartite window at ground level and a segmentally pedimented bipartite window above, with a narrow light in the gablehead. The left-hand bay is lower and contains a tripartite window (not transomed) with a relieving arch at ground level, and above it a pedimented, bracketed bipartite window in the gablehead.

The east elevation displays a bipartite window to the centre at both ground and first floors, with a corbelled angle to the right. Above is a smaller corbelled and finialled pedimented bipartite window breaking the eaves. A blocked doorway to the left has a blank face above, with a pedestrian gateway abutting to the outer left. A slightly recessed three-storey tower-like bay rises at the outer right, topped with a small parapet and featuring a small extension at ground level, a first-floor window, and two small windows at the second floor, with a semicircular coping at the centre of the parapet.

The northwest elevation has a broad, deep-set timber door with a relieving arch off-centre right, two windows to the left, and a pedimented window breaking the eaves to the left of centre above. Adjacent stacks and a shouldered stack are positioned accordingly.

The north elevation includes a piended rubble bay at the outer right containing two bipartite windows at ground level and a pedimented window breaking the eaves above. To the left is an asymmetrical brick elevation with later timber and perspex additions. A piended brick sorting office with seven round-headed windows opens to the east and links to a former Unitarian Church.

Windows throughout are predominantly six-pane upper over four-pane lower sashes in timber sash and case design. The roof is covered in grey slates. The building features cavetto coped ashlar chimney stacks with terracotta cans, ashlar-coped skews and skewputts. Cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers and grilles complete the external detailing.

The interior contains a timber-panelled vestibule with a decorative cast-iron newel post and timber handrail to the staircase. Egg and dart cornicing and timber panelling appear in the vestibule and the former front office to the left. A single-storey range features an open-timber ceiling, cast-iron pipework, and radiators.

A pedestrian gateway with a round-headed cope faces Hunter Street. A single square-section gatepier with a corniced cap stands on Wemyssfield, with cast-iron spurs at the angles of the building and gatepier. Low, saddleback-coped boundary walls, some with railings, complete the boundary treatment.