Aberhill Primary School, School Street, Methil

Aberhill Primary School, built probably by G C Campbell in 1912, is a highly innovative school building of cruciform plan, with a sympathetic dining hall extension added in 1996 by the local authority architect. The building is single-storey and has a piend roof. It is constructed of painted harl with red sandstone ashlar doorcases and stone cills, featuring an eaves course. The windows are round-headed, with voussoirs, keystones, stone and timber mullions, and chamfered arrises. All doors are part-glazed, timber, two-leaf doors with decorative astragaleria and multi-pane fanlights.

The principal (southwest) elevation has nine symmetrical bays. The central three-bay doorcase features semicircular steps leading to a deep-set door within a pedimented and keystoned surround, set below a round-headed window with a moulded apron in a flat-roofed tower. Flanking this are angled, canted lower bays, one with a two-part window and the other with a door (formerly a window) flanked by windows. The arms flanking the central bay have tall bipartite windows breaking the eaves into pedimented dormer heads with blind arrowslits, and flanking windows.

The south (entrance) elevation is almost full width and incorporates a modern, flat-roofed extension that partially masks the lower part of a pedimented, keystoned doorcase, which itself breaks the eaves into a high segmental-headed pediment.

The southeast elevation has seven symmetrical bays, with a central bay featuring a bipartite window and closely disposed flanking windows breaking the eaves into a segmental-headed pediment with a blind arrowslit. The flanking arms mirror the design of the southwest elevation.

The east elevation has a bay to the right with an original pedimented sandstone doorcase, set above a segmental pediment with a blind arrowslit. An extension to the left features a segmentally-headed window flanked by bipartite windows and a further door to the outer left.

The northeast elevation mirrors the east elevation, but reversed, with the arms flanking the central bay designed similarly. The bay immediately to the right of the arm features a pedimented central bipartite window, a window to the right, and a door to the left, with the central and outer right bays projecting into a new glass-topped, pyramidally-roofed hall.

The north elevation has a doorway similar to that on the east elevation, centrally positioned.

The northwest elevation has seven symmetrical bays with a canted, four-part window that breaks the eaves into a segmental-headed pediment with a blind arrowslit. The flanking arms resemble the southwest elevation, but the inner bays have bipartite windows flanking the central bays.

The west elevation mirrors the north elevation.

The windows feature small-pane glazing patterns in top-opening timber frames, with some modern replacements. The roof is covered in grey slates with terracotta ridge tiles, with plain bargeboarding, overhanging eaves, and cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers.

The interior features boarded timber dadoes and part-glazed timber doors with multi-pane fanlights. The entrance hall has a polychromatic ceramic tiled dado with Art Nouveau inserts alongside a timber dog-leg staircase with balusters carved with Art Nouveau detail. A central, domed, polygonal hall includes a pedimented door to the southwest, carved pilasters, a mutuled cornice and a ribbed dome with semicircular windows.

Ancillary structures include play shelters supported on three cast-iron columns to the southwest and northeast. The site is enclosed by coped and harled boundary walls, with domed coping to square-section red sandstone ashlar gatepiers featuring decorative cast-iron gates.