Morningside Residential Home, 31 Bennochy Road, Kirkcaldy

Morningside Residential Home, 31 Bennochy Road, Kirkcaldy

A large two-storey asymmetrical Scots Baronial villa designed by Robert Little and built between 1890 and 1892. The building is constructed in snecked bull-faced ashlar with polished and dressed margins and quoins, featuring a base course and eaves courses. The composition is dominated by a tall conical-roofed bartizan and ball-finialled crowstepped gables with dormerheads. Architectural detailing throughout includes corbels, hoodmoulds, relieving arches, stop-chamfered arrises, and stone transoms and mullions.

The principal south elevation has three bays. The centre bay features a pointed archway porch stretched between an advanced left gable and a tall square bay to the right. The porch entrance has a moulded doorway with flanking narrow lights, a panelled timber door and plate glass fanlight. Above this sits a dormerheaded window with a pierced stone balcony at first-floor level. To the right, a bipartite window at ground level sits beneath a three-course battered cope that gives way to a first-floor window with splayed angles, a stepped hoodmould, and a mutuled tower roof with dummy machicolations and a corbelled, finialled bartizan to the outer right. The left gable bay has a canted tripartite window at each floor, with crenellation at first-floor level and a glazed gunloop in the gablehead.

The east elevation on Bennochy Road contains three bays. An advanced gabled bay occupies the centre with a projecting tripartite window that extends further lights to the returns and features a crenellated roof at ground level, above which sit bipartite windows with a narrow light in the gablehead. The recessed left bay has a bipartite window at ground level with a window above, the bartizan to the left, and a stack to the right. The right bay contains a further bipartite window with a dormerheaded window breaking the eaves above.

The west elevation displays asymmetrical fenestration including a broad gabled bay to the centre, beneath which sits a conservatory, and a six-light transomed stair window above. A crenellated bay occupies the right side with a lower gabled bay to the left.

The north elevation is similarly asymmetrical, with a recessed gabled bay to the left featuring a broad gablehead stack, and a lower advanced bay to the right with a dormerheaded window and gabled returns.

The building is glazed throughout with small-pane and plate glass in timber sash and case windows. The bartizan is roofed in grey slates laid in a fish-scale pattern. Stacks are asymmetrically arranged with coped form, those positioned at the wallhead rising from crowstepped bases. Stone skews are ashlar-coped with stone finials. A decorative wrought-iron weathervane tops the bartizan, and cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers complete the external detailing. The stair window features coloured and leaded glass.

The interior is largely unaltered, retaining extensive cornice plasterwork, marble fireplaces, and embossed friezes. Panelled and boarded dadoes run throughout. The vestibule preserves original figured wallpaper, and the hall contains a screen door with leaded coloured glass depicting a galleon to the centre and small panels showing the Canongate, Edinburgh and the Tolbooth dated 1793 to the flanking lights. An Edwardian radiator screen is present.

The main staircase is timber-balustered with decorative newel-post finials and a boarded dado. Its window features painted and leaded panels. The former drawing room, previously of L-plan form, retains an elaborate coved ceiling and a marble fireplace with Ionic columns.

A timber conservatory with a crenellated and ball-finialled parapet was added after 1903 on the west elevation.

The boundary treatment comprises semicircular-coped squared and snecked rubble walls with masonry upstands. Two pairs of pyramidal-coped ashlar gatepiers mark the entrance.