265 High Street, Burntisland

267 High Street, Burntisland

This is a 3-storey tenement with public house and shops at ground level, designed by Swanston and Legge in 1899. It occupies a splayed corner site and is built in Flemish style with painted ashlar and red sandstone walls, enhanced with polychrome ashlar dressings.

The building is dominated by a corner tower topped with a bellcast roof and attenuated spire, flanked by finialled curvilinear gables. Balconies project from the first floor. The principal architectural features throughout include a base course, moulded string course, a second-floor cill course, and eaves cornice. Windows are architraved, combining round-headed and elliptical-arched openings (the latter at first floor) with hoodmoulds, stone transoms and mullions.

The south-east corner elevation features a chamfered entrance with a heavily moulded doorcase, serpentine label-stops and decorative cast-iron gates enclosing a panelled, part-glazed door with decorative astragals and coloured leaded glazing. Above rises the jettied three-sided tower, its faces decorated with moulded panels below small round-headed windows and sundials at first floor, and three larger windows at second floor topped by a decorative plasterwork frieze beneath the copper bellcast roof and spire.

The east elevation contains a deep-set timber door with a four-leaf fanlight, flanked by a large tripartite round-arched window and a similar window in a bay, both with raked cills, hoodmoulds and decorative foliate bosses. At first floor, a transomed elliptically-arched bipartite window sits to the right in curvilinear outer framing, while to the left a transomed bipartite French window with moulded surround and flanking pilasters sits above a dentilled stone balcony supported on three foliate scrollwork consoles, with cast-iron railings featuring decorative waterleaf and heraldic shield ironwork. The second floor holds a bipartite window to the right beneath a steeply sloping roof and another transomed bipartite window to the left under a high curvilinear coped and finialled gable with drop finial and flanking finialled polygonal nookshafts.

The High Street (south) elevation comprises seven bays, grouped 2-1-1-2-1, with a slightly angled bay at the approximate centre. The ground floor contains a part-glazed tenement door surmounted by a pair of tiny glazed arches flanked by heavy columns and drop finials supporting two scrolled foliate consoles below the balcony. To the right is an entrance with a tri-lobed moulded doorhead, decorative cast-iron gate and part-glazed door; inset above is a panel depicting the original Port Buildings with an inscription reading "Site of East Port Gates of Original Burgh 1635-1825". Two large tripartite round-headed windows sit to the right, while to the left are two mirrored pairs of round-arched openings with decorative bosses, each containing a deep-set part-glazed door in a traditional shopfront; one shop retains a canvas canopy. The first floor displays a transomed French window in a moulded frame at the approximate centre, two transomed bipartite windows in curvilinear outer framing to the right and one to the left, plus a transomed bipartite window in a square-headed moulded surround with finialled flanking pilasters at the outer right, and two similar at the outer left, all above a five-consoled balcony with finialled flanking pilasters. At second floor, a transomed round-headed window occupies the centre below a small dormer-type tower with finial, while two bipartite windows stand to the right and one to the left; the outer right displays a transomed bipartite window in a square-headed surround below a finialled curvilinear gable, mirrored by two similar windows below curvilinear gables at the outer left.

Windows employ 8-, 10- and 15-pane glazing patterns to the tower and south centre and right at first and second floor; plate glass is used elsewhere, set in timber top-opening and casement windows. The roof is covered in red tiles with coped ashlar stacks fitted with cans, ashlar coped skews and finials. Cast-iron downpipes and decorative rainwater hoppers complete the external finish.

Interior

The public house retains substantial original features, including mosaic-patterned floor tiles at both entrances, a bar interior with corniced panelling and part-glazed internal doors with decorative astragals and coloured glass. An inglenook features fluted pilasters surmounted by lions bearing shields, bench-seats and a brick fireplace with beaten copper hood and tiles (possibly Delft).

The tenement contains a stone stair with glazed tiles to dado height and decorative cast-iron balusters with a timber handrail. Doors are part-glazed and panelled with small-pane fanlights. Number 269 retains decorative panelling to its windows.