Kenmont, Leven Road, Kennoway

Kenmont is a house dating from around 1800. It is a two-storey, three-bay rectangular building with a piend roof, a bowed storm gable, and a single-storey wing. The exterior is dry-dash with raised painted stone margins and quoins, and features stone mullion windows.

The west elevation, which is the principal facade, is symmetrical. The central bay is a bowed gable featuring a pedimented and pilastered doorpiece, a deep-set two-leaf boarded timber door, a small-pane fanlight, and a Venetian window on the first floor, which gives way to a small gablehead stack. Flanking bays have a later bipartite window on the ground floor and a single window above. To the outer left is a slightly recessed single-storey bay with a modern French window and a four-pane fanlight.

The east elevation has a central bay with a full-height round stair tower with a window. To the right is irregular fenestration and a single-storey bay beyond. A projecting bay to the left of centre features a modern door in a lower flat-roofed extension.

The north elevation, facing Leven Road, has two windows to the single-storey wing and a dominant wallhead stack behind. The south elevation has a modern glazed door to the centre bay at ground level, a dominant wallhead stack above, and a window to each floor of an extension to the outer right.

The windows largely have 12-pane lying-pattern glazing, with a decoratively-astragalled top centre light to the Venetian window. Other window glazing patterns include 4-, 12-, and 15-pane timber sash and case windows, and plate glass glazing in top-opening timber windows in the extension and stair tower. The roof is slate, with grouped octagonal stacks on shouldered bases and a banded, corniced single stack.

Inside, the house retains plain cornicing and many original doors. There is a decoratively-astragalled fanlight to a pilastered screen door, and a turnpike stair with decorative cast-iron balusters and a timber handrail. The first floor has a bowed hallway.

The property is enclosed by high coped rubble boundary walls with flat-coped square-section ashlar gatepiers.

Kenmont was the home of novelist Mrs Johnstone during the 19th century; she was a friend of Sir Walter Scott.

References relating to Kenmont can be found in A J Findlay’s Kenoway: Its History and Legends (1946), page 28.