Walled Garden And Outhouses, Comely Park House, 80 New Row, Dunfermline

Walled Garden and Outhouses, Comely Park House

This is a substantial country house and its associated structures, substantially remodelled in 1892 but incorporating an earlier house of 1785 with 19th-century additions. The main building is two storeys with an attic storey, arranged in a rectangular plan with a main block and single, two-storey and two-storey-and-attic additions.

The 1892 remodelling introduced Jacobean details throughout. The principal south elevation features a central open porch with an entablature supported on a pair of Tuscan columns, flanked by pilasters either side of the doorway. The door is part-glazed timber with a rectangular fanlight above. A pair of mullioned and transomed bay windows with gabled tops flank the entrance. These gables are surmounted by machicolated parapets, raised at their centres over carved shields; the left shield is inscribed "J S 1785" and the right "W B D 1893". Each projecting bay contains mullioned and transomed windows—the left with 6-light windows to each floor, the right with paired canted 8-light windows. Breaking-eaves dormer windows with 2-light mullioned windows sit above each projecting section. A central attic dormer with a ball-finialled shaped gable comprising paired semicircles surmounted by a circle breaks through the eaves. A carved plaque with a central tablet flanked by scrolls sits over the first-floor window.

The exterior is harled with generous coursed sandstone ashlar dressings. The main block features a base course, string courses above first-floor windows, and an eaves cornice to the principal elevation. Crowstepped gables top the main block. At corners, bracketed extended skewblocks with obelisk finials mark where the roof has been raised. A coursed stugged sandstone porch to the west and flanking bays to the principal elevation feature architraved openings with vertical margins to angles. The building is topped with grey slate roofs with red ridge tiles. Corniced gablehead stacks sit to either side of the main block; the western stack is corbelled out slightly with a partially external flue. A corniced wallhead stack sits to the single-pitch gable on the north side.

The east elevation shows two 19th-century extensions set in front of the main block: the right is two storeys with a ground-floor window; the left is single storey with a crenellated parapet at eaves level, corbelled out in a semicircular plan at the outer left corner.

The south elevation incorporates a complex arrangement. Part of the main block is set back to the outer right, with a later lean-to section projecting forward at ground floor, extending further with a catslide roof and a narrow flat-roofed section. A breaking-eaves dormer above features a single-pitch crowstepped roof. Paired bays with crowstepped gables project forward to the left in line with the ground-floor lean-to, with irregular fenestration and stair windows. The upper stair window opens out as a glazed door onto a decorative cast-iron bridge and staircase with a decorative balustrade, which projects forward to give access to the walled garden to the north. A two-storey section adjoins to the left with an entrance featuring a six-panel timber door and three-pane rectangular fanlight.

The west elevation displays the gable end of the main block set back, with a window to the left of the first floor and a pair of flanking windows to the attic. A single-storey entrance porch with a corniced parapet projects forward and extends left as an enclosing wall to the rear yard. Access is via semicircular-plan steps leading to an angled bay with a basket-arched doorway with moulded reveals and prominent keyblock, containing a six-panel timber door. Bracketed pilasters flank the arch and continue through the parapet, which has a shaped pediment between them with a carved tablet at its centre.

The interior has been largely altered in the 20th century. A dog-leg staircase with a cast-iron balustrade remains.

Fenestration throughout is principally two-pane timber sash-and-case windows, with round cans where they survive.

Late 18th and early 19th-century lean-to outhouses run east to west to the rear (north) of the house. These are harled with sandstone ashlar dressings comprising vertical angle margins, architraves to openings, and skews. Four entrances sit to the right of the principal south elevation, with two to the left and a window between them. A pair of windows, probably inserted later, sits to the left of centre. All doors are boarded timber.

A boundary wall of varying construction and date extends to the north, south and east of the house, encompassing its late 19th-century boundaries. It is partially sandstone rubble and partially harled and coped, dating from between the late 18th and late 19th centuries. A pair of late 19th-century sandstone ashlar gateposts flank the west entrance; these are square-plan with cornices and mounted ball finials, with a pair of later wrought-iron gates. A pedestrian entrance to the north has an angled lintel at its corners and a wrought-iron gate.

The walled garden to the north is rectangular-plan, partially dating from the late 18th and early 19th centuries but attaining its present form in the late 19th century, at a higher level than the house. Tall sandstone rubble walls enclose it to the north, east and west. The entrance sits at the south end of the east wall. A lower-height coped harled wall sits to the south where the land falls away to the lower level. Access from the upper level of the house is gained via the decorative cast-iron bridge and staircase. Steps to the east lead down to the lower level.