Barum House, Park Place, Dunfermline

Barum House, Park Place, Dunfermline

Barum House is a detached villa built around 1875, designed in the Scottish Baronial style. It is a two-storey building of irregular plan with three bays, set on a sloped site within grounds enclosed by a sandstone rubble boundary wall.

The principal (western) elevation is built in coursed rockfaced sandstone with droved ashlar dressings, while the other elevations are constructed of coursed stugged rubble with similar dressings. A base course and eaves course emphasise the principal elevation. The most distinctive feature is the projecting tower at first-floor level, which dominates the west front. The tower is corbelled out slightly and surmounted by a tall piended roof with decorative wrought-iron brattishing. At each corner are corbelled conical-roofed bartizans, each with an arrowhead opening and a decorative wrought-iron finial. Above the tower is a small round-arched attic window.

The entrance is set back beneath the tower under a roll-moulded round arch supported on flanking chamfered and stopped square-plan piers with cushion-like capitals. The door is a panelled two-leaf timber door with a two-pane fanlight. An open porch is formed by the base of the tower, with round-arched openings to both the front and right return, featuring identical supporting piers to the entrance arch.

The three-bay arrangement of the principal elevation is asymmetrical. To the left of the entrance is a gabled bay projecting slightly outward, topped with a decorative wrought-iron finial. Below is a rectangular-plan mullioned tripartite bay window at ground floor with a cornice surmounted by a crenellated parapet, above which is a bipartite window with a stepped label-mould and panel at the head. The right bay is flush with the entrance tower. Here sits a mullioned quadripartite canted window at ground floor, also with a cornice and crenellated parapet above. Above this is a breaking-eaves gabled bipartite dormer with a thistle finial. Windows throughout the principal elevation feature architraves with chamfered and stopped reveals.

The northern elevation has irregular fenestration, with two windows to each floor on the left portion; the upper windows are rectangular piended-roofed breaking-eaves dormers. A late 20th-century replacement window has been inserted at ground-floor level to the outer left. A single-storey piended-roofed service wing wraps around the left corner, with an entrance featuring a four-panel timber door and two-light rectangular fanlight, and a window to its left.

The southern elevation features a gabled section projecting to the left, with two windows at ground floor and one at first floor. A bay set back to the right has windows at each level, the first-floor window being a rectangular piened-roofed breaking-eaves dormer.

The eastern elevation contains a stair window to the left of centre with a small window below. A single-storey piended service wing projects to the right, with a small entrance featuring a boarded timber door to the left, and two late 20th-century inserted windows with concrete cills to the left return.

Windows throughout the building have been largely replaced with modern UPVC frames. The roofs are grey slate laid in a fishscale pattern to the bartizans and in bands to the tower. Chimney stacks are shouldered with band courses to the north and east elevations, while that to the south is gable-headed; all have octagonal cans.

The boundary wall enclosing the grounds is built of sandstone rubble with rounded coping. A pair of square-plan coursed stugged sandstone gatepiers to the north feature chamfered and droved edges with droved pyramid caps.

The interior was not inspected at the time of listing (1999).