Old High School, Priory Lane, Dunfermline

The Old High School, located on Priory Lane in Dunfermline, was built between 1883 and 1886 by architects James A Mercer and F and G Holme from Liverpool. It is a single-storey building with an attic and features a detached lodge that was originally part of the former Dunfermline High School, which has since been converted into flats. The design is asymmetrical Scottish Baronial, characterized by crowstepped gables.

The exterior is constructed from coursed snecked rockfaced sandstone with droved sandstone ashlar dressings. It has overhanging eaves and crowstepped gables with moulded skewputts. A moulded band course runs above the ground floor windows on the south elevation and the left bay of the principal east elevation. The openings, except for the dormer, feature long and short surrounds.

On the east (principal) elevation, there is a Caernarvon-arched entrance at the center, which has a boarded timber door topped with a shaped fanlight. To the left, a gabled bay with a finial contains a canted window with ashlar mullions on the ground floor, and above it is a window with a carved panel that includes dragons and a thistle. The right bay features a pair of ground floor windows with a shared cill, and above is a piended dormer with a timber mullion.

The south elevation facing Priory Lane has a window on the right side of the ground floor and a carved monogrammed panel above it. There is a walled yard to the left and an entrance to the right. The west elevation has a projecting gabled bay with a finial on the right and a window on each floor, while a blank wall is set back to the left. The north elevation features a blank bay topped with a crowstepped gable.

The building has 2, 4, and 8-pane timber sash and case windows, a grey slate roof with red ridge tiles, and two sandstone stacks with deep coping—one on the north gablehead and one on the south ridge, both with round cans.

The interior has not been inspected since 1998.

The gateposts and boundary wall consist of a pair of coped, square-plan sandstone ashlar gateposts located to the southeast of the lodge, each with a base course. The flanking low coursed sandstone walls have chamfered ashlar coping, with the wall to the right extending across the length of the former Lauder Technical College to the north.