North Lodge, St Colme House

North Lodge, St Colme House

North Lodge is a gatelodge dated 1907, situated at the entrance to St Colme House in Aberdour. It was built to replace a smaller lodge that had previously occupied the same site. The building is a single-storey structure with an original L-plan, extended in the late 20th century to the south to create a T-plan.

The lodge is constructed of squared, snecked, tooled sandstone with polished ashlar dressings, featuring long and short detailing to the arises and window margins. The principal west elevation displays an advanced gabled entrance porch positioned off-centre to the left, with a centred door surmounted by a carved, dated and initialised shield bearing the inscription 'M 1907'. To the left of the porch is a window set in the left return, with a bipartite window positioned close to the porch. An advanced gabled wing projects to the right with a centred bipartite window, and a modern extension extends further to the right.

The north elevation contains windows to both the right and left, with a recessed extension to the far left featuring three equally arranged small narrow windows. The south elevation, partially visible when recorded in 2002, contains a late 20th century gabled extension with a window.

The lodge features a replica timber panelled door and predominantly 10-pane timber sash and case windows with 6 lower and 4 upper panes. The pitched grey slate roof has overhanging eaves with exposed rafters. Corniced bargeboards ornament the gables, topped with ball and spike finials to the west and south gable apexes. Corniced gable apex stacks with clay cans stand to the north and east elevations, while a shouldered, corniced elongated stack with clay cans rises from the advanced west section. Corniced timber gutters complete the detailing.

The gates, gatepiers and surrounding railings were designed by J Maitland and Wardrop and erected in the 1870s as part of the larger estate entrance scheme. A pair of highly decorative cast and wrought iron gates forms the centrepiece, featuring a gold-painted coronet at the centre with radiating spokes that terminate in arrow-head motifs. This design echoes gates created for Moray Gate Lodges at Wester Aberdour and Darnaway Castle in Morayshire.

Flanking the gates are a pair of ashlar gatepiers with chamfered square-plan bases, corniced caps surmounted by ball finials. Low snecked and tooled stone quadrant walls with chamfered ashlar coping extend from the gatepiers, topped by simple low cast-iron railings interspersed with four decorative cast iron panels. Four support railings with decorative cast-iron console brackets are fixed to the ground behind the wall, each surmounted by a golden-painted urn. The walls terminate at a pair of piers identical to the gatepiers but without ball finials.

Historical Context

St Colme House served as the residence of the Earl of Moray's chief factor from the 1830s until the 1960s. The factor, known as 'his Lordship's commissioner', oversaw approximately 2,000 acres of parkland at Donibristle and held responsibility for the Earl's entire estate of 7,000 to 8,000 acres across Fife. St Colme House was largely extended and rebuilt during the 1830s to reflect the elevated status of its new occupier.

The gates and railings erected in 1870 share stylistic motifs with those erected in the same year at the East Lodge to the Donibristle Estate in Wester Aberdour. The centralised coronet of the Moray family, which appears on both sets of gates, also features on the gates to the Earl of Moray's principal seat at Darnaway Castle in Morayshire.

During the 1960s, when the Moray Donibristle Estate was sold for housing development, the British Petroleum Company acquired St Colme House and North Lodge. The adjacent Braefoot Oil Plant is situated on the coastline near the house. The lodge serves as a caretaker's residence, with the main house now functioning as a training centre for oil industry workers.