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Summary

Description

Gillespie and Scott, 1894; alterations J D Swanston, 1928-9; altered 1964. 2-storey, 3-bay, rectangular-plan gabled manse. Stugged ashlar, squared sandstone rubble and polished quoins. Deep base course, part string and 1st floor cill courses, eaves cornice. Basket-, segmental- and round-arched openings, chamfered reveals, voussoirs, stone transoms and mullions.

S (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: moulded, deep-set basket-arched doorway with broad part-glazed boarded timber door, adjacent small round-headed window with trefoil detail to right, whole below string course and 1st floor cill course (both enclosing downpipe) forming frame for carved floreate panel and inscription; bipartite window to left and tripartite window in recessed bay to right. 1st floor centre bay with bipartite window in round-arched surround, tympanum inscribed 'RAITH MANSE, ERECTED TO THE BELOVED MEMORY OF JOHN FORRESTER, 18...96', small gable above; bipartite window to left in small gable and further bipartite to right with windowhead breaking eaves into gablet.

W ELEVATION: window to centre and 2 windows to left at ground, further window to centre at 1st floor in stepped chimney gable.

N ELEVATION: asymmetrical fenestration with piended dormer window in lower bay to right.

E ELEVATION: chimney gable with window to centre at each floor.

Mainly 9-pane glazing pattern over plate glass in timber sash and case windows. Grey slates. Coped ashlar stacks with cans and ashlar-coped skews with flat skewputts; cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers.

INTERIOR: modernised 1964 but retaining staircase (balusters boarded) with fielded, ball-finialled timber newels and architraved vestibule door.

BOUNDARY WALLS: low saddleback-coped boundary walls to S, semi-circular -coped rubble boundary walls elsewhere.

Statement of Special Interest

Built as the manse for the former Raith Church in Links Street (now Koko's, listed separately), this building was retained as Abbotshall manse when the congregations combined in 1964. The formal opening, on 1st April 1896, was commemorated by a decorative key with inscription and house on the reverse which was presented to Mrs Forrester, wife of John Forrester donor of the building. The former manse of Abbotshall Church stands to the east end of Milton Road and is now the Abbotsford Hotel, the NSA says of this building, "The manse was built in the year 1772, and is the first that was in the parish. Till that time, the clergyman had an allowance of only L.5 for a house. An awkward addition of two good rooms was made at the manse, at the induction of the last incumbent, now upwards of twenty years ago, at an expense fully equal to the half of what it would have cost to build a substantial new house" (p161).

References

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