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Summary

Description

Probably John Milne, circa 1880. 2-storey, 3-bay Scots Baronial villa with tower and ogee-roofed angle bay; large and unsympathetic 20th century additions. Squared and snecked stugged rubble with ashlar dressings. Base course and shaped rope-mould course over 1st floor windows. Segmental-arched windows to 1st floor; corbels and stone mullions.

W (BENNOCHY ROAD) ELEVATION: full-height polygonal corner bay (partially encased by addition) to outer right with 3-light window to each floor, machicolated cornice giving way to ogival fishscale roof with iron weathervane. Canted, tripartite window at ground in slightly advanced bay to outer left, stone canopy with gablet over centre light and single window at 1st floor breaking eaves into crowstepped gable. Centre bay with bipartite window at ground (1 light blocked), further bipartite window at 1st floor with blank panels set in gablehead above, decorative stone finials and kneelers to gable. Single storey modern Fifestone addition adjoining to outer left.

S (FORMER ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: 2-storey additions obscuring most of original house; former entrance tower partially encased by 20th century flat-roofed blockwork addition; round-arched doorway with rope-moulding to original entrance. Upper stages: advanced crowstepped gablehead with stack to right of centre, with window below finialled dormer gablehead breaking eaves on return to left. 3rd stage of entrance tower: finialled, pepperpot-roofed bartizans to each angle (except NE) with hoodmoulded pointed-arch windows between; wallhead stack and tall pyramidal French pavilion roof with decorative iron brattishing.

N ELEVATION: broad crowstepped gables with gablehead stacks flanking flat-roofed link with stair window and modern dormer window set-back across roof valley. Single storey crowstepped wing to centre and left.

E (REAR) ELEVATION: largely obscured by extensive flat- and pitch-roofed additions.

Plate glass glazing in timber sash and case windows. Grey slates. Shouldered and corniced gablehead stacks with cans; scrolled and beaked skewputts; moulded eaves guttering.

INTERIOR: (not seen 1997) highly decorative plasterwork cornices and roses; cast-iron balustrade (boxed-in) and timber handrail; panelled shutters.

STABLE: rectangular-plan stable linked to main house by modern single storey additions. Door to centre N; rounded angles and crowstepped gables, pepperpot bartizan to NW angle, blocked oculus and ball-finial to W gable, stack to E gable and louvered ventilator with pyramidal fishscale roof. The tentative attribution to John Milne stems from details in common with his other Baronial designs. See also Building for a New Age, exhibition catalogue, Editor John Frew, Annabel Ledgard on John Milne (1822-1904).

BOUNDARY WALLS AND GARAGE: low saddleback-coped squared rubble, and high coped rubble boundary walls. Small, crowstepped, harled garage.

Statement of Special Interest

26 Bennochy Road is a prominently sited villa built for the linen manufacturer and linoleum magnate, Michael Beveridge (1836-1890), of the firm Shepherd & Beveridge, which became Barry, Ostlere and Shepherd. Michael Beveridge became Provost of Kirkcaldy in 1886; his second wife remained at Beechwood until her death in 1938. After the Second World War, the house was acquired by the Kirkcaldy Branch of the Royal British Legion who occupied the building until the 1990s; at the time of resurvey (1997), it is empty.

References

Bibliography

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