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Summary

Description

Late 18th century, with later additions; extensively restored 1993 by Simpson and Brown. 3-storey, 3-bay, classically-detailed town house. Rubble-built with ashlar dressings, lime-washed, slate roof. Rusticated quoins, ashlar-coped skews, corniced end stacks. Ashlar-margined windows, 12-pane timber sash and case glazing.

N ELEVATION: Central stuccoed porch at ground and 1st floors added circa 1853-4 with pilastered and corniced doorpiece and main cornice, masking original Venetian windows to ground and 1st floors Bay to left obscured by entrance and stair to St Roque's Halls. Single-storey flat-roofed passage linking house to church added circa 1950.

S ELEVATION: prominent projecting 3-bay bow to centre, centre bay blind, battered concrete base, small windows at ground floor with linking lintel course, central shouldered wallhead stack with oculus; single window to all floors at bays to left and right; 2 canted dormers.

INTERIOR: largely intact, including cornices and joinery, and some chimneypieces. Original spiral stair with stone newel at ground floor, wrought-iron balusters above; later spiral stair with ornate cast-iron balusters giving external access to 1st floor.

BOUNDARY WALL: coped rubble boundary wall to front, part of similar wall to St Roque's Hall and St Paul's Cathedral.

Statement of Special Interest

This house is built on the medieval castle rock, perhaps the grandest surviving Georgian house within the ancient burgh boundary. Formerly named Burnhead, this house and the adjoining Burnside (demolished for the erection of St Roque's Hall) was built by Thomas Wemyss and his brother, who ran the thread making factory to the south. The house, although without its bowed centre bay, is almost certainly that shown in the circa 1780 oil painting of the Dundee waterfront; what is presumably the thread factory is also to be seen. Neave's 1822 map shows the house to be 'Mr Duncan's house', which was later occupied

by Bishop Alexander Penrose Forbes, 1853-76, in whose tenure schoolrooms were formed in the ground floor necessitating the

additional stair. The house was renamed Castlehill in 1861.

References

Bibliography

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