Sites and Monument Record: Kersie Mains (SMR 184)
Description
Kersie Mains is located just to the SW of South Alloa and is a good example of a 17th century small laird's house. It is a two-storey L-shaped building with a rectangular staircase-tower in the re-entrant angle. The stone walls are rendered and the roof is now slated.
The main block lies almost W/E with the principal facade facing south with 5 windows on the first floor above four and a central doorway on the ground floor - all with roll moulded margins. The door is slightly elevated with a curving flight of three stairs, now bordered by rendered brick parapet walls. The upper parts of two basement windows are visible. On the SW corner a projecting quoin serves as a sundial. The wallhead has a cavetto eaves course and the skews are plain, terminating in rectangular panelled chimney stacks with moulded capstones.
Attached to the west side of the north face is a two-storey wing of three windows, with two windows and a central projecting porch on the ground floor. This wing also ends in plain skews and a panelled chimney stack. In the angle between the porch and the north end of the wing is a covered entrance to the basement - now roofed with corrugated steel. The north gable of this wing has a window in the garret. A single storey extension extends the length of the wing and has plain window margins rather than the roll-moulded margins of the original block.
In the re-entrant angle between the main block and west wing is a large square stair tower with piended roof. Three windows light the stair.
So-called "thatch-stones" at the bases of the chimney stacks and the steep pitch of the roof suggest that the house was originally roofed with pantiles.
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