Sc. Obs. exc. Hist. [f. FORE- pref. + STAIR.] (See quot. 1797.)

1

1500–20.  Dunbar, Poems, lxxxii. 17.

        Ȝour foirstairis makis ȝour housis mirk,
Lyk na cuntray bot heir at hame.

2

1775.  in Cramond, Annals of Banff (1891), I. 323. James Alexander has erected a forestair adjoining the south front of his new house at the Kirk Style.

3

1797.  G. M. Berkeley’s Poems, Preface, p. lxi. Stone houses [at St. Andrews], most of them disfigured by what is termed a fore stair, that is, an open stair case, on the outside, in a zigzag manner across the front of the house, and an huge smidie, a not inelegant name for a filthy thing, a dunghill.

4