Scotland's top mason, Sir Archibald Orr Ewing, was indicted as office bearer for the lodge over health and safety failings which allowed an 87-year-old woman to fall to her death from a second-floor window.

Management at the Edinburgh home failed to fit restrictors to the windows, despite a Care Commission recommendation to do so.

Instead, two windows were simply painted shut – including the one 87-year-old Leah Bell later fell from.

Staff were not even properly trained to check whether windows were safe for residents.

Sheriff Gordon Liddle yesterday said the lodge had "clearly failed to meet their responsibilities," adding that their best efforts "had fallen well short."

Edinburgh Sheriff Court heard how a 2002 Care Commission audit had advised managers at Sir James McKay House in the Ravelston area of the city to have all windows above ground floor fitted with a mechanism which prevents them from opening more than 9cm.

The home accepted these recommendations and say that works were carried out to meet them, but two windows – including one in Mrs Bell's room – were missed and simply "painted shut."

Widowed for the third time just 15 months before, Mrs Bell was not coping well and the obituary of her third husband, Reg, was found on her bedside table after her fall.

Staff members checked on Mrs Bell three times in the hours before her death on March 10.

When they found her lying on the ground outside her second-floor room, they called for paramedics, who rushed her to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Mrs Bell died four hours later from multiple injuries, including two broken legs, caused by the 22-feet fall.

The senior care officer at the home, one of two operated by the lodge in Scotland, admitted staff did not physically check if the painted windows could open.

Staff were not aware that windows should not have been painted shut and that every window should have been fitted with a restrictor, meaning the dangers were never picked up.

This amounted to a failure to provide employees with adequate training on the part of the lodge.

Sheriff Liddle said: "This is a tragic set of circumstances because of inexcusable failure to secure windows and an old lady died. The tragedy is that this was so easily preventable."

Despite the sheriff's damning assessment of the lodge's failings Mrs Bell's daughter, Brenda McConkey, 63, said she did not blame the home for her mother's death.

She said: "In our opinion if she was that determined to get out she would have done. Whether it was because she was upset or she panicked and thought there had been a fire alarm we will never know."

David Begg, who was also indicted as Grand Secretary of the lodge, was in court yesterday but declined to comment.