Description

William Chalmers 1869-70. Prominent 2-storey and attic 11-bay French Renaissance institution. Snecked rubble with painted ashlar quoins and dressings.

Elevation to street: single-storey and basement with 2-storey centre. Doorpiece with curvilinear armorial under recessed 2-light arched window with gablet inscription "Dundee Orphan Institution erected by Public Subscription 1870". Flanking round-arched keyblocked windows 2-bay projecting wings with segmental arched windows and blind round arched windows at attic gables.

Conservatories in basement areas: that to left with brattished roof, that to right 20th century with taller gabled centre.

S elevation: advanced 3-storey 3-bay pavilion-roofed centre, ground floor door with tall arched stair window over and stepped parapet with ball finial. Flanking bays canted at ground and 1st, round-headed 2-light windows with curvilinear gablets over. Advanced segmental arched bipartite wings with 3-bay links. Small round arched dormers to links, bipartite ashlar wallhead dormers to pavilion roofs, those to W unfortunately modernised.

Side elevations 4-bay with segmental-arched bipartites. Flanking single-storey service wings.

Slate roofs with iron brattishing, missing from platformed pavilioans. Central octagonal fleche with swept slate roof, now boarded, finial missing.

Rubble-built boundary wall with cast and wrought-iron railings, erected after the widening of Broughty Ferry Road.

Statement of Interest

Established 1815 at Small's Wynd. New building opened 1870 on a greenfield site given by J A Guthrie. It cost $6,000 and could accommodate 70 children (actually 53 in 1874). Costs per annum per head were calculated at $17.13.00, of which $3.6.00 was for education, "a sum which contrasts strikingly with the cose in many similar establishments".

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17801483

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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