Description

David Bryce, 1854-5; internal alterations T Lindsay Gray, 1954. 2-storey and attic with 3-stage tower, rectangular-plan, Flemish

Gothic-style, Chamber of Commerce building on corner site, with plain single and 3-storey blocks to rear. Cream stugged ashlar sandstone, rubble with ashlar dressings to rear, grey slate roof. Base course, cill course to 1st floor, corniced wallhead; cross windows with roll-moulded architraves and shouldered heads to ground floor, tall transomed and mullioned windows to 1st floor with banded colonette architraves and moulded cornices linked to wallhead, buttressed and pedimented dormers breaking through open-work parapet with crocketted finials and traceried pointed-arch windows, pointed-arch windows to 2nd stage of tower, round-arch to 3rd each with richly finialled and decorated heads; depressed-arch moulded doorcases with similarly

decorated heads; gablet-coped crowstepped gables.

FRONT ELEVATION: door to centre left flanked by oculi, 2 indows to left, single windows to right, 4 closely grouped windows and small single window to far right, 7 windows to 1st floor, 7 dormers, rooflights, small octagonal angle tower to outer left with parapet and wallhead level and at base of spirelet. Slightly advanced tower to outer right; door to 1st stage, window to 2nd and 3rd stage, pendant angle buttresses to upper part of 3rd stage with corbel table at wallhead and corniced open-work parapet with gargoyles.

LEFT RETURN ELEVATION: 3 windows to ground and 1st floor, pointed-arch window with hoodmould to gable; octagonal stair tower with finialled facetted roof to left re-entrant, door and various windows.

MEADOWSIDE ELEVATION: tower to left with window to 1st, 2nd and 3rd stages, small canted stair tower to right, 3-bay gable to far right with windows to ground floor, 1st floor and mezzanine, parapet at wallhead extending to octagonal angle tower at right as front elevation, pointed-arch window to gable.

REAR ELEVATION (TO ROYAL EXCHANGE LANE): single storey block to left with door and 4 paired 12-pane windows; 3-storey, 4-bay, piend-roofed block to right with four 12-pane sash and case windows to ground and 1st floor, 3 windows to 2nd floor with pedimented dormerheads, various

windows to left return elevation, right return elevation blind.

4 windows to 1st floor of main building at rear, 5 gabled dormerheads with pointed-arch traceried windows (modern glazing to bottom), some incorporating wallhead stacks.

INTERIOR: not seen.

Statement of Interest

The 1st floor double hammer-beamed roof reading room was lowered and partitioned in 1954. Bryce's original design shows a 2-tier octagonal extension to the tower capped by an ogival crown spire, a scheme abandoned because of subsidence. The reading room and spire are illustrated in McKean and Walker.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17575730

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.

Recommended Books

• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds: Cotswolds Pt. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Yorkshire West Riding: Sheffield and the South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Department for Communities Listed Historic Buildings of Northern Ireland: Information Guide for the 2nd Survey of Historic Buildings