Description

Peddie and Kinnear, Architects, 1859-61. 3-storey tenement with shops (modern) to ground floor; finialled, gabled corner turret corbelled out at 1st floor level (circular to 1st, octagonal to 2nd, square to attic) to Craig's Close. Lightly stugged squared and snecked sandstone with polished dressings. Continuous cornice to ground floor; stepped string courses above and beneath 2nd floor windows. Windows in stop-chamfered surrounds. 2 stone-mullioned bipartite windows at 1st floor; 3 finialled, pedimented dormers breaking eaves at 2nd floor. Bowed glass to 1st floor windows of corner turret; blind arrowslit in gable. Additional modern dormer to attic. Bowed corner to rear, corbelled out at attic to crowstepped gable.

Plate glass at 1st floor, 4-pane glazing at 2nd in timber sash and case windows. Corniced stack with circular cans. Grey slates.

Statement of Interest

A Group comprises 1-63 (Odd Nos) and 2-6 and 18-56 (Even Nos) Cockburn Street. Known briefly as Lord Cockburn Street, Cockburn Street was named after the doyen of conservationists, Lord Cockburn, who died in 1854. It was built by the High Street and Railway Station Access Company, under the Railway Station Acts of 1853 and 1860, to provide access to Waverley Station from the High Street. The serpentine curve of the street (anticipated in Thomas Hamilton's Victoria Street) gives a gradient of not more than 1:14; James Peddie and Henry J Wylie were the engineers. One of the aims of the design was to conceal the diagonal line of the street from Princes Street. A watercolour perspective drawing of the street by John Laing, published in THE BUILDER of 1860, shows how this was to be achieved. Stylistically, the intention was 'to preserve as far as possible the architectural style and antique character of the locality.' Peddie and Kinnear's Cockburn Street designs are an innovative application (much imitated later) of the Scots Baronial style, previously used by Burn and Bryce in country houses, to the urban situation, with shops and tenements enlivened by crowstepped gables, corbelling and turrets, linked by moulded string courses.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17811471

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

• 
  For the Record
• 
  Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
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  Setting up a Listed Building Heritage Partnership Agreement: Historic England Advice Note 5
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  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Northamptonshire: Buildings of England Series (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Cambridgeshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)