Description

Peddie and Kinnear, Architects, 1859-61. 3-storey and attic 3-bay Scots Baronial tenement block with shops to ground floor; central crowstepped gable with tall fluted apex stack. Lightly stugged squared and snecked sandstone with polished dressings (painted to ground). Continuous cornice to ground floor; stepped string course beneath 2nd floor windows; rhones supported by metal brackets and carved owl and gryphon. Windows in stop-chamfered surrounds; stone-mullioned bipartite windows to 1st floor; basket-arched 2nd to floor; finialled, swept pyramidal-roofed 2-light dormers to attic.

Predominantly plate glass in timber sash and case windows. Grey slates. Corniced apex and ridge stacks with circular cans.

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 Q17811553

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

• 
  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects, Supplement 2014
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Buildings of England)
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  Renovating Old Houses: Bringing New Life to Vintage Homes (For Pros By Pros)
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  Somerset: North and Bristol: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Building Small Projects (New Best of Fine Woodworking)