Description

W T Oldrieve for Board of Works, 1908-10. Post Office built in Scots Renaissance style, picturesque composition incorporating Post Office (Counters) with entrance to Commercial Street, and Royal Mail Letters Sorting Office with vehicle access to harbour at rear. Complex, roughly L-plan; long main 2-storey range to Commercial Street, 3-storey at rear, with 2-storey wing at right angles, stair tower in re-entrant angle. Harled walls with droved ashlar margins and detailing of dormerheads, crowsteps and deep, recessed eaves course. Sash and case windows, small-paned, some bipartite with stone mullions, side and rear windows barred at ground floor. Slightly swept, bracketted eaves, roofed with blue-grey slates, harled and corniced stacks, metal rhones, rainwater-heads with star detailing.

S (COMMERCIAL STREET) ELEVATION: near-symmetrical with advanced crowstepped outer gables flanking 4-bay centre block, which has 3 tall windows with moulded architraves at ground and 4 curvilinear pedimented dormerheads breaking eaves at 1st floor. Single storey advanced, flat-roofed ashlar shopfront overlays part of centre range and right gable - bolection moulded doorway to outer right with Royal Armorial panel over, 4 tall windows, wall-mounted posting box and stamp machine. Telephone kiosk in angle (see separate listing). Advanced gable to left has moulded doorway and window in corniced ashlar panel at ground, with ashlar balustrade extending across frontage to right. Bipartite stair window above.

N (HARBOUR) ELEVATION: asymmetrical; L-plan, main 3-storey range with 2-storey wing advanced at right angles to left, and pyramidal roofed, 2-storey stair tower in angle with bipartite at each floor. Flat-roofed vehicle loading bay adjoining main range at ground, extending across the 1st of 3 regular bays with tall bipartites to each floor, breaking eaves in pedimented dormerheads. Range terminating in taller, 2-bay tower-like crowstepped gable broken by balustraded parapet, with 2 round-headed windows at 2nd floor. Adjoining lower wing projecting to harbour; 3-bay, one crowstepped gable.

E ELEVATION: irregular fenestration; bipartites at ground and 1st floor, 2nd floor window with moulded panel over set in gablehead breaking eaves. Tall, corbelled wallhead stack.

YARD WALL: harled dwarf wall with ashlar cope and drum piers.

Statement of Interest

The post office was built over Sinclair's Beach and the site of a house, pier and loberry. In 1887, Andrew Smith won in a dispute with Lerwick Harbour Trust over the ownership of Sinclair's Beach. Smith held that Udal (Norse) Law whereby the beach and foreshore is the property of the landowner prevailed over Scots Law which states that the foreshore is crown property. It was the scene of the arrest of 40 employees on 1st November 1914 (for an unexplained reason) who were marched to the county jail between 2 lines of marines with fixed bayonets, it is assumed, due to thoughts they had been tampering with official war mail associated with the naval base at Swarback Minn. An early 20th century photograph shows the yard wall and drum piers to be considerably higher originally. The design and siting of this building is used to far more effect than the strikingly similar one in Oban. The scale and massing of the elements respond very well to the different aesthetic and practical demands of Commercial Street and the harbour, and as such affirms this building as a fine piece of civic design.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17852227

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

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  Building Small Projects (New Best of Fine Woodworking)
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  Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
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  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects, Supplement 2014
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  Dorset (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of Historic Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas