History in Structure

21 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh

A Category B Listed Building in Edinburgh, Edinburgh

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Coordinates

Latitude: 55.9507 / 55°57'2"N

Longitude: -3.1904 / 3°11'25"W

OS Eastings: 325761

OS Northings: 673715

OS Grid: NT257737

Mapcode National: GBR 8PG.7B

Mapcode Global: WH6SL.YPYG

Plus Code: 9C7RXR25+7R

Entry Name: 21 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh

Listing Name: 19 and 21 Cockburn Street

Listing Date: 14 December 1970

Category: B

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 366763

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB28574

Building Class: Cultural

Also known as: Edinburgh, 21 Cockburn Street

ID on this website: 200366763

Location: Edinburgh

County: Edinburgh

Town: Edinburgh

Electoral Ward: City Centre

Traditional County: Midlothian

Tagged with: Architectural structure

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Description

Peddie and Kinnear, Architects, 1859-61. 3-storey and attic twin-gabled 4-bay tenement block with shops to ground floor. Squared and snecked lightly stugged sandstone with polished dressings (painted to ground). Continuous cornice to ground floor; moulded cill courses and stop-chamfered windows to 1st and 2nd floors. 2 stone-mullioned bipartite windows to 2nd floor, small windows in attic above. Gabletted crowsteps to finialled gables with bracketed skewputts. Small timber finialled dormer to attic at centre.

Plate glass in timber sash and case windows. 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

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