Description

Peddie and Kinnear, Architects, 1859-61. 3-storey and attic 4-bay tenement with shops to ground floor; finialled, fish-scale slated conical-roofed circular tourelle to Anchor Close. Lightly stugged squared and snecked sandstone with polished dressings. Continuous cornice to ground floor; stepped moulded string course beneath 2nd floor windows. Roll-moulded basket-arched openings to ground floor; stop-chamfered depressed-arched windows to 1st floor. Timber-panelled door (to flats) with plate glass fanlight. Finialled gable to attic at centre with small stone-mullioned bipartite window and 2 small wallhead stacks, flanked by 2 finialled timber dormers to attic.

REAR ELEVATION: drum stair-case with moulded, stepped string course and conical roof and weathervane to centre. Crowstepped gable to right, finialled dormerheaded window breaking eaves to left.

4-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows

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. The rear elevation of Nos 15-17 was designed to be part of the romantic sky-line of the Old Town, as viewed from the New. 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 Q17811497

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

• 
  Churches: An Architectural Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Cornwall (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Surrey (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990