2, 4 Shandwick Place, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Edinburgh

Description

Sydney Mitchell & Wilson 1901, ground floor largely refaced by Tarbolton & Ochterlony 1938-40. Large Free Renaissance corner building, 4-storey and attic with ground floor shops and public house. Shandwick Place frontage broad 3-window, with wide curvilinear wallhead gable rising to shell-head, 3-window at attic, single oculus in cartouche at garret; Queensferry Street frontage public house, rusticated with two deeply moulded segmental arches with mullions and timber panelled entrance door within right arch. Above, 3 identical 2-bay windows 1st floor level each with 2-window curvilinear wallhead gable, swagged at the tympanum with square chimney block above. 1st, 2nd and 3rd floor windows with Gibbs surrounds and pulvinated friezes, large singles at 1st with alternate voussoirs projected and linking band of scrolls, 2nd and 3rd floor double-windowed with quintuple key blocks, those at 2nd with thin continuous apron and guttae. Slim single-windowed recessed quadrant corner, armorial cartouche over quintuple keyblocked 1st floor window, keyblocked architraved windows with cornices 2nd and 3rd, pilastered rotunda at attic rising to concave set-off with cartouche bearing peristyle cupola with distyle treatment between buttresses and ogee leaded roof with lucarnes, small lantern at top.

The interior of the public house was seen in 2007. Good quality early 20th century decorative scheme by Sydney Mitchell largely intact. Floor to ceiling tiled lobby with timber panelled part-glazed inner door. Timber panelling to dado and timber chimneypiece with over-mantle with mirror. Elaborate compartmented ceiling with deeply moulded cornice and plaster frieze with birds and swags of fruit. Timber panelled bar counter front. Ceiling-height gantry with segmental-arched pediments to sides and split pediment to centre with arched mirrors between slender Ionic columns; glazed cabinets below.

The interior of the former bank has not been seen but it is known to have a stained glass feature window, carved wooden figures representing each sign of the Zodiac and a painted ceiling by Henry Lintott in the former telling room of 1940.

Statement of Interest

This building is of major importance both because of the quality of its design by the prominent architectural practice Sydney Mitchell & Wilson and because of the important role it plays in the streetscape at the west end of Princes Street. The design combines elements of the Edwardian Baroque in the repeated use of the Gibbsian windows with touches Art Nouveau in the small corner turret and curvilinear gables. Sydney Mitchell was a very capable designer being able to turn his hand to both public and private work with equal ease, designing fluently in a number of styles.

The building was constructed to serve as premises for a branch of the Commercial Bank with its entrance on the corner and for public rooms for the Caledonian United Services Club on the first and second floors with a separate entrance in Queensferry Street. It also accommodated other shops and a public house on the ground floor.

The design of the public house, including the interior fittings, is by Sydney Mitchell. The exterior of the public house is largely unaltered except for the skin of reddish polished stone below the windows which is the result of the changes introduced by Tarbolton & Ochterlony. The interior fittings of the public house are of high quality and are largely unaltered. The gantry is finely carved and the plasterwork is particularly noteworthy.

The treatment of the windows is stylistically similar to the arched windows on the second floor of the Commercial Bank's premises in North Bridge designed by Mitchell a couple of years earlier.

Arthur George Sydney Mitchell (1856-1930) was the son of the eminent surgeon Dr Arthur Miller, later Sir Arthur Miller. Miller senior was an influential figure in society in the later Victorian period in Scotland holding a range of important administrative posts including a directorship of the Commercial Bank. Through this connection, the younger Mitchell obtained the patronage of the bank and nearly all his major commercial commissions were undertaken for it. His first work for the bank was the interior remodelling of the bank's premises at 14 George Street, Edinburgh. There followed a series of other jobs, some for smaller provincial branches, but many for large and prominent buildings including that on the corner of North Bridge and High Street, the remodelling of the chief office in Gordon Street in Glasgow and the new building in Union Street Aberdeen, the last in the series being the building on the Shandwick Place and Queensferry Street corner site.

List description updated as part of the Public Houses Thematic Study 2007-08. The interior part of the description section and the references were updated in 2017.

External Links

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