Description

Dated 1866. Single storey gabled reading room and cottage, 5-bay, grouped 3-2, lower bays of cottage to right. Squared, snecked and stugged stone with ashlar dressings, chamfered arrises.

READING ROOM: 3 bays to left with pedimented and pilastered door to centre, with fanlight (blocked), with 'AMT' carved in flowing script above. flanked by broad gabled panel to left with 5-light bowed window, ashlar aproned with stone mullions and half-conical roof, quatrefoil in gablehead;

flanked to left by narrower gabled panel with pedimented window, oval panel in gablehead carved with shield and motto.

COTTAGE: 2 lower bays to right ; 2 advanced gabled bays, narrow to left with corniced window to front, arched arrowslit and datestone in gablehead, door on return to left; bay to right wider with canted window and round panel in gablehead, carved with key motif.

REAR: 4 tall windows to reading room, 2 windows to lower cottage with brick lean-to in re-entrant angle of slight recess masking window to right.

Windows currently blocked (1997). Graded grey slate roof. Stone finials to gableheads. Ashlar coping to steep gablehead skews and ashlar stacks.

INTERIOR: not seen 1997.Low coped rubble wall to front, harled to side. Short flight of steps with gablet coped dwarf wall between terraced levels.

Statement of Interest

Sited on road corner by Stangerhill Bridge. The reading room was gifted to the town in the will of Miss Margaret Traill, and opened on New Year?s day 1867. Caldwell described it as 'a boon and ornament to the locality'.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17828919

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

• 
  The Victorian House Manual (2nd Edition): How They Were Built, Improvements & Refurbishment, Solutions to All Common Defects - Includes Relevant ... ... Properties (Haynes Manual) (Haynes Manuals)
• 
  Kent: North East and East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Berkshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Care and Repair
• 
  Dorset (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)