Kirkwall Hotel, Harbour Street, Kirkwall, Kirkwall, Orkney Islands

Entry Name: Kirkwall Hotel, Harbour Street, Kirkwall

Listing Name: Harbour Street, the Kirkwall Hotel

Listing Date: 15 March 1999

Category: B

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 393108

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB45997

Building Class: Cultural

ID on this website: 200393108

Location: Kirkwall

County: Orkney Islands

Town: Kirkwall

Electoral Ward: Kirkwall West and Orphir

Traditional County: Orkney

Tagged with: Hotel

Description

T S Peace, 1890, with later alterations and additions. 4-storey, 5-bay rectangular-plan, asymmetrical free Renaissance hotel with 4-storey, 5-bay addition to outer right; French pavilion roof with crown and columned and pedimented doorway to slightly advanced and taller central bay; pyramidal roof to slightly advanced and taller bay to outer left; gabletted 4th floor windows breaking eaves. Squared and coursed rubble with sandstone ashlar dressings; modern harl to addition with cement dressings. Base course; cornice course between ground and 1st floors and 3rd and 4th floors; corniced eaves course; long and short margins to windows; moulded shouldered surrounds and various cornices to 1st floor windows; moulded surround and bracketed windows to 2nd floor windows; panelled Corinthian columns to some 1st floor windows; bull-faced, long and short quoins.

N (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION; stop-fluted double Corinthian columns with narrow lights between supporting carved pediment over modern 2-leaf boarded doors at ground in bay to centre; tripartite window with semicircular pediment bearing initials 'WD' and date, '1890' at 1st floor; bipartite windows at each floor above; finialled oculus to French pavilion roof above. Bipartite window at ground and 1st floors in bay to left; single window at each floor above. Bipartite window at each floor in bay to outer left. Single window at each floor in bays to right. 5-bay addition to outer right: modern door in large square-headed recess at ground in bay to outer right; window at each floor in each bay remaining (large windows at ground; continuous balcony across 3rd floor).

E (BRIDGE STREET) ELEVATION: irregular 3-bay. Consoled pediment to architraved doorway at ground in bay to outer right; irregular fenestration; paired, shouldered tall wallhead stacks above.

Replaced uPVC windows. Grey slate roof; fish scale tiles to pavilion roofs; felt covering to flat roofed addition; red clay ridges; stone skews; rubble ,corniced stacks to E; harled, corniced stack to W; predominantly cast-iron rainwater goods with decorative attachments and polygonal hoppers.

INTERIOR: some original features remain including fielded ceiling and cornice to principal 1st floor meeting room; unseen elsewhere, 1998.

Statement of Interest

Designed by Orkney's most prolific and well known architect, T S Peace, and built for William Dunnet, whose initials appear over the central 1st floor window, the Kirkwall Hotel provides an impressive backdrop to Kirkwall Harbour and terminates the narrow Bridge Street with a grandiose design of French influence. Features on interest to note include the columnar-mullioned windows the classical, pedimented doorpiece, and the French pavilion roofs.

External Links

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