Description

Peddie and Kinnear, Architects, 1859-61. 3-storey 3-bay symmetrical tenement with shop to ground floor and 3 gabled dormerheaded windows breaking eaves at 2nd floor. Squared and snecked lightly stugged sandstone with polished dressings (painted to ground). Continuous string course between ground and 1st floors (linked to those on flanking elevations). Timber-panelled door with plate glass fanlight to right. Recessed glazed door to shop.

4-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows. Grey slates. Corniced end stack with circular windows.

Statement of Interest

A Group comprises 1-63 (Odd Nos) and 2-6 and 18-56 (Even Nos) Cockburn Street. No 34 was considerably simplified from Peddie and Kinnear's drawing as built. 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 adaptation (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.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17799665

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

• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Drawing up a Local Listed Building Consent Order: Historic England Advice Note 6
• 
  Maintaining and Repairing Old Houses: A Guide to Conservation, Sustainability and Economy
• 
  Hampshire: South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)