Description

Dated 1875. 2-storey and attic corner block comprising shop and public house at ground floor and tenement above: 3 bays to North Bridge Street; slightly recessed, bowed bay to corner containing pub entrance flanked by columns; 2 bays to Croft Road; adjoining, slightly recessed, 3-bay block at No 1 Croft Road forming part of terrace. Painted ashlar at ground floor of principal block; tooled, squared, coursed yellow sandstone with polished ashlar dressings to street elevations elsewhere; render to S gable; roughly squared, snecked, tooled yellow sandstone to rear with polished ashlar dressings. Raised margins. Platform roof.

12 AND 13 OLIVER PLACE: Base course; panelled stall risers; 1st-floor cill course; continuous 1st-floor hoodmoulds; eaves course linking margins of 2nd-floor windows; modillioned cornice; blocking course linking dormers. Quoin strips. Regular fenestration with stop-chamfered, roll-moulded, shouldered-arched margins at ground and 1st floors, basket-arched margins and bracketed cills at 2nd floor, and rectangular margins and projecting cills to rear. Recessed, 2-leaf, 6-panel timber door with rectangular fanlight to corner, with flanking, octagonal-based, shallow-foliate-capitalled, engaged columns; date stone to gabled dormer above; central 2-leaf, timber-panelled tenement door with fanlight and consoled canopy to Oliver Place, flanked by shoulder-arched shop and pub windows; shop door to outer left; 2 blind and 2 glazed ground-floor openings to Croft Road.

1 CROFT ROAD: Slightly recessed central door in plain, corniced architrave; 3 gabled dormers. Base course; moulded eaves course. Regular fenestration, with slightly raised margins and bracketed cills.

Plate glass at ground floor; 4-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows at 1st floor of Nos 12 and 13 Oliver Place and throughout upper floors of No 1 Croft Road block. Grey slate roof with metal ridges. Ashlar-coped skews. Corniced ashlar stacks with some octagonal buff clay cans.

INTERIOR: Mirrored gantry, decorative cornices and ceiling rose to pub. Stone tenement stair from ground to 1st floor, timber stair to upper floors, with decorative cast-iron balustrade and polished timber handrail; stone stair to basement; predominantly 4-panel timber doors and some working timber window shutters to flats.

Statement of Interest

A well-proportioned, well-detailed, later-19th-century block situated in the centre of Hawick on Oliver Place, towards the High Street end of North Bridge Street, and making a strong contribution to the streetscape, with essentially unaltered street elevations including unusually well-preserved pub and shop frontages.

This block is very similar to No 81 High Street and, like that building and its neighbours at Nos 83-85 High Street and Nos 3 and 4 Oliver Place (see separate listings), was presumably commissioned by James Oliver of Thornwood (1817-1905), who made his fortune in the auctioneering business and was one of the town's wealthiest and most prominent figures at the time. The architect of these buildings is not known, but their distinctive features - continuous hoodmoulds, 1st-floor cill courses, bracketed 2nd-floor cills, eaves courses and corbelled cornice - are repeated on a number of buildings in and around High Street.

The pub was awaiting a new leaseholder at the time of resurvey (2008), so its interior was not seen, but information on it was given by some of the residents of the building. Named the Imperial Bar, it is often referred to as the Imperial Hotel, as it provided accommodation until the Second World War.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q77781048

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

• 
  Drawing up a Local Listed Building Consent Order: Historic England Advice Note 6
• 
  London 4: North: North v. 4 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Period Property Manual (New Ed)
• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)