Description

Charles George Hood Kinnear, 1866. 4-storey 6-bay tenement block with pedimented pend to outer left and shops to ground floor. Polished ashlar (painted to ground). Continuous cornice to shops; cill course to 1st and 3rd floors; broad moulded eaves cornice. Roll-moulded basket-arched stop-chamfered openings to ground floor. Timber boarded door with plate glass fanlight to flats at centre. Segmental windows to 1st floor, round-arched to 2nd floor, both in lugged architraves; shouldered windows to 3rd floor; bipartite windows to each floor in all but 2nd bay from left; bracketed cills to 2nd floor. Slightly advanced pend to outer left: long and short quoins; channelled pilaster strips flanking entrance; tripartite windows above; corniced wallhead stack above moulded pediment.

Drill Hall for the Midlothian Artillery Regiment constructed to the rear of the tenements (now in use as a restaurant, 2015).

Statement of Interest

Part of Grindlay's Orchardfield estate, laid out for the Merchant Company by William Burn in 1820. A rare tenement design by Kinnear.

Grindlay Street was developed from the 1860s on the area of the Orchardfield Estate to the layout of William Burn's plan of 1820. In the first half of the nineteenth century, industrial development in the west of Edinburgh and continuing residential expansion of the New Town northwards had delayed development in the area. Following the construction of the canal and the railway, tenemental development began again in the 1860s during a period of significant residential expansion in the City. Tenement nos 20-30 and the drill hall to the rear appear on the Ordnance Survey Town Plan of Edinburgh, Surveyed 1877.

Architect Charles George Hood Kinnear (1830-1894) practised as a partner in the foremost firm of Peddie and Kinnear from 1853. Kinnear joined the Volunteer Force of the First Midlothian County (Midlothian Coast) Artillery Volunteer Brigade in 1859.

The Volunteer Force was a part-time citizen army of artillery and engineer corps formed in Britain in 1859. Drill halls were constructed for these forces as centres for training which often had an expressly social as well as military function.

Kinnear, who rose to Senior Major in the force, designed the building of the regimental headquarters drill hall in Grindlay Street and was also one of three officers who financed the building.

Listed building record and statutory address updated (2015). Previously listed as '20-30 (even nos) Grindlay Street'.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q77775449

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.

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