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Summary

Description

James Smith of Whitehill, circa 1700, and Robert Paterson, 1862. Symmetrical 4-storey 5-bay Scots Baronial tenement replacing front range of partially collapsed tenement by James Smith (see Notes). Central pend to Paisley Close; dividing stair to outer left (leads to 107 High Street, listed separately). Crowstepped wallhead gable with corbelled apex stack; canted 1st floor oriel. Squared and snecked stugged sandstone (painted ground and 1st floors); polished dressings. 6-storey tenement to rear is surviving part of Smith's tenement, with later alterations. Random rubble; raised ashlar margins; long and short quoins.

S (HIGH STREET) ELEVATION: flanking 3-bay shopfronts at ground (those at right with original shouldered openings) with continuous cornice. Stair to outer left within rope-moulded round-arched surround, with decorative cast-iron hand-rail and balustrade. Keystone of round-arched pend to Paisley Close carved with portrait head of a boy; inscribed scroll (see Notes); foliate carving on corbelling of oriel above, with rope-moulded cill and machicolated, crenellated parapet. Flanking windows in 1-2 2-1 formation. Moulded stepped string course above 2nd floor windows. Upper floors regularly fenestrated with stop-chamfered, roll-moulded surrounds

N (REAR) ELEVATION: 4-storey and basement to small courtyard; irregular fenestration; small corbelled bowed oriel with pointed-arched window. Random coursed rubble; ashlar margins and raised cills; stone relieving arches to lower windows.

BLOCK TO REAR: 6 storeys including basement but reduced in height. 3 evenly-spaced bays to E elevation; 2 bays to W (small paired stair windows to each floor plus larger single window); rebuilt forestair in left bay; timber panelled door to rear at forestair (17th century in style only); small adjoining slated outbuilding, 1977; shop at ground entered below blocked (late 18th/early 19th century slapping) wide segmental-arch. N elevation with several irregularly spaced blocked openings; evidence of 2 sections or building phases.

Plate glass windows to shops; later leaded glazing with pointed-arched astragals to 1st floor; replacement timber sash and case windows to 2nd and 3rd floors above in keeping with originals (2-pane upper sashes, 4-pane lower); 12-pane replacement timber sash and case glazing to rear. Pitched grey slate roofs; coped wallhead and end stacks; circular clay cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods.

INTERIOR: part seen 2002. 1st floor of Paterson's tenement: recessed windows with painted timber panelling; Baronial-style chimneypiece (inscribed 'UBI BENE IBI DATRIA'). Smith's block has scale and platt stone close stair with half-columns; treads re-levelled in concrete and linoleum. (Stairs to attic may still retain original worn stone steps with bottle nosings.)

Statement of Special Interest

Paisley Close was known as Smith's Land or Close (see map ref. above) and James Smith's tenement originally fronted the High Street. This large broad-fronted tenement was an example of the change in building forms in the Old Town. The narrow frontages of the deep and irregularly-shaped burgage plots began to be replaced, from the 1670s, by rational and monumental speculative development that in many instances obliterated the Old Town pattern (see Glendinning et al pp135-6). Mylne's Court in the Lawnmarket by Robert Mylne, from 1690, is the earliest remaining example. The front section of Smith's Land collapsed on November 10th 1861 and Paterson's replacement building, with the predecessor of 107-119 High Street still standing to the left, is illustrated in Grant (see above). The inscription 'Heave awa' chaps I'm no' dead yet' commemorates the (anglified) words of a boy pulled from the ruins and the portrait head carved in the keystone of the pend to Paisley Close, by John Rhind, represents the boy. Paterson's building was renovated in 1980.

References

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