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Summary

Description

Circa 1900, incorporating earlier fabric. 3-storey and attic hotel of L-plan arrangement, 6-bay elevations to Castlehill and Argyll Street with additional chamfered mutual corner entrance bay comprising entrance door at ground floor with 3-storey semi-octagonal oriel above. Roughcast walls with droved ashlar dressings, all painted. Base course and eaves course, raised margins at windows and door openings.

CORNER TOWER: entrance door with moulded surround at chamfered bay. Semi-octagonal oriel window corbelled out above, giving canted 3-light bay windows at 1st and 2nd floors, bipartite windows at each face of 3rd floor. Cill and lintel courses at each floor and cornice at eaves.

NW (CASTLEHILL) ELEVATION: 7 bays, including chamfered corner bay to outer left. Regular fenestration elsewhere with doorway at 4th bay.

NE (ARGYLL STREET) ELEVATION: 7 bays, grouped 3-4, including chamfered corner bay to outer right. 1st bay; 2-storey 3-light canted oriel at 1st and 2nd floors surmounted by canted and pedimented dormer. Corniced bar frontage to 2nd and 3rd bays comprising door to left with tripartite window adjacent to right. 4th bay parapetted at eaves, 1st floor window of 5th bay off-set to right. 7-flue wallhead stack at 6th bay, single window at ground floor, semi-octagonal dormer intersecting to left, corbelled out at 3rd floor matching corner tower to right.

REAR ELEVATIONS: regularly fenestrated with circular stair tower adjoining SE elevation. Adjoining L-plan range of partly roofless, gabled and harled random rubble buildings.

Timber sash and case windows, 4-pane to most openings, 2-pane lower sashes and 8-pane at 1st and 2nd floor of tower, 4-pane upper sashes at bipartite windows of tower and matching dormer. Grey slate mansard roof, ogee roof with concealed flashings and lead finial to tower and matching dormer, conical at rear stair tower. Pedimented, slated timber dormers with 6-pane upper sashes and 2-pane lower sashes. Flanking sidelights to windows of dormers at NW (Main Street) pitch, with 2-pane upper sashes. Cast-iron downpipes and gutters at eaves, profiled at principal elevations. Roughcast stacks with red sandstone ashlar cornices and red circular cans.

INTERIOR: timber staircase with turned balusters. Good fittings to Ladies WC at 1st floor.

Statement of Special Interest

A photograph of the hotel prior to rebuilding shows a plain 7-bay gabled building. Warrant applications for alterations and additions were made in 1897 and 1907 by Captain H Macneal Younger of Lossit, who also owned the Machrihanish hotel by Sydney Mitchell. The polygonal corner tower with ogee roof (echoed in the neighbouring red sandstone Barochan Place) is redolent of Mitchell?s designs. Bracket marks at 2nd floor, 6th bay, indicate the point where there was formerly a sculpture of a deer. The forcefulness of the main design elements grouped around the corner is somewhat reduced by the absence of the deer sculpture which worked visually in conjunction with the chimney to great effect. This remains, however, an impressive building on this prominent corner site.

References

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