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Summary

Description

William Hamilton Beattie, dated 1887, incorporating 18th century Stout's House, and enlarged 1908. 3-storey and attic, 5-bay asymmetrical Scots Baronial hotel on rising site. Complex comprises 5-storey single bay tower (built on former gabled Stouts House) to SE corner of 3-storey and attic principal block to Commercial Street with variety of single storey and attic additions to rear. Cement-rendered shopfront, harl-pointed rubble lower floors to tower, stugged ashlar walls to principal elevation, squared and snecked side and rear elevations all with mixture of cement-rendered, and stugged and droved, sandstone dressings and details. Corniced and bracketted cills.

E (COMMERCIAL STREET) ELEVATION: tower advanced in bay to outer left. Corniced and painted shopfront at ground with opening containing door at left and shop window at right. Single window at 1st floor in bay to left, centred at 2nd floor, offset to left at 3rd floor with 2-storey corbelled and machicolated circular bartizan with narrow windows at corner to right, rising through parapetted eaves of tower to corniced eaves and conical roof surmounted by wrought-iron weathervane; corresponding bartizan at SE corner.

Entrance bays recessed at left, ground floor; round-arched vertically- boarded timber door abutting re-entrant; heavy carved rope hoodmould articulated around datestone centred over arch-head, cast-iron ventilator in chamfered opening with column at centre. Symmetrical arrangement in bays to right comprising hotel entrance at centre with flanking shopfronts. Modern hotel door, stone doorpiece with panelled pilasters supporting paired consoles surmounted by cornice and corniced dies (perhaps balustraded between). 3-bay shopfronts flanking, each with basket-arched openings to recessed central 2-leaf panelled and glazed entrance doors with flanking cast-iron columns and 2-pane fixed-lights. Cornice articulated around doorpiece and oriel corbelled out at right. 1st floor; bipartite windows at ground and 1st floors in bay to outer left, regular fenestration in bay at right, crowstepped M-gable breaking eaves at head of bays, finialled at left, apex stack at right, with margined round-arched windows in gableheads. Bipartite at 1st floor in entrance bay, pedimented dormer with thistle finial breaking eaves above. 4-light canted bay, breaking eaves and corbelled out to square with crowstepped gablehead containing round-arched window.

N ELEVATION: crowstepped gables flanking centre bay, dormer with pedimented dormerhead breaking eaves. Apex stacks to gables, missing at gable to right, also with right skew built up to platform roof.

S ELEVATION: 4 bays (grouped 2-2) to left of tower; door at 1st floor in bay at outer left, additional window centred at 3rd floor.

W (REAR) ELEVATION: crowstepped gable with apex stack at outer right, elevation obscured below by range to Pitt Lane; 5 irregularly fenestrated bays to left, 2nd and 3rd floors visible, lower floors obscured by single-storey and attic additions.

Timber sash and case windows, plate glass to principal front, mainly 4-pane to side and rear elevations. Platform roof to principal block with slated pitch to E, piend-roofed, slate-hung timber dormer with plate glass timber sash and case window. Grey slate and tile piended roofs, to additions at rear, gabled timber dormers with sash and case windows.

Stugged sandstone stacks with deep copes and circular cans to principal block.

INTERIOR: patterned, coloured tiles to entrance vestibule floor. Plasterwork ceilings surviving in principal rooms at 1st and 2nd floors.

Statement of Special Interest

The house incorporated in the S end of the complex belonged to an Orcadian called John Kelday. His daughter Elizabeth married John Grierson in 1755 and it remained in the Grierson family until it was bought by Thomas Stout and became known as Stoots Hoose. The Commercial Bank tried to acquire the property but Stout would not sell. The bank applied to the Town Council to declare the house unsafe in the hope it would force Stout to sell, but he retained ownership until his death and the family sold it to Messrs. Leask who laid the foundation stone of the Grand Hotel in 1886, appointing John M Aitken as contractor. Aitken reputedly advised Beattie that the walls of the S elevation would support the new work, and therefore enhance the look of the Hotel. Stoots Hoose contained the Grand Hotel Bar until becoming a bakers? shop in the 1930's.

References

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