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Summary

Description

Probably early 19th century, No 6 rebuilt 1862, alterations R & S Sproule & Son, 1922. Public house comprising two gabled buildings (now joined internally) with unifying 1922 pilastrade and fascia at ground floor. White-painted rendered masonry with painted ashlar dressings. Variety of mid/later 20th century glazing patterns in timber frames. Welsh slate roofs.

NO 4: single storey and attic, roughly 3-bay. Off-centre 2-leaf timber panelled door; windows to outer bays; 2 gabled dormers breaking eaves. Coped stack to right.

NO 6: 2-storey, roughly 3-bay. 2-leaf timber panelled door to right; wide pend entrance to left; corniced window margins at 1st floor; gablehead stack to right with assorted clay cans; ashlar-coped skews. Extensions and irregular fenestration to rear.

INTERIOR: good traditional pub interior with surviving 1930s / 40s decorative scheme and several public sitting rooms on both floors. Half-glazed inner entrance door with frosted glass inscribed 'The Grapes'. Principal bar room with full-height timber boarded panelling, plain bar counter and gantry and bell indicator box. 2 back rooms with dado-height timber boarding and bell pushes. Art Deco cocktail bar upstairs with fine mirrored gantry and curve-ended banded timber bar counter (see Notes). Predominantly timber-panelled interior doors throughout and some 19th century plaster cornicing.

OUTBUILDINGS TO REAR: mid 19th century. Single and 2-storey gabled brick outbuildings (former stabling) enclosing small courtyard to rear. Timber-boarded doors. Grey slate roofs.

Statement of Special Interest

A good example of a provincial public house that makes a good contribution to the streetscape and has a good surviving traditional interior scheme; the survival of the number of small public sitting rooms is of at least equal importance to the fixtures. No 4 has additional interest as one of the earliest surviving buildings on Bridge street: most of the buildings on the street seem to have been rebuilt in the late 19th century.

The Grapes is generally believed to have been built as a coaching inn, with stabling in the rear courtyard. However, this seems unlikely as the two buildings are not described as an inn on John Wood's Town Plan of 1843 or the first two editions of OS town plans (1847 and 1863) - all of which mark the other public houses in the town. The pend giving access to the rear is not shown on these either, making coaching provision impossible. Two buildings occupying the same footprint are shown on Wood's map (the earliest detailed map readily available), but it is not until the 1893 OS town plan that the building is shown with its pend as one property and marked as the Grapes Inn. Michael Slaughter's book indicates that the Grapes was rebuilt in 1862. The date seems right, in stylistic terms, for No 6, but No 4 with its narrower plan and low height seems to be a survival of the late 18th or early 19th century terrace that previously lined Bridge street. Buildings of Scotland states that the front pilastrade was added in 1922 by R & S Sproule & Son (a local firm of decorators). The outbuildings at the rear (which certainly were used as stables) are first shown on the first edition OS map (1847) with alterations and additions shown on the 1893 map. It is probable that these buildings were originally built for a function other than stabling since access to them was very restricted.

The interior survives as a characterful traditional public house. The fixtures (panelling, bar, etc) are relatively plain, with the exception of the stylish 1930s cocktail bar and gantry upstairs, which came from a hotel in Ayr in the 1950s. The number of small sitting rooms with their working bell-pushes, is however, a rare survival of a once-common arrangement in Scottish pubs.

Listed as part of thematic survey of Scotland's Heritage Pubs (2007-8).

References

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