Publication Account
Date 1951
Event ID 1096505
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1096505
In the E. group the head office of the Royal Bank of Scotland demands first place. This building, which stands within a forecourt at the centre of the E. side of the Square, was designed by Sir William Chambers of Ripon, who was also responsible for Duddingston House. Built between 1772 and 1774 as the town house of Sir Laurence Dundas, Bart.,of Kerse, it became in 1794-5 the principal office of Excise in Scotland. In 1825 it was acquired by the Bank, then proprietors of Number 35, the adjoining property on the N., and has since been extensively altered, notably from 1858 onwards.
Arnot, writing in 1778 (1), describes it as "incomparably the handsomest town-house we ever saw," and it is certainly a scholarly, proportionate building, although dwarfed to some extent by larger structures which have since risen in its vicinity. As Arnot saw it, the house stood detached and was oblong on plan with the central parts of front and back slightly advanced, the W. projection rectangular and that to the E. circled. By 1804 an extension had been connected to the S. side. In 1827 the dwarf wall that had until then separated the forecourt from the street was replaced by the existing fine iron screen. A portico was added to the facade in the following year, followed a little later by an extension from the N. side. The circled projection on the E. was removed in 1858 to make way for the existing telling-hall, and the same year saw the start of an extensive remodelling of the interior of the building.
The masonry is of polished ashlar, probably from Ravelston, and does credit to William Jamieson, the master mason, who was also employed on the Register House (No. 129). The building is three storeys high, and is unique among New Town houses in having no basement or sunk floor. The ground floor is defined externally by a zone of channel-jointed masonry rising from a high, plain plinth. The prominent part of the front is built "palace-form," that is to say on the upper storeys it is divided by composite pilasters supporting an entablature and a triangular pediment. Between the pilasters and below the uppermost windows runs a band enriched with a fret. In the facade there are five openings on each floor, all carefully proportioned to the solids and admirably placed. Those on the ground floor are subordinated to the rustication, while the tall windows of the first floor have triangular pediments and contrast with the square, simply moulded windows above. The entablature is delicately detailed and its frieze is enriched with a graceful scroll-work. In the tympanum stand the Royal Arms, evidently a relic from the time when the building was Crown property as the third quarter represents France.· Apart from the absence of pilasters, main pediment and window pediments, the treatment of the back and of both sides of the building was identical with that of the front.
There has been so much internal alteration that evidence for the original arrangement only remains on the first or principal floor. On all three floors parpend walls running from front to back divide the building into three parts, and the central division was again divided into three compartments, one behind the other, to accommodate a central staircase. But at some time before 1850 the staircase was transferred to the outer compartment on the W., now the upper part of the entrance-hall of the Bank, the stair rising in two parallel flights against the E. wall and giving access to an upper hall formed where the old staircase had been. In 1858 the stair was moved again (infra). The original staircase had communicated with a service stair on its S. side and had given entry to two rooms, situated respectively at the N.E. and N.W. corners of the building, as well as to two others respectively on its W. and E. sides, the E. room having a circled end. Through the service staircase entry was obtained to two small rooms situated respectively at the S.E. and S.W. corners of the building, one or other of which opened into a third room on the S. side of this staircase. But when the original main staircase was altered the service staircase was also reconstructed, the room on its S. side being removed; this allowed the rooms on its E. and W. sides to be enlarged, and both of them were now provided with circled ends. Of this arrangement all that survives is the drawing-room, situated at the N.E. corner. This is a noble room, measuring about 35 ft. 6 in. from E. to W. by 21 ft. from N. to S., with a height of 17 ft. The modelled plaster ceiling is particularly good and is hardly distinguishable from the contemporary ceilings in houses designed by Robert Adam. The room has three windows facing N. which, before York Place was built, must have commanded the whole estuary of the Forth, and originally there were two more facing E., which had to be removed in the course of extensions to the building. On the S. is a handsome marble mantelpiece. The entrance, situated near the S.W. corner, has a mahogany door, the delicately carved architrave and pediment being of pear wood. The room on the S. of the drawing-room was curtailed in 1858 to make way for the modern staircase. The uppermost floor was converted many years ago into a house for the agent of the Bank, but some of the mantelpieces are doubtless original as they bear the fret ornament so greatly favoured by Chambers.
RCAHMS 1951, visited c.1941
(1) History, p.320
