Publication Account
Date 1951
Event ID 1097266
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1097266
101. Wilson's Court, 136A Canongate.
Two early 18th-century rubble-built tenements, outwardly identical in design, bound this court on N. and S. Three storeys and an attic in height and oblong on plan but for a circular stair-tower projecting into the court, each building has a pend or passage beneath its E. end and a central gablet, surmounted by a rebuilt chimney-stalk and containing a Venetian window rising above the eaves on the N. side.
In the northern house, which faces the Canongate, the ground floor is devoted to shops. The first flat has four good rooms grouped round a lobby, which has lately been extended through the largest compartment to secure better light and ventilation. The two rooms to the back contain nothing of interest. The W. front room has a carved wood surround to the fireplace, which probably has a marble slip, painted over. The back wall of the E. room has three recesses, the one in the centre larger than the others, all with ogival heads supported on twin shafts; these were probably formed during the Gothic revival. On the second floor the lobby has always extended from back to front, with two rooms on each side; none of these possesses anything worthy of remark apart from a fireplace in the E. room at the back. The dark, low-ceiled attic-rooms have been modernised. The balustrade at the top of the newel stair has a graceful trellis of wood.
The building to the S. is arranged differently, and was perhaps intended to be self-contained as it has two principal rooms on every storey. The E. room on the first floor has an 18th-century niche on each side of the fireplace and there is said to be a built-up staircase rising to the second floor within its N.E. corner, although no trace of any such feature is visible at present. There is nothing else that calls for notice.
RCAHMS 1951
