Publication Account
Date 1951
Event ID 1097530
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1097530
11. Boswell's Court, 352 Castle Hill .
This tenement of four storeys and an attic, which faces the street immediately E. of Castle Hill School, dates from the 17th century, but its interior has been completely modernised and its exterior shows many signs of alteration. For example, the channelled lower part of the ashlar front is comparatively recent; the masonry above, enriched by two string courses,is probably not original although it seems old ; and the chimney-stalk upon the wall-head is an 18th-century addition. The attic floor is lit by five dormers with simple triangular pediments, decorated at the finials. Each of the three floors immediately below has seven plain windows, which in some cases seem to have been enlarged by dropping the sills. On the ground floor are two modern lights to the W. of a passage which gives access to the lowest storey and also leads to a court behind, where a stair-tower rises to the upper floors. On the lintel of the stair-entrance is a shield, bearing a merchant's mark and flanked by the initials T and L, probably for Thomas Lowthian.* Other initials, apparently R W and H T, appear in a panel to the left, and below runs the inscription O LORD [IN THE]IS A[L MI TRAIST]. A late 16th- or early 17th-century doorway with an ogival head, said to have been removed from the Duchess of Gordon's house in Blair's Close nearby, has been re-used as the modern entrance to a turnpike stair in the near wing of Castle Hill School. In the tympanum is carved a floriated coronet supported by two animals, the dexter one of which may be a unicorn and the sinister one a griffin.
RCAHMS 1951
*Lowthian’s Close seems to have been beside Boswell’s Court.
