Publication Account
Date 1951
Event ID 1097727
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1097727
40. Hyndford's Close and South Gray's Close, 34 and 40 High Street.
The entries to these closes pass beneath the E. ends of two rubble-built tenements, facing the street, which, to judge by their architectural detail, appear to have been built simultaneously in the late 17th century. In the centre of their front is a newel-staircase, entered from the pend of South Gray's Close and serving both "lands." The tenement on the E. has six storeys, and the one on the W. had the same number until its uppermost floor was removed. Owing to the fall of the site, however, there is a difference in the levels of the two tenements, the W. one standing on higher ground, and it was thus impossible for the three string-courses that enriched the superstructure to be carried continuously across the front of both. These string-courses run as sill-courses beneath the four back-set windows of the W. tenement, continue above the staircase windows, and return downwards to form the sill-courses of the four similar windows of the E. building. The lower storeys have been modernised, and the upper ones, which contain two flats on each floor, call for no remark. As a plaque on the first-floor front of the W. "land" records, this was the birthplace both of Henry Erskine, Lord Advocate (b. 1746) and of his brother Thomas, afterwards Lord Chancellor (b. 1749).
Both tenements have extensions to the back. The easternmost of these has five storeys, reached from a newel-stair with a moulded entrance in Hyndford's Close, and can hardly be earlier than the 18th century. The extension to the W. contains a long vaulted cellar, probably of the 17th century, but the two storeys above have been reconstructed at some later date. What had been the ground and first floors were gutted in the late 18th century and turned into a hall with a gallery at the sides and a proscenium opening at the S. end. The floor that was then removed has now been replaced; but the upper part of the proscenium still exists, as does the enriched, coved, plaster ceiling of the hall, which is lit by cupolas.
RCAHMS 1951
