Inveraray, North Main Street East, Macintyre's Warehouse And Spar Shop

Silvercraigs's House (L on fig.). Built between 1773 and 1780 for James Campbell of Silvercraigs, provost of Inveraray, this house has a tall three-storeyed seven-bay frontage, 19.5m in length. It has schist dressings to the openings, including a 2.6m-wide segmental-headed archway to the central pend, and the quoins are of rusticated ashlar. At the centre of the wall-head there is a gab let containing a small round-headed window and surmounted by a chimneystack. The rear windows are similar in scale to the front ones, and those of the first floor are round-arrised, but the second-floor ones bear 35mm chamfers, damaged in some cases, and one of the lintels is too short, indicating the use at this level of the material that Campbell was given permission to remove from his house in the old town (en.4). The pend, which has hinge-crooks at front and rear for two-leaved gates, has in its N wall a doorway into a stone geometrical stair rising to the first floor and continuing to the garret in timber with plain iron balusters and a mahogany handrail. Although the interior was not renovated by Lindsay, it has been much subdivided, but some rooms remain unchanged, including the large one at the S end of the first floor, lit by two windows in each of the front and rear walls. There are many original six-panelled doors and shutters and several of the second-floor rooms have moulded plaster cornices, that of the centre room being enriched with acanthus and pellets. The only original fireplace-surround, at the E end of the S wall of the second floor, has a 20mmbead-moulding and a Carron grate. The much-altered buildings round the courtyard entered by the pend include a former stable, and Provost Campbell was taxed in 1798 for 19windows and a two-wheeled carriage (en.5).

RCAHMS 1992, visited c. April 1989