Perth, 163, 165, 167 High Street

NO 1180 2370 A historic building survey was carried out, 12 July – 24 November 2016, in advance of the demolition of two adjacent red-brick industrial buildings at 19 Mill Street, and a single-storey building in the rear of 165 High Street. All three buildings stood near each other in the backlands on the N side of the High Street, and were accessed from Mill

Street, historically serving as a back lane on the N side of High Street.

The two buildings at 19 Mill Street were of three-storeys, and showed a long history of additions and alterations. The westernmost of the pair (Banks) incorporated fragments of earlier sandstone rubble structures at its SW corner, and had undergone a surprisingly ambitious alteration in steel and cast iron in the early- to mid-20th century. Both may also have been raised by one-storey.

The building at 165 High Street (Watsons) was a long, single-storey structure, originally a row of stables or garages, converted to storage late in the 20th century. A fragment of an earlier sandstone rubble building survived in its N gable-end wall. On the E side of the buildings there was an early sandstone rubble boundary wall, structurally separate from the building.

The three buildings show the density and complexity of small-scale industrial and commercial activity which once took place on the High Street backlands in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the tendency to incorporate fragments of earlier structures.

The boundary wall E of Watsons shows the tendency for the rigs of medieval urban burghs to take on a life of their own, independent of the buildings which stand on them, and for party and boundary walls to become ‘detached’ legally and physically, from the buildings on either side.

A watching brief on removal of foundations and floor slabs recorded garden soil under the floor of Banks, including reworked medieval deposits, and a similar soil under Watsons, but no significant archaeological remains near enough to the surface to be at risk from the present car park development.

Archive: NRHE

Funder: Perth and Kinross Council

David Bowler – Alder Archaeology

(Source: DES, Volume 17)

Alder Archaeology conducted an historic building survey on the site of a current porcelain shop at 163-167 High Street, Perth, in advance of the demolition of storage buildings. The proposed development area is to the rear of the shop. The requirement was to record the existing structures photographically and in narrative form, noting setting, form, function, fabric and details of construction phasing. The storage buildings appeared to date from the early nineteenth century, when the site had been used as a livery stables, with brick extensions dating from the 1960s.

Information from Alder Archaeology Ltd

OASIS ID: alderarc1-277286