Wick, Pulteneytown, 29 Breadalbane Terrace

Pair of 2-storey with attic, 2-bay, rectangular-plan, gabled houses. Coursed Caithness stone slabs, regular fenestration, irregular to rear. Canted dormers. Plate glass sash and case windows except large plate glass window to ground floor right. Grey slates. Coped skews, gable stacks. Cast-iron rainwater goods.

The Group listing is in recognition of the exceptional group value of these buildings as the core of Thomas Telford's 1809 scheme for the new town plan of Pulteneytown for the British Fisheries Society. (Historic Scotland)

Pulteneytown was a planned village established by the British Fisheries, a semi-charitable joint stock company established on the same basis as tollroad and canal trusts and other industrial settlements such as Easdale Island community founded by the Easdale Slate Company (see separate listing). The Society had established two previous settlements at Ullapool and Tobermory on the West Coast. These were laid out on simple grid plans by land surveyors. As with the majority of the three hundred or so planned villages established in the Highlands between 190 and 1830, regularity, "so that the town should have a handsome appearance", and convenience were the primary objectives. However, the Directors of the Society were also aware of the colonial aspect of their venture. Very much in the Roman colonia tradition of the Annexed Estates Commission settlements at Callander or Kinloch Rannoch, the grid plans of Ullapool and Tobermory were a deliberate imposition of and control on a landscape and people considered wild and unruly. The same ethos used in the planning of the colonial settlements of North America, such as Williamsburg, Virginia. Besides the first Edinburgh New Town, earlier planned villages in Scotland, like Ormiston, East Lothian laid out by John Cockburn, 1738 or Inveraray first laid by the Duke of Argyll to plans by John Adam, 1751 and developed by Robert Mylne from 1774, further reflect that the simple grid was the ubiquitous choice for planners and founders of towns throughout Enlightenment Scotland. (Historic Scotland)