Edinburgh, 18 Blackfriars Street

43. Duchess of Callander's House, 18 Blackfriars Street.

This oblong tenement, the survivor of an identical pair, comprises a cellarage, four storeys and an attic, and stands half-way down the W. side of Blackfriars Street. It has all the appearance of an early 18th-century building, and it cannot be later than 1742 since its position is marked on the map published in that year by Edgar. At both back and front the rubble walls rise to a central gablet above the eaves, and are pierced by windows with back-set margins, those facing the W. being arranged symmetrically but the others, which face the street, having their alinement interrupted by the lights of the staircase. A central doorway gives direct access from the street to the newel-stair inside; another leads from a court behind into the ground floor, which can, however, also be entered directly from the main thoroughfare.

On every floor above the cellarage there has been a flat of five rooms, four of them having bolection-moulded fireplaces. The unmoulded fireplace of the fifth room enables it to be identified as the kitchen. On the ground-floor the kitchen-fireplace has been inserted within the recess of an earlier one, large in size and moulded with a quirked edge-roll, which dates from the late 16th or early 17th century; and this suggests that part of an earlier party-wall was incorporated in the present building. At the four corners of each flat are little closets, said to be “oratories” but evidently privies. The lower floors have been gutted and strengthened and are now used as a warehouse, but those above are still inoccupation.

RCAHMS 1951