Post Office

Post Office. Built in 1897, likely by Thomas Algernon Dorrien-Smith, who was the Lord Proprietor and an architectural enthusiast. The building is constructed from snecked rock-faced granite with shaped boulder-faced granite surrounds and dressings, set beneath gabled slate roofs. It is an unusual example, employing an almost Alpine style. The Post Office is two storeys high and has a 3-window arrangement on the first floor. All openings feature massive hewn boulders used to form cills, quoins, and lintels. The ground floor includes a segmental-arched carriageway on the right side, and a 20th-century door within a recessed square-headed doorway to the right of a tripartite window with rough granite mullions and single-light windows. The first floor has 4/4-pane horned sash windows. Two projecting gables are visible, the left one taller and covering two bays; it is supported by cantilevered granite brackets with scissor trusses. A plaque displaying the date 1897 and the VR cypher commemorates Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The rear has a steeply-pitched roof. The building is listed as a prominent and distinctive example of Dorrien-Smith’s estate architecture; his uncle, Augustus Smith, introduced the postal service to the Isles of Scilly.