27 North High Street, Portsoy

23 North High Street in Portsoy is a house built around 1720-1730. It is a two-storey structure with a dormerless attic and features a six-bay front with a curvilinear gable. The exterior is harled, using crushed red Portsoy 'marble' as aggregate, and has contrasting painted ashlar margins. The gable at the rear is lightly slurried rubble, and the rear is also harled with contrasting painted margins.

The house has two slightly advanced gabled centre bays, which include a round-headed pend arch flanked by a window and a round-headed keystoned attic window. The gablehead is curvilinear with a coped design and an apex stack. The advanced bay is flanked by narrow doorways in the second and fifth bays, with a transom and fanlight above the second bay. There is an enlarged bipartite window in the sixth bay, which is the extreme right. The first-floor windows have regular 12-pane glazing, while the ground floor features varied multi-pane glazing, and the narrow rear windows have 15-pane glazing; all windows are timber and sash case. The house has harled coped end stacks, flat skews, and a slate roof with a pottery ridge.

Inside, there is a deep moulded cornice in one ground floor room and a narrow curved staircase with turned balusters. The first-floor parlour has a deep, heavy moulded plaster ceiling cornice and raised and fielded panelling throughout, which is now stained. The moulded ashlar chimneypiece has triangular base stops and a later stained and varnished surface. There is also a late 19th-century cast-iron grate.

Next door, at 25 High Street, there is an early 18th-century two-storey house with a dormerless attic that forms the north wing of the 23-27 North High Street range, creating an L-plan layout. This house has modern harl and a doorway in the re-entrant angle, likely the former centre door of a five-bay house. It is flanked on the left by two small windows and has three small first-floor windows. The east gable facing the street has paired ground and small first-floor windows with chamfered reveals. The windows feature plate glass glazing, and the house has steeply pitched crowstepped gables, renewed coped end stacks, a Welsh slate roof, and a pottery ridge.

At the rear of Nos 23, 25, and 27 North High Street, there are large garden plots enclosed by coped rubble walls, with the western wall abutting Barbank Street. The garden has charterboles facing south.