14, 16 Low Street, Banff

The Fife Arms Hotel, located at 12 Low Street, Banff, is a substantial and finely detailed Renaissance-style building constructed between 1843 and 1845, likely designed by Thomas Mackenzie of Elgin. It comprises three blocks forming a cohesive unit. The front facade is finished in polished sandstone ashlar, while the return gable and rear elevations are largely of mixed rubble construction, with the rear of the main block having a harled finish with ashlar margins and dressings.

The central block, known as Fife House, is a three-storey building over a raised basement, featuring five bays. A prominent Roman Doric portico with coupled columns provides the central entrance, leading to a panelled door and steps. The ground and first floor windows are panelled, with moulded jambs and cornices to the first floor. Smaller windows are found on the second floor, with matching jamb mouldings and 12-pane glazing. Quoined angles are present, and a modillioned wallhead cornice supports a balustrade. Corniced and stringcoursed detailing exists, as do wallhead stacks flanked by scroll consoles, corniced rear stacks, and a shallow piended slate roof. The interior features a column-screened entrance hall.

The two-storey range at 8 Low Street, four bays wide and over a raised basement, abuts the south gable of Fife House, creating a continuous frontage. It includes a corniced doorpiece and tripartite windows in the right-hand bay on both the ground and first floors. A bandcourse links the first-floor windows, and 12-pane glazing is consistent throughout, with 4-pane detailing in the outer tripartite bays. This section has a moulded wallhead cornice, corniced and stringcoursed end and ridge stacks, and a shallow gabled slate roof. The rear has irregular fenestration, with a tripartite window mirroring the front’s first-floor window, providing light to a former drawing room. Inside, a curved staircase with decorative cast-iron balusters ascends along the east wall. The ground-floor former dining room maintains a simple moulded cornice, while the former drawing room on the first floor retains a deep decorative cornice and a plain, striated white marble chimney piece, though it has since been subdivided.

The range at 12-16 Low Street, an eight-bay, two-storey building, abuts the north gable of Fife House, again contributing to a continuous frontage. A wide, basket-arched pend with blocked imposts leads to former stables at the rear, alongside a pair of panelled double-leaf doors to the north of the pend and two further doors to the south. Nos. 14 and 12 retain original moulded shop windows with renewed glazing and cast-iron grills below the windows, which were used to ventilate cellars. Number 16 has been modernized. Doorways provide access to the internal accommodation between each pair of shops. The regular first-floor fenestration has simple raised jambs, all linked at sill level by a bandcourse, with some surviving 12-pane glazing. A deep wallhead cornice, stringcoursed and corniced stacks, and a short, three-storey wing projecting into the courtyard are also present. The former stables have been converted into garages.