158 High Street, Montrose

This is an 18th-century classical town house located in a close, with significant alterations made in the 19th century. It has an L-shaped plan, two storeys and a basement, and is constructed of stugged sandstone ashlar to the front, with squared and snecked stone to the rear.

The east elevation features a five-step flight of stone leading to the entrance on the raised principal floor. There are windows to the left and right in the basement, with wrought-iron railings. The entrance has a recessed dressed ashlar doorpiece, with splayed reveals to the door and flanking rectangular windows. Above the door is a full-width segmental fanlight with four panes, and a tripartite window is centred at the first floor, with stone columnar mullions.

The south elevation, facing into the close, comprises two connecting sections. The section to the right has a four-step flight and wrought-iron balusters leading to a corniced doorpiece and panelled door, with windows at basement, raised principal and first floors. To the left, a section is slightly advanced, featuring a bowed wall with a basement window and a small additional window above. Across three bays to the left, the principal and first floors are symmetrical, with a bipartite window featuring a stone columnar mullion to the right and two windows to the left. The central window on the principal floor is blinded, and there is a basement door to the left. A gable end of the western wing is advanced to the left, with harled and rubble stone outhouses at ground and first floor levels and a bowed window above.

The west elevation has a raised basement, with a symmetrical three-bay bowed section to the right, featuring round-arched windows at the principal floor. A single bay section is to the left, with tripartite windows, canted at both the basement and principal floor levels.

The north elevation, adjoining 154 High Street, is harled to the left and has a window at the first floor. A blinded window is positioned at basement and principal floor level to the centre, with a window at principal and first floors within the re-entrant angle of the front block.

The windows are timber sash and case, with 12 and 18 panes. Plate glass is used at the principal floor to the rear, with 16 panes on the tripartite windows. The roof is piended to the east of the west wing and conical on the bowed section to the west, covered in grey/brown slates. The roof features rendered stacks, one on the party wall to the north, one on the ridge, and one shouldered and coped to the south.

The interior retains fine, largely intact plasterwork and panelled doors. There is a rib-vaulted plaster ceiling in the entrance hall, a semi-circular staircase at the intersection of the wings, and a dog-leg staircase connecting the two-bay section to the east and the main block. Cast-iron balusters are present, and a noteworthy bow-ended dining room is located within the east wing, formed from partition walls and curved doors, partially aligning with the outer wall to the southeast. A two-bay section to the right was formerly separated from the main block and contains a surviving Victorian sanitary fitment and stove within a one-room flat on the principal floor.

Rubble stone boundary walls enclose a garden to the rear (west).