The Clydesdale Bank, 208-212 High Street, Montrose

The Clydesdale Bank is a large, three-story commercial and domestic building dating to circa 1870, prominently situated on Montrose High Street. The main rectangular block is complemented by projecting wings to the rear, forming an approximate U-shaped layout.

The front facade is constructed of sandstone ashlar, with squared and stugged stone to the rear. Key features include a base course, cornices and friezes above the ground floor and at the second-floor cill, bracketed eaves cornices and friezes, and distinctive carving to the parapet. Pilastered, round-arched windows are set within a frame of roll moulding, featuring spiral strap decoration at the entrance and on the first and second floors.

The east (principal) elevation is seven bays wide on the ground floor, with a central recessed entrance featuring a pair of doors with pierced fretwork and cusped panels, topped by a cusped and plain-panelled round-arched fanlight. Flanking the entrance are three-bay former shopfronts, each with a central door and flanking large, square-headed windows. The first floor showcases a columnar mullioned window flanked by bipartite openings, which open onto a balcony with a balustrade supported by three-step brackets. The second floor features a smaller, centred window above the first, with columned tripartite windows at the centre and wall end columns mirroring the first floor design. All windows incorporate diagonally crossed medallions in their spandrels.

The north elevation abuts 202/204 High Street and includes a single-bay northwest wing in Parks Close. The south elevation features a blank wall of the front block and a setback southwest wing, with a small window at the second floor. A single bay returns, containing a ground-floor door with decorative glazing and windows at the first and second floors. A separate, south-facing building within the garden to the west comprises four bays, constructed with squared and snecked sandstone and featuring a single-pitch roof.

The west elevation incorporates a timber and glass porch at ground and first floor levels, with three narrow round-arched windows at the second floor. Advanced wings flank the central section, the left wing having a single bay and the right wing boasting a large canted bay window spanning ground and first floors, with a window above.

The building incorporates timber sash and case windows with four panes in the west wings, and plate glass elsewhere. The roofs are clad in grey slate, piended in style, and feature ashlar wallhead stacks located north and south of the front block, and south of the west wings, with a small ridge stack on the main block.

The interior is characterized by deep plaster cornicing and a domed ceiling in the principal ground-floor room. The upper floors were not inspected during a 1997 survey. Rubble stone boundary walls enclose the property, with the northern wall forming the southern boundary of Parks Close, and a brick section extending further west.