Warehouse And Office, Workshop, Lighthouse Depot, Oban

Warehouse and Office, Workshop, Lighthouse Depot, Oban

A substantial warehouse complex built around 1904 with later alterations, constructed in coursed granite rubble with harled pointing and raised sandstone ashlar quoins and dressings. The main warehouse is a 2-storey rectangular-plan building with office accommodation at first-floor level, featuring broad coped crowstepped gables and a distinctive corner octagonal tower abutting the east gable. Circular windows punctuate the gableheads. Single-storey garages with a corniced eaves course adjoin to the north.

The south elevation presents five large ground-floor windows, with a prominent first-floor door to centre-right fitted with a ramp entrance added in 2001 that bridges the raised ground.

The east elevation is composed of five bays. A wide 2-storey gabled section to the left contains a garage door at ground floor with a glass-brick fanlight directly above, a door to the left, and a circular window to the gablehead. The central semi-octagonal tower features a door at the first stage and a slightly corbelled-out upper stage with five windows surmounted by a ball finial to a conical roof. A flat-roofed single-storey garage extends to the right, with a door topped by an oversized glass-brick fanlight in the penultimate bay right and a large inserted garage door at the far right.

The north (shore) elevation spans seven bays, dominated by an advanced flat-roofed single-storey garage at ground floor featuring four evenly spaced segmental-arched windows set close to the eaves. Three double garage entrances are positioned between the window openings, the leftmost now blocked, with an additional double-door entrance below the window at far right. An octagonal tower emerges from the rear of the advanced ground-floor section to the left, with a door accessing the flat roof. Evenly spaced windows rise above the advanced section to the right.

The west elevation features an external metal stair added in 2001 leading to a door at first-floor level of the gabled section to the right, with a window at far right and a circular window to the gablehead.

Windows throughout are multi-paned double-glazed timber tilt-top windows set in original splayed openings. Garage doors are roll shutters to the east and timber-boarded to the north. The pitched roofs and tower are covered with grey slates, whilst the flat-roof garage and coped crowstep cappings are lead-covered.

Interior spaces comprise office accommodation upgraded to modern standard in 2001, with warehouse and garage areas containing cast-iron columns and concrete construction, some subdivided in the late 20th or early 21st century.

Square-plan coped ashlar gatepiers mark the depot entrance to the southeast.

Associated with the main warehouse is a manager's house, built circa 1904 on the footprint of a 19th-century building. This small 2-storey, 3-bay, rectangular-plan house has a single-storey piended extension to the west. Construction is coursed granite rubble with harled pointing and raised sandstone ashlar quoins and dressings. The north (shore) elevation displays a central door with flanking bipartite windows and a smaller bipartite window to the extension at far right, topped by two breaking-eaves gabled dormers with bipartite windows above and a 20th-century rooflight to the centre. The south (entrance) elevation features a central stone porch (a later addition) with pitched roof and surrounding glazing, a door to the right return, a window to the extension at far left, and a central breaking-eaves gabled dormer with bipartite window above the porch. Windows are tilt-top plastic; doors are plastic. The roof is pitched with overhanging bracketed eaves, grey slates, terracotta ridge tiles, straight stone skews, block skewputts, coped gable-head stacks, and circular clay cans.

Two 19th-century single-storey outbuildings flank the forecourt to the manager's house. The westernmost is a 3-bay cottage with segmental-arched droved and keystoned dressings, featuring a central door on its east elevation with flanking windows, timber sash-and-case windows with horns, a timber-boarded door, grey slates, terracotta ridge tiles, and narrow timber bargeboards. The eastern building is 2-bays of similar treatment, with an arched 2-leaf timber-boarded stable-door to its left and a timber-boarded door to its right on the west elevation, and a window to the south elevation. A single coped rubble stack with circular clay can stands at the south gable head.

Boundary walls to the manager's house comprise a low coped rubble wall with plain-cast iron railings to the south and low and high coped rubble walls to the east.