16-18 Russell Street, Rothesay, Bute

Thomas Russell; dated 1877; extended to same design 1901; rehabilitated 1985. Extensive 3-storey Scots Baronial tenement on corner site (shop at ground No 26); 22- by 6-bay grouped 3-3-3-3-4-3-3 to Russell Street, 2-2-2 to Mill Street; full-height engaged corner tower. Coursed yellow sandstone ashlar; polished sandstone dressings; painted render at ground to Mill Street. Raised base course; architraved string course (stepped to Russell Street); architraved cill course at 2nd floor; moulded eaves. Single and bipartite windows (basket-arched at ground floor) comprising moulded reveals, chamfered cills; corniced openings at 1st floor; corbelled cills at 2nd floor, recessed lintels. Regularly disposed crowstepped gableheads breaking eaves; surmounting thistle and ball-shaped finials; apex stacks. Elaborate neo-Jacobean strapwork with crests and monograms at 1st floor openings to Mill Street and main 1st floor bays to Russell Street; scrolled panels with embossed dates and initials, "TR-MR, 1877" flanking angle.

S (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION RUSSELL STREET: replacement part-glazed timber doors off-set to right of centre Nos 14 and 16, centred at No 18, off-set to left of centre Nos 20, 22, 24 and 26. Flanking single windows; single windows in remaining bays at ground (bipartite in bay to outer left No 18). Symmetrically-arranged windows at 1st and 2nd floors. Full-height corbelled tower to outer left comprising shop entrance at ground, 3-light bowed windows at 1st and 2nd floors, curved crowstepped gable, flanking corbelled stacks.

W (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION MILL STREET: shop at ground (W elevation No 26 Russell Street); regularly-disposed windows above. Replacement doors at ground (Nos 19, 21, 23); plate-glass fanlights; flanking bipartite windows. Regularly-disposed windows at 1st and 2nd floors.

Predominantly 2-pane timber sash and case windows. Grey slate roof; crowstepped skews; cast-iron barley-sugar downpipes; Gothic rainwater heads. Stop-chamfered polished sandstone wallhead stacks comprising flanking crowsteps, architraved copes, octagonal cans. Regularly disposed coped, rendered ridge stacks; various circular cans.

INTERIORS: not seen 1996.