26 Russell Street, Rothesay, Bute

This is a substantial, three-storey Scots Baronial tenement built in 1877 by Thomas Russell, with an extension to the same design added in 1901 and subsequent rehabilitation work in 1985. It occupies a corner site in Rothesay, Bute, and incorporates a shop at ground level (numbered 26). The building has 22 bays facing Russell Street, arranged as 3-3-3-3-4-3-3 bays, and 2 bays facing Mill Street, arranged as 2-2-2. A prominent full-height corner tower is engaged into the Russell Street elevation.

The building is constructed of coursed, yellow sandstone ashlar, with polished sandstone dressings, and painted render at ground level on the Mill Street elevation. A raised base course is present, along with architraved string courses which step up along the Russell Street façade. An architraved cill course runs across the second floor, and there are moulded eaves. The windows are single or bipartite, with basket-arched heads at ground level. They have moulded reveals, chamfered cills, corniced openings at the first floor, and corbelled cills at the second floor, with recessed lintels. Regularly disposed crowstepped gableheads break the eaves, topped with thistle and ball-shaped finials, and there are decorative apex stacks. Elaborate neo-Jacobean strapwork featuring crests and monograms adorns the first-floor openings facing Mill Street and the main first-floor bays along Russell Street. Sculpted scrolled panels with embossed dates and initials, "TR-MR, 1877," flank the corner angle.

The south-facing (Russell Street) elevation features replacement part-glazed timber doors, off-centre to the right at numbers 14 and 16, centred at number 18, and off-centre to the left at numbers 20, 22, 24 and 26. Single windows are placed in the remaining ground floor bays, with bipartite windows in the bay to the outer left (number 18). The first and second floors have symmetrically-arranged windows. The full-height corner tower to the outer left includes a shop entrance at ground level, three-light bowed windows on the first and second floors, a curved crowstepped gable, and flanking corbelled stacks.

The west-facing (Mill Street) elevation has a shop at ground level and regularly spaced windows above. Replacement doors are present at ground level (numbers 19, 21, and 23), incorporating plate-glass fanlights, and flanked by bipartite windows. The first and second floors have regularly spaced windows.

The building has predominantly two-pane timber sash and case windows, a grey slate roof with crowstepped skews, cast-iron barley-sugar downpipes, and Gothic rainwater heads. The wallhead stacks are constructed of stop-chamfered polished sandstone, featuring flanking crowsteps, architraved copes, and octagonal cans. Regularly disposed coped, rendered ridge stacks are present, with various circular cans. The interiors were not inspected during a 1996 survey.