2, 3, 4 Queensferry Street, Edinburgh

This is a large, corner building on Shandwick Place and Queensferry Street in Edinburgh, constructed in 1901 by Sydney Mitchell & Wilson, with substantial alterations to the ground floor carried out by Tarbolton & Ochterlony between 1938 and 1940. The building is designed in a Free Renaissance style, standing four storeys high with an attic, and incorporating ground-floor shops and a public house.

The Shandwick Place frontage features a broad three-window arrangement. The wallhead curves upwards to a wide, curvilinear gable, with three windows in the attic level. A single oculus is set within a cartouche at the garret level. The Queensferry Street frontage is dominated by the public house, which is rusticated and features two deeply moulded segmental arches with mullions. A timber-panelled entrance door is located within the right-hand arch. Above this, three identical two-bay windows are present on the first floor, each with its own curvilinear wallhead gable, swagged at the tympanum and surmounted by a square chimney block. The windows on the first, second, and third floors have Gibbs surrounds and pulvinated friezes. The first-floor windows are large singles with alternate voussoirs that project, linked by a band of scrolls. The second and third-floor windows are double-windowed, with quintuple key blocks, the second floor’s featuring a thin, continuous apron and guttae. A recessed quadrant corner features a slim single window, with an armorial cartouche above the first-floor window. The upper floors have keyblocked architraved windows with cornices, culminating in a pilastered rotunda at attic level, rising to a concave set-off with a cartouche. This is topped by a peristyle cupola with a distyle treatment flanked by buttresses, and an ogee leaded roof with lucarnes, with a small lantern at the very top.

The interior of the public house, inspected in 2007, retains a largely intact decorative scheme from the early 20th century, designed by Sydney Mitchell. It features a floor-to-ceiling tiled lobby with a timber-panelled, part-glazed inner door. The interior is characterised by timber panelling to the dado, a timber chimneypiece with an over-mantle and mirror, and an elaborate compartmented ceiling with a deeply moulded cornice and plaster frieze depicting birds and fruit swags. A timber-panelled bar counter is present, along with a ceiling-height gantry featuring segmental-arched pediments and a split pediment in the centre, with arched mirrors set between slender Ionic columns; glazed cabinets are situated below.

The interior of the former bank has not been inspected but is documented to include a stained glass feature window, carved wooden figures representing the Zodiac signs, and a painted ceiling by Henry Lintott in the former telling room, dating from 1940.