186 High Street, Edinburgh is a Grade B listed building in the City of Edinburgh local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 14 December 1970.

186 High Street, Edinburgh

WRENN ID
sombre-transept-sunrise
Grade
B
Local Planning Authority
City of Edinburgh
Constituency
Edinburgh East and Musselburgh MP: Chris Murray (Lab)
Country
Scotland
Date first listed
14 December 1970
Address
186 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1RW
OS grid reference
NT 258 736
Coordinates
55.9497, -3.18954
Source
Historic Environment Scotland listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

188 High Street in Edinburgh is a commercial building designed by George Smith in 1845. It is a narrow, four-storey structure with an attic, featuring three bays and a Scots Jacobean style. The building has a distinctive corbelled and shouldered wallhead gable. On the ground floor to the left, there is a basket-arched pend leading to Borthwicks Close, while the right side has a later frontage for a police centre.

An ornamental bracketed cornice runs between the ground and first floors, and the first-floor windows are adorned with cornices and strapwork pediments. There is a cill course at the second floor, with ornamental cornices above it. The third floor windows have projecting bracketed cills. The wallhead attic gable is corbelled out and breaks the eaves, featuring a bipartite segmental-arched window in the centre, which has a shouldered hoodmould and a needle finial at the apex.

To the rear, the building rises to six storeys and includes another corbelled gable on the west elevation. The windows throughout are timber sash and case, with configurations of 12, 8, and 4 panes. The roof is covered with grey slate, and the building has particularly broad axial ashlar stacks, clay cans, and cast-iron rainwater goods.

Local climate

186 High Street, Edinburgh sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 970 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 76% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 53% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 43 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 81% of listed buildings. Of these, 25 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.

Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.

More on this building

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  • Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
  • Flood risk assessment
  • Radon risk assessment
  • Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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Nearby listed buildings

  1. 188 High Street, Edinburgh Grade B 18 m
  2. 170 High Street, Edinburgh Grade B 20 m
  3. Police Chambers, 192 High Street, Edinburgh Grade A 20 m
  4. 3 K6 Telephone Kiosks, High Street, Edinburgh Grade B 32 m
  5. The Mackenzie Building, Old Assembly Close, 172 High Street, Edinburgh Grade B 33 m
  6. Market Cross, High Street, Edinburgh Grade A 42 m
  7. 148, 150, 152 And 154 High Street, Edinburgh Grade B 42 m
  8. City Chambers, High Street, Edinburgh Grade A 43 m
  9. 7 Old Fishmarket Close, 190 High Street, Edinburgh Grade B 55 m
  10. 231 High Street, Edinburgh Grade A 55 m