Hope The Bakers, 6-10 Mar Street, Alloa

Hope The Bakers is a two-storey commercial building dating from around 1830, located at 6-10 Mar Street in Alloa. The structure features a six-bay pilastered shopfront on the ground floor and three bays of residential accommodation above, set within a terraced street. At the rear, there is an early 19th century baking oven.

The building is constructed from rendered, squared, and coursed stone, with a painted shopfront that includes a base course, continuous fascia, and cornice. The Mar Street elevation originally had a mirrored shopfront with doorways in the penultimate bays flanked by windows. The right door has a part-glazed, two-leaf inner door and is flanked by large plate glass windows, while the left door is blinded and former large window openings have been partially blocked with smaller windows. The first floor has three regularly spaced 12-pane timber sash and case windows. The roof is covered with grey slate, featuring a single cast-iron rooflight, coped skews, and a stone stack on the left gable, with the right stack removed.

Inside, the property retains plaster cornices and window shutters from around 1820. The baking ovens at the rear, likely from the early 19th century, predate the shopfront block and were originally accessed by a vennel, as shown in Wood's plan from 1825. The oven is painted brick on the exterior and has a cast-iron door plate for the stoking section, along with a large rectangular opening to the oven that appears to have been altered from its original form. Additionally, there is a second steam-powered oven from around 1840 located in the back courtyard, which was glazed over at that time.