Midsteeple, High Street, Dumfries

Midsteeple, located on High Street in Dumfries, is a significant town house built between 1705 and 1707, designed by John Moffat of Liverpool and constructed by Tobias Bachup of Alloa. The building features a free-standing rectangular plan with three storeys and a square clock tower at the eastern end of the short northern wall, which rises in three undiminished stages topped with a louvred ogival leaded cupola. The exterior is finished in polished red ashlar, with channeling at the ground level and rusticated quoins. String courses separate the floors and tower stages, while the windows are mostly aproned, with cornices at the first floor and bolection-moulded architraves. The second-floor windows are margined, and there are pierced wallhead parapets. A square flue over the western wall-head has been removed, and the eastern long wall is painted above the re-cased ground floor.

The main entrance is located on the two-bay southern end wall, featuring a pedimented first-floor doorway designed by James Barbour, which replaces a circa 1830 porch and loosely follows the original design. This doorway is bolection-moulded and includes added pilasters and a frieze. A forestair leads up to the entrance, situated in the re-entrant angle behind a balustraded low shop. The platt, which has a shop below and an enlarged window, is adorned with an elaborate wrought-iron ravel (balustrade) crafted by Patrick Sibbald of Edinburgh, and it has been repaired, likely by Barbour. Two large stone crests, representing the Royal Arms of Scotland and St Michael, are centrally positioned on the southern wall. The interior was gutted in 1970, but a single adjoining bay to the north retains sympathetic detailing. A straggle of shops beyond, formerly a police office, is excluded from the listing.

The tower features a forestair with a basket-arched door leading to an internal wheel stair, with stair lights above. The northern and western elevations are relatively plain, while the remaining elevations have an oculus in the fifth stage. Each elevation of the top stage has a square panel, with a clock face on the northern and southern sides. The cupola has been stripped of its leaded crockets but retains louvred lucarnes.