Dc Thomson's Warehouses, Guthrie Street, Dundee

The building comprises a group of circa 1828-35 flax warehouses laid out in a U-plan around a central courtyard, with a further warehouse of an L-plan added to the west in the 1860s. The warehouses are constructed of rubble.

The Blinshall Street frontage presents a two-storey, six-bay warehouse. The ground floor contains two blocked windows and two doors, one of which has been enlarged. The symmetrical first floor features two taller, blind windows in the centre, and two windows to each side, one blind and one blocked. The north and south gables are blank. A lower, L-shaped warehouse to the west encloses the courtyard, incorporating a fire barrier wall. The roof is slate, originally piended, and a wooden gate provides access to the courtyard.

A long, two-storey warehouse fronts Guthrie Street, with a three-bay eastern gable and an enlarged ground floor entrance. Two windows have been fitted with modern block glazing. The formerly piended slate roof has been altered to a gabled form and is now corrugated. The Guthrie Street elevation has five blocked ground floor doors and ten small, margined windows with modern block glazing. The south elevation is similar, with small first-floor windows and a wooden hoist serving the courtyard. A taller, three-storey warehouse stands at right angles to the one- and two-storey warehouses, featuring a later, large ground floor entrance to the Guthrie Street elevation. The first and second floors each have three bays, with hoist doors within the left-hand bays, beneath a wrought iron hoist and original, unglazed, wooden shuttered windows. The roof is hipped slate with a central fire barrier wall. The elevation facing the courtyard has small, blind windows on the first and second floors, and larger, blocked doors beneath a wooden and two wrought-iron hoists. The west elevation has small, blind windows overlooking a narrow alleyway.

A two-storey, L-plan warehouse, dating to the 1860s, is separated from the older warehouse by a narrow passage with steps, linked at first floor by cast iron gantries. The front elevation has five bays with a central entrance beneath a louvred hoist door. The west elevation has three bays with shuttered windows – iron at ground floor level and wooden at the first floor. The rear section of the warehouse is lit at first floor by three small, multi-paned windows. A blank northern elevation is capped by two piended roofs.

The interior of the Blinshall Street warehouse has a high ground floor with a wooden multiple tie-beam roof; a lower section at the rear features queen post and collar beams. The Guthrie Street two-storey warehouse incorporates a steel frame and concrete arched floors which were inserted circa 1900, with a queen post roof. The three-storey warehouse has had the north section’s first floor removed, but the south section retains original timber post and beam construction on all three floors. The L-plan warehouse has flanged cast-iron columns supporting wooden floors and beams with wells. It also has an open tie-beam roof. An internal stone dividing wall incorporates an arched entrance. A number of original iron-plated wooden doors remain.