86-88 High Street, Dunbar

86-88 High Street, Dunbar

A three-storey, three-bay tenement with attic, dating from around the later 17th to mid-18th century, though some elements may be earlier. The main block is set back slightly from High Street and features a stair tower to the rear (west), a pend to the left, and an early 21st century shopfront at ground floor level. To the rear, a long two-storey block from the 17th century abuts the main structure, with a lower single-bay, two-storey block at its west end. A single-storey brick addition from the early to mid-20th century adjoins this.

The front elevation is bull-nosed rendered. The remaining walls are largely red sandstone rubble with squared rybats to the openings. The roofs are steeply pitched with pantiles and slate eaves; corrugated sheeting covers the rear pitch of the main block. Windows are predominantly six-pane timber sliding sashes, many of which are boarded, and largely date from around the early 18th to 19th centuries.

The ground floor is a modernised shop interior, stripped back and knocked through to the rear block to form a single space with modern partitions added. The upper floors retain their historic layout and significant early fixtures and fittings. The second floor comprises a principal room to the front with two smaller rooms to the rear and a corridor connecting to the rear stair. Notable features include early joinery such as panelling, shutters and doors, a kitchen range, historic roof timbers retaining shipping marks (including from the Baltic), layers of wall finishes and wallpaper from the 18th to early 20th centuries, and the tenement stair, which has been removed at ground floor level.

The exact period of construction is unclear, but the arrangement and proportions of the main elevation suggest a date from the late 17th to mid-18th century. The lower floors in the eastern part of the front block may be earlier. The building appears to be an enlargement and extension of an earlier range fronting High Street, and may incorporate early post-medieval or medieval fabric from this earlier range.

The building appears on John Wood's Plan of Dunbar (1830) as owned by 'Miss Kellie'. Its footprint has not changed significantly since this date, as shown in detail on the 2nd Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1894 (revised 1893). The single-storey brick block to the west was built in the first half of the 20th century to replace an earlier building on the site, and is shown on the National Grid Map (revised 1963, published 1964). 20th century shop fit-out work stripped the ground and first floor levels back to external walls, removed the lower part of the tenement stair, and added internal support structures. The upper floors were walled off and abandoned from the earlier 20th century onwards. A broad chimney visible in a 1961 photograph has since been truncated.