Firkins Bar, 42-44 Vicar Street, Falkirk

The Firkins Bar occupies a circa 1900, three-storey tenement building on Vicar Street, Falkirk. The building features a classically detailed facade with shops and a public house at ground level, commercial premises on the first floor, and a prominent bowed corner elevation. The exterior is constructed of polished ashlar with a base course, a ground floor cornice, first and second floor cill courses, an eaves cornice, and a blocking course. Windows are architraved, with those on the first floor accentuated by consoled cornices and stone mullions.

The east elevation (Vicar Street) has a central bay at ground level featuring a broad, two-leaf panelled timber door, a deep, blocked fanlight, and a fixed display window with a panelled apron, all beneath a fascia with paired brackets. To the left are bays forming the corner elevation. A shop is located on the right, with a modern fascia and two display windows to the left, an in-canted door, and a further window to the right. The first and second floors each have a single window in the central bay, flanked by bipartite windows, with a further bipartite window on the outer right.

The southeast corner elevation has five public house display windows, canted around the corner at ground level, displaying a narrow rounded fascia and cornice. The first floor features a bowed, wide-centre tripartite window, a single window to the right, and two windows to the left, all beneath a linked cornice, with similar fenestration to the second floor.

The south elevation (Melville Street) presents a bay to the right with a display window at ground level and a bipartite window above on each floor. To the left are two bays with two display windows to the right and two doors to the left, a bipartite window to the right, and a single window to the left on each floor (those on the first floor lacking cornices).

Plate glass glazing, some of which is etched, is found in timber sash and case windows on the first floor (except for the outer right on the east side), the second-floor southeast corner, and the two bays to the left on the south side. The first-floor east elevation windows are etched with Art Deco-style depictions of animals, birds, and a fountain. The roof is covered with grey slates, and features coped ashlar stacks with polygonal cans to the south.

The interior of Firkin’s Bar retains a good original decorative scheme, including two-leaf, glazed doors to a Melville Street entrance vestibule with etched glass and a fine panelled Vicar Street entrance vestibule with partial glazing and coloured glass clerestorey. Other features include decorative plasterwork cornices and friezes, mosaic tiled floors, screens, a timber-panelled bar and gantry, a tiled dado, and fluted cast-iron columns. A common stair for Melville Street has decorative cast-iron balusters. Decorative etched glass is visible at the first-floor windows on the Vicar Street elevation.