Laurel Bank Hotel, Balbirnie Street, Markinch

The Laurel Bank Hotel, located on Balbirnie Street in Markinch, is an early 19th-century building with significant additions and alterations made in 1903, 1909, and 1931. It originally comprised a two-story, three-bay house on a corner site, with a larger house to the south, both later converted into a hotel, likely around 1931. Subsequent modern additions are not characteristic of the original design.

The original building is harled, with stone margins, base, and eaves courses. The 1903 addition is constructed of squared rubble with polished ashlar dressings. Notable architectural details include chamfered cill courses and eaves cornices, stone parapets with urn balusters, square and curvilinear corner piers, and a variety of decorative finials including ball, spike, floreate, and thistle designs. Chamfered arrises and stone mullions are also present.

The north (entrance) elevation of the original house is symmetrical, with bays grouped towards the center. A modern timber canopy obscures the pilastered and corniced doorcase at the center, while flanked by windows and regular windows at the first floor. Ropework detail and scrolled skewputts are visible to the right and left. The west elevation features a gable on the left with a door at ground level and a window above, alongside a lower wing with windows on both the ground and first floors.

The 1903 building’s east (principal) elevation showcases a rectangular block with a step up to a wide, advanced quadripartite window, set within a slightly projecting centrepiece flanked by windows which function as a door. The first floor mirrors the ground floor layout, incorporating windows on the returns. A stone balustraded parapet rises above, punctuated by square dies and ball finials, while the rear features pyramidal finials. To the right is a lower, advanced gable framing a corner, with a full-height canted window below a stone balustraded parapet, and a thistle finial to the gablehead. A modern flat-roofed extension on the outer right obscures the earlier building’s recessed elevation.

The west elevation is largely hidden by modern extensions, though a projecting round landing tower with a tripartite window and an ogee roof with a cast-iron finial remains visible at the center. Additional modern extensions obscure previously located windows. Cast-iron finials and ball finial skewputts are also present.

Most windows are fitted with plate glass within timber sash and case frames. The upper sashes of the quadripartite and return windows on the east elevation feature fine leaded and coloured glass Art Nouveau designs. Stair windows are similarly decorated. Ground floor windows on the north and west are plate glass in fixed panes, while a first-floor window to the right on the west has been replaced with a modern top-opening window. The roof is covered in graded grey slates, with coped ashlar stacks and decorative skewputts and finials. Square-section gutters with cast-iron downpipes, decorative rainwater hoppers, and brackets are also present. Low coped rubble boundary walls mark the site.