16-18 Maygate, Dunfermline

This is a large, three-storey and attic tenement block, dating from 1894-96 and designed by T Hyslop Ure. It comprises ten bays and exhibits baronial/Jacobean detailing, including crow-stepped gables, turrets, and pedimented windows. The principal (south) elevation is constructed of coursed dressed stugged sandstone with contrasting red sandstone ashlar dressings, while the rear is of coursed stugged sandstone partly covered in rendering. A moulded cornice sits above the ground floor shopfronts, and band courses are positioned above the lintels of the first and second floors; the second-floor band course is moulded and wraps around the windowheads like hood-moulds. Angle quoins are present. Window surrounds are long and short, with roll-moulded reveals to the ground floor, and chamfered reveals to the first and second floors. The attic windows alternate between triangular and semicircular pediments. Architraved tenement entrances are located at numbers 4 and 16, each featuring a six-panel timber door, stopped roll-moulded reveals, flanking pilasters, rectangular fanlights surmounted by a frieze with three rosettes, and shell-like semicircular pediments. Late 20th-century shopfronts are situated in between and to either side of the entrances. The outer left bay is canted at ground floor level, topped by a three-storey ashlar turret of circular plan with an octagonal upper stage, featuring three narrow windows with moulded surrounds on each floor and band courses across cills and above lintels. The second bay is set at a slight angle to the remaining bays and shares a crow-stepped gable with the sixth bay. This gable and the flanking bays include smaller corbelled turrets with octagonal upper stages and domed roofs surmounted by coronet finials. The fenestration is generally regular, apart from the sixth bay, which has a pair of windows on the first and second floors, and the flanking bays, which have two-light mullion windows to the first floor. Semicircular pediments with motifs – including a shield bearing the architect’s initials intertwined – adorn the first-floor windows of the second and sixth bays, with flanking crocket finials and one at the apex. Brackets support the second-floor band course, and a pilastered attic window is topped with a finialled semicircular pediment to the second bay. Dormer windows are the predominant form in the attic, apart from those on the gabled bays; these are typically ornamented with carved motifs and finials to their pediments. The west elevation is considered part of the south elevation. The windows are mainly timber sash and case with four and six-pane upper sections to the principal elevation, with varying types at the rear. The roof is covered in grey slate. A wallhead stack with a band course and moulded coping sits to the side of the gable to the second bay of the principal elevation, with similar ridge stacks, and a harled wallhead stack to the rear. Round cans are also present.