12-13 Albert Road, Gourock

An earlier 19th century, two-storey, three-bay, classical villa consisting of two flatted dwellings, likely built in or around the 1830s, fronting the shore esplanade at Albert Road, West Bay, Gourock.

The villa is constructed of red sandstone with a painted render to the front elevation. It has exposed ashlar quoins, base and eaves course margins, ashlar dressings, and a projecting moulded cornice surmounted by a blocking course. A pilastered door piece with a cornice and tabletted blocking course is fronted by three stone steps. The door is panelled timber with a plate glass top light. Flanking the door are top-hung sash-and-case style window frames with a six-pane upper glazing pattern.

The rear elevation has a projecting stone forestair with ornamental iron railings accessing an oversailing landing with a timber porch. Openings to the ground floor have been altered. The ashlar dressings of two blocked windows are visible at the south (gable) elevation.

The interior, seen in 2025, retains its original flatted floorplan arrangement with a central hallway and two large front rooms. Both apartments have moulded cornicing, timber wall presses and cupboard recesses, working timber panelled shutters, and consoled cornice plasterwork decoration in the hallways of early 19th-century character. The upper floor has two cast iron fireplaces.

Stone gable end chimney stacks and a grey slate roof covering were removed from the building in 2021.

Historical development

Gourock was an early resort for sea-bathing, popular with summer visitors from Paisley and Glasgow from at least the 18th century.

Summer lodgings and residences became increasingly popular with the introduction of steamer ships on the Clyde after 1812, and the enlarging of the steamer pier at Gourock in 1840. Numerous villas at Gourock's West Bay (Albert Road) had been built by the early 1840s (Edinburgh Witness 1842, Greenock Advertiser 1844). The 'Low Gourock Road' became known as Albert Road after the esplanade and sea wall were constructed in 1899 at the height of Gourock's popularity as a Clyde resort town.

A building at Nos 12 and 13 Albert Road is first depicted on Thomas Grainger's map of 1836, which shows intermittent shorefront development along the West Bay. A building with the same footprint is shown in detail on the 1856 Ordnance Survey map, with upper entrance stair to rear. The map also shows that around 70 resort villas had been completed along the West Bay shorefront by that time.

An additional lodging (No.14), with gable end fronting the sea, was appended to the south gable of No. 12 and 13 before 1856. The availability of sufficient land to build an additional property suggests that No. 12 and 13 was constructed when the sea frontage at West Bay was less of a premium. The later villa addition was demolished in 2011 (Inverclyde Council, LBE-280-2001).

Nos 12 and 13 have continued in residential use since the mid- 19th century.