Royal Hotel, 34 High Street, Penicuik

The Royal Hotel, located at 34 High Street in Penicuik, is a mid-18th century building with a 19th-century addition. It is a two-storey and attic, five-bay classical coaching inn, featuring five lower recessed bays attached to the right. The exterior is rendered and whitewashed, with polished ashlar margins and stop-chamfered arrises. It has a base course, a corniced fascia band course between the principal and first floors, and a cornice with a blocking course that includes a central wallhead tablet at the first floor of the original inn on the left.

On the south elevation, the original inn has a pilastered doorpiece with a corniced lintel, centered at the ground level, which includes a timber door and a plate glass rectangular fanlight. The remaining bays at ground level have regular fenestration, with further pilasters flanking the outer bays, and regular fenestration at the first floor.

The five-bay addition to the right is recessed and features a two-leaf, four-panel timber door with a plate glass rectangular fanlight in the outer right bay at ground level. The remaining bays at ground level and the first floor have regular fenestration. There is a single-storey coped infill at the re-entrant angle.

The west elevation has a two-bay gable with windows on the outer left and right at both ground and first floors. The north elevation is partly obscured by a later single-storey addition centered at ground level, which includes a coped segmental-arched pedimented doorpiece in the re-entrant angle to the west, along with irregular fenestration.

The east elevation is a blank gable with a roof that sweeps down to the north, showing remains of former walls rising to the first floor, facing the street and to the right of center.

The interior was not seen in 1999. The building predominantly features four-pane timber sash and case windows, grey slate roofs with lead ridges, and three regularly spaced slate-hung rectangular piended dormers. It also has cast-iron rainwater goods, gablehead stacks, and a shouldered wallhead stack, all coped with circular cans, and coped skews.