Town House, 11-13 Victoria Street, Stromness

This is a late 19th-century town house located at 11-13 Victoria Street, Stromness. The building was originally designed as a town house and is constructed on a raised ground level, set back from the road. It is an asymmetrical building of three bays, displaying a Scots Jacobean style with crowstepped gables and a full-height, square two-light bay to the left, and an advanced gabled porch to the centre. The exterior is of stugged red sandstone ashlar with cream ashlar dressings, including a base course, a band course between floors on the left bay, a cornice, and a blocking course to the square bay. Windows have chamfered reveals, long-and-short margins, stone mullions, aproned cills, and stepped hood moulds above the door. Long and short quoins define the corners.

The principal east-facing elevation features a stone flight leading to a roll-moulded architraved doorpiece within an advanced, ball-finialled gabled porch, with a replacement two-leaf timber panelled door, an inscribed rectangular fanlight, and a window set back at the first floor. A window is located at ground floor in the right bay, and a fleur-de-lys-finialled gablet sits above another window on the first floor. The advanced left bay contains bipartite windows on both floors, topped by a ball-finialled gable.

The south-facing side elevation is three bays wide, with a timber panelled door and fanlight at ground-floor centre, a window above it, and a window with a finialled gablet above another window on the first floor to the right. An advanced gabled bay with a pitched addition at ground level is positioned to the left, featuring a window on the first floor and a gablehead stack above.

The north-facing side elevation presents two bays, with a three-light piended bay at ground level to the advanced gabled bay on the left; a blocked window sits above, with a gablehead stack above that. A blank bay is positioned to the right, alongside a tall wallhead stack. A flat-roofed addition is integrated into the ground level between the bays.

The building is largely fitted with 12-pane timber sash and case windows. The roof is covered in grey slate, with slate on the additions, a lead covering to the flat-roofed addition, a coped ashlar ridge, gableheads, and wallhead stacks. uPVC rainwater goods are also present.

The interior features architraved timber panelled doors, timber skirtings, timber panelled shutters, and decorative cornices in each main ground-floor room, including egg and dart, dentilled, and floriate details. An etched vestibule door is marked “CBS Ltd.” The main north-east room on the ground floor has been converted into a banking hall, including a floriate ceiling rose, a fitted timber-based bank counter with a steel grille (featuring a Greek key border, floral carvings, moulded pen-holders, and leaflet recesses on the customer’s side; and graded drawers on the cashier’s side), and a cupboard safe with a reinforced internal door and large steel lock. A central timber stair has cast-iron barleysugar banisters and a timber handrail. A meeting room for the Orkney Islands Council to the southeast contains an ornately carved chair dated 1903.

The property is enclosed by stugged and snecked ashlar boundary walls with a ridged ashlar cope, square-plan ashlar gatepiers with pyramidal caps and ball finials, cast-iron gates and arch, and decorative cast-iron railings along the boundary walls and flanking steps to the central door.