59 Albert Street, Kirkwall is a Grade C listed building in the Orkney Islands local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 9 December 1977. Commercial, tenement. 2 related planning applications.
59 Albert Street, Kirkwall
- WRENN ID
- third-parapet-mist
- Grade
- C
- Local Planning Authority
- Orkney Islands
- Constituency
- Orkney and Shetland MP: Mr Alistair Carmichael (LD)
- Country
- Scotland
- Date first listed
- 9 December 1977
- Type
- Commercial, tenement
- Address
- 59 Albert Street, Kirkwall, KW15 1HQ
- OS grid reference
- HY 449 110
- Coordinates
- 58.98258, -2.9597
- Source
- Historic Environment Scotland listing
Description
59 Albert Street in Kirkwall is a late 18th century building that features single-storey shops added in the early 19th century. The structure is a two-storey and attic, five-bay double tenement block that is set back from the main street. It includes a central pend, three evenly spaced gabled dormers, and two three-storey crowstepped wings at right angles to the rear, creating a U-shape around the pend. The exterior is harled with plain cement margins, while the shops at ground level are cement-rendered, lined, and painted. The left rear wing is made of rubble, and the right rear wing is harled. The building has an eaves course and a corniced pediment above the central dormer.
On the east (principal) elevation, the ground floor is irregular with eight bays, featuring a central pend. To the right, there is a four-bay shop with a part-glazed timber panelled door and a blocked rectangular fanlight in the penultimate bay. Each bay has a window. To the left, there is a three-bay shop with a modern part-glazed door and a rectangular fanlight in the centre bay, with windows in the flanking bays. The first floor has a window in each bay, with the two windows to the right being larger. Each gabled dormer above has a window.
The west (rear) elevation features two three-storey, two-bay gabled, crowstepped wings flanking the pend. There is a modern projection from the left wing, with a window on each floor above. The right wing has a window on each floor in each bay, topped by a gablehead stack.
The ground floor has modern shop windows, while the first floor features 12-pane timber sash and case windows and 4-pane timber sash and case windows in the dormers. The right wing at the rear has modern timber-framed windows. The main block has a modern grey slate roof, with traditional grey slate on the rear wings. The roof includes a stone ridge, stone skews, and a cavetto moulded skewputt at the northeast angle. The gablehead stacks on the north and south elevations are harled and corniced, with ridged cylindrical cans and uPVC rainwater goods.
The interior of the ground floor consists of modern shop interiors, while the upper floors remain unseen and were updated in 1998.
Local climate
59 Albert Street, Kirkwall sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,130 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 89% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 97% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 2 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 99% of listed buildings. Of these, 2 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 2 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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