Royal Bank Of Scotland, 1, 3 Victoria Street, Stromness

The Royal Bank of Scotland, located at 1 and 3 Victoria Street in Stromness, was built in 1864 and has undergone later alterations. It is a three-storey, three-bay rectangular-plan bank designed in an asymmetrical Scots Jacobean style. The building features a corbelled crow-stepped gable on the left and finialled gablets on the right. It is constructed from stugged and snecked red sandstone ashlar, accented with polished cream ashlar dressings. Architectural details include a base course, a string course that acts as stepped hood-moulds over the ground floor openings, and an eaves course. The openings have chamfered reveals, stone mullions for the bipartite windows, and crow-stepped gables on the north and south sides, along with long and short margins and quoins.

On the principal elevation (east), there is a shouldered-arched door in the left bay, featuring a modern timber door with a fanlight. Behind it is a modern, part-glazed timber panelled door with a fanlight. Above, there is a bipartite window on each floor. The finialled gablehead features a recessed segmental-arched date panel. In the central bay, a bipartite window at ground level has the lower right light converted into a cash dispenser, with a single window above on the first floor and a single thistle-finialled dormer window breaking the eaves on the second floor. The right bay also has a shouldered-arched door at ground level with a blank armorial panel below the hood mould, a modern timber door, and a fanlight, mirroring the arrangement of the central bay above.

The south side elevation has a gabled design with two bays. It features a window at ground level and another window above in the right bay. There is a small, round-arched recess at the finialled gablehead above. The north side elevation is mostly blank, with a small round-arched recess below the gablehead stack.

The building has two- and six-pane timber sash and case windows, a grey slate roof, ashlar skews, cavetto- and block-moulded skewputts, and a coped ashlar gablehead stack on the north side. Decorative cast-iron rainwater goods with thistle-leaf brackets and dated hoppers from 1898 are also present.

Inside, the bank has been modernized, but some features remain, including timber-panelled window recesses and decorative thistle cornices in the main reception hall.

The boundary walls consist of low squared and snecked rubble with flat ashlar copes along the east front of the bank, likely added later.