9 King Street, Kirkwall

Dated 1880, 9 King Street is a two-storey and attic, four-bay asymmetrical L-plan house exhibiting Baronial detailing. The house has an advanced crowstepped-gabled bay to the left, featuring a five-light, canted window at ground level. An advanced, square-plan, gabled entrance bay, with a corbelled design, is set at an angle, abutting a conical-roofed, engaged circular tower. The construction comprises squared and coursed rubble with polished and stugged sandstone ashlar dressings. A string course runs between the ground and first floors, extending as a hood mould over a heraldic shield above the doorway. Another string course is present across the entrance bay gable and as the eaves course to the tower, with a separate eaves course to the bays to the right. Window reveals are chamfered, and windows incorporate stone mullions with long and short margins and square terminal dies to the window cills.

The principal, or southeast, elevation features a moulded, stop-chamfered doorpiece at ground level within the central entrance bay. A dated heraldic panel is positioned above this, with a timber-panelled door featuring a rectangular fanlight and a window above. A window is also present at first floor level, while the gable above holds an attic window. A window is found at first floor level in the circular tower, which abuts to the right. Bipartite windows with single windows stacked above appear in the two bays set back to the right, with a small, centred, gabletted dormer positioned above. The advanced bay to the left presents a cantered window at ground level with a blocking course, alongside a canopied bipartite window with moulded angles at the first floor, and a round-arched attic window within the block-finialled gablehead.

The southwest elevation is irregularly fenestrated with a two-bay design. A ground-floor window is set in the bay to the center, with a non-aligned window on the first floor, topped by a tall wallhead stack. An additional window is positioned on each floor level of the bay to the left. The northwest, or rear, elevation is also irregularly fenestrated with gables and a single-storey, L-plan addition projecting from the left.

Predominantly two- and four-pane timber sash and case windows are fitted throughout. The roof is covered with banded grey and purple slate, with a grey slate fish scale roof covering the tower. A decorative, pierced stone ridge is present, alongside dressed rubble corniced stacks and predominantly cast-iron rainwater goods with decorative attachments and hoppers.

The interior features timber architraves, skirting boards, and panelled doors at ground floor level. A staircase incorporates cast-iron barley-twist balusters, a timber handrail, and panelled newel posts. The first floor interior was not inspected in 1998. Boundary walls are constructed of low cope, squared rubble, with square-plan, bull-faced ashlar sandstone gatepiers capped with ashlar and replacement cope-mounted railings. A single-storey, two-bay ancillary building with a pitched roof is located to the southeast behind the boundary wall. This building has a wide entrance with a two-leaf boarded door on its west side, and a gabled elevation. Windows, one formerly a segmental-arched doorway now blocked, are present in each bay on the north side. The roof is grey slate with a stone ridge, stone skews, and a coped rubble gablehead stack to the east. The interior of the ancillary building was not inspected in 1998.