Black Bull Hotel, 9 Market Place, Lauder

The Black Bull Hotel, prominently situated at 9 Market Place, Lauder, is a late 18th-century coaching inn with extensions from the early 19th century and later additions. It comprises a two-storey and attic, seven-bay main block, a single and two-storey wing to the northeast, and an attached former stable block. The principal southwest elevation features a striking Palladian window with Gothic astragals. The main facade is rendered with incised lines designed to imitate ashlar, complemented by painted ashlar dressings, while other areas are harled. A base course and eaves band accentuate the principal elevation, while architraved openings add visual detail. Coped gables flank the main block.

The southwest elevation originally presented six regularly spaced bays, with entrances located in the second and fifth bays. The left entrance has a two-leaf, six-panel timber door, while the right entrance features a two-leaf, four-panel timber door and an ashlar cornice. Windows are positioned in each bay on the first floor, and gabled dormers are placed above alternate bays. A wider bay was added to the left in the early 19th century to accommodate function rooms and incorporates a Palladian window with Gothic astragals above a tripartite window with narrower flanking lights.

The northeast elevation displays the projecting gable end of the former stable block. A late 20th-century single-storey addition is set back to the left. A two-storey gable end of a mid-19th-century rear wing is also set back, featuring two first-floor windows, with a piended roofed section adjoining to the right.

The southeast elevation includes a blank gable end of the original block/byre to the left. A mid-19th century wing is largely obscured by a later lean-to section containing an entrance and window. Late 20th-century single-storey sections flank a large recessed entrance. The former stable block/byre, now two separate ranges, is set back to the right, with entrances and inserted windows.

The northwest elevation adjoins 7 Market Place.

The windows are timber sash and case with 12-pane or multipane glazing, many retaining original hand-blown glass on the principal southwest elevation. The roofs are covered in grey slate, and the building is characterized by three harled coped ridge stacks, including two gablehead stacks on the main body of the building, a wallhead stack to the rear, and a stack on the piended-roofed rear wing.

Internally, the ground floor reception room showcases Adamesque plasterwork on the ceiling, along with a panelled timber dado and round-arched niches. The remainder of the ground floor has been altered and is now open-plan. A first-floor room within the original section retains timber panelling, built-in closets, and a bolection-moulded fireplace surround. The first-floor room in the early 19th-century extension features plaster cornicing.