Head Post Office, 44-50 Commercial Street, Lerwick

W T Oldrieve for Board of Works, 1908-10. Post Office built in Scots Renaissance style, picturesque composition incorporating Post Office (Counters) with entrance to Commercial Street, and Royal Mail Letters Sorting Office with vehicle access to harbour at rear. Complex, roughly L-plan; long main 2-storey range to Commercial Street, 3-storey at rear, with 2-storey wing at right angles, stair tower in re-entrant angle. Harled walls with droved ashlar margins and detailing of dormerheads, crowsteps and deep, recessed eaves course. Sash and case windows, small-paned, some bipartite with stone mullions, side and rear windows barred at ground floor. Slightly swept, bracketted eaves, roofed with blue-grey slates, harled and corniced stacks, metal rhones, rainwater-heads with star detailing.

S (COMMERCIAL STREET) ELEVATION: near-symmetrical with advanced crowstepped outer gables flanking 4-bay centre block, which has 3 tall windows with moulded architraves at ground and 4 curvilinear pedimented dormerheads breaking eaves at 1st floor. Single storey advanced, flat-roofed ashlar shopfront overlays part of centre range and right gable - bolection moulded doorway to outer right with Royal Armorial panel over, 4 tall windows, wall-mounted posting box and stamp machine. Telephone kiosk in angle (see separate listing). Advanced gable to left has moulded doorway and window in corniced ashlar panel at ground, with ashlar balustrade extending across frontage to right. Bipartite stair window above.

N (HARBOUR) ELEVATION: asymmetrical; L-plan, main 3-storey range with 2-storey wing advanced at right angles to left, and pyramidal roofed, 2-storey stair tower in angle with bipartite at each floor. Flat-roofed vehicle loading bay adjoining main range at ground, extending across the 1st of 3 regular bays with tall bipartites to each floor, breaking eaves in pedimented dormerheads. Range terminating in taller, 2-bay tower-like crowstepped gable broken by balustraded parapet, with 2 round-headed windows at 2nd floor. Adjoining lower wing projecting to harbour; 3-bay, one crowstepped gable.

E ELEVATION: irregular fenestration; bipartites at ground and 1st floor, 2nd floor window with moulded panel over set in gablehead breaking eaves. Tall, corbelled wallhead stack.

YARD WALL: harled dwarf wall with ashlar cope and drum piers.