Grand Hotel, 145-151 Commercial Street, Lerwick

Grand Hotel, 145-151 Commercial Street, Lerwick

William Hamilton Beattie designed this hotel in 1887, incorporating the 18th-century Stout's House, and it was enlarged in 1908. The building is a 3-storey and attic structure with an asymmetrical 5-bay Scots Baronial composition, sited on rising ground. The complex comprises a 5-storey single-bay tower at the south-east corner, built on the former gabled Stout's House, adjacent to a 3-storey and attic principal block facing Commercial Street. Various single-storey and attic additions extend to the rear.

The exterior shows a mixture of finishes: a cement-rendered shopfront, harl-pointed rubble to the lower floors of the tower, stugged ashlar to the principal elevation, and squared and snecked rubble to the side and rear elevations. All feature a variety of cement-rendered and stugged and droved sandstone dressings and details, with corniced and bracketed cills throughout.

The Commercial Street elevation has a tower advanced in a bay to the outer left. At ground floor, a corniced and painted shopfront contains a door to the left and a shop window to the right. The tower displays a single window at 1st-floor level in the bay to the left, centring at 2nd floor and offsetting left at 3rd floor. At the corner to the right rises a 2-storey corbelled and machicolated circular bartizan with narrow windows, breaking through the parapetted eaves and rising to a corniced eaves and conical roof topped with a wrought-iron weathervane. A corresponding bartizan appears at the south-east corner.

Recessed entrance bays occupy the ground floor to the left, with a round-arched vertically-boarded timber door abutting a re-entrant angle. Heavy carved rope hoodmould articulates around a datestone centred over the arch-head, with a cast-iron ventilator in a chamfered opening featuring a column at the centre. To the right, symmetrical bays contain the hotel entrance at the centre with flanking shopfronts. The modern hotel door sits within a stone doorpiece with panelled pilasters supporting paired consoles surmounted by a cornice and corniced dies, perhaps originally balustraded between. Three-bay shopfronts flank this, each with basket-arched openings to recessed central 2-leaf panelled and glazed entrance doors, flanked by cast-iron columns with 2-pane fixed-lights. A cornice articulates around the doorpiece, with an oriel corbelled out to the right. At 1st-floor level, bipartite windows appear in the outer left bay and regular fenestration in the right bay. A crowstepped M-gable breaks the eaves at the head of the bays, finial'd at left and with an apex stack at right, both featuring margined round-arched windows in their gableheads. Bipartite windows at 1st floor appear in the entrance bay, with a pedimented dormer bearing a thistle finial breaking the eaves above. A 4-light canted bay breaks the eaves and corbels out to a square with a crowstepped gablehead containing a round-arched window.

The north elevation features crowstepped gables flanking a centre bay, with a dormer bearing a pedimented dormerhead breaking the eaves. Apex stacks rise to the gables, though that to the right is missing. The right skew is built up to a platform roof.

The south elevation shows 4 bays grouped 2-2 to the left of the tower, with a door at 1st-floor level in the outer left bay and an additional window centred at 3rd floor.

The west (rear) elevation has a crowstepped gable with an apex stack at the outer right. The elevation is obscured below by a range facing Pitt Lane. Five irregularly fenestrated bays to the left display 2nd and 3rd floors visible, with lower floors obscured by single-storey and attic additions.

Windows throughout are timber sash and case, with plate glass to the principal front. The side and rear elevations are mainly 4-pane. The principal block features a platform roof with slated pitch to the east and piend roof, with a slate-hung timber dormer incorporating a plate glass timber sash and case window. Grey slate and tile piended roofs cover additions at the rear, with gabled timber dormers containing sash and case windows. Stugged sandstone stacks with deep copes and circular cans serve the principal block.

The interior features patterned, coloured tiles to the entrance vestibule floor, and plasterwork ceilings survive in principal rooms at 1st and 2nd floors.