Cairngorm Hotel, Grampian Road, Aviemore

The Cairngorm Hotel, probably dating to the later 19th century with an early 20th century hotel extension, is built in a Highland estate style. The building comprises a 2-storey, 4-bay villa and a taller, 3-storey, 4-bay extension with a 3-stage angle tower. The exterior is of stugged ashlar with paler sandstone ashlar dressings, incorporating a base course and a stepped dividing course. A segmental-headed doorway is present, along with some segmental-headed windows, hoodmoulds, raked cills, chamfered arrises, stone mullions, and timber transoms and mullions to the stair window.

The east elevation features a 2-storey block to the left and a broad gabled bay to the right, containing a doorway at ground level, a bipartite window above, and a single window in the gablehead. To the left are three symmetrical bays, featuring a modern porch at the centre and tall, rectangular, tripartite windows on either side, with cornices, deep blocking courses, and decorative cast-iron brattishing. First-floor windows include a single window centrally and bipartites flanking it, all breaking through the eaves into dormerheads. The 3-storey block to the right has steps leading up to a modern porch and a wide, central tripartite window with a stepped hoodmould. The tower is located to the outer right. The first floor contains a central single window flanked by bipartites, and a stepped course above gives way to three windows at the second floor, each breaking into dormerheads.

The northeast tower projects and has three windows on each stage, a mutuled cornice, and a conical roof with a decorative cast-iron weathervane. The west elevation displays a variety of elements, including lower bays to the right with an advanced centre gable and a canted tripartite dormer window. There are tall bays with a jerkinhead roof and a fire escape, along with a regular fenestration pattern on the right return and mullioned stair windows in the re-entrant angle. The north elevation is largely hidden by the extension but retains a tall M-gable to the left and gabled dormers to the right. The south elevation consists of a single, gabled bay.

The windows are predominantly timber sash and case, with a 4-pane glazing pattern over plate glass lower sashes on the east elevation of the hotel extension, and 4-pane and plate glass glazing elsewhere. Leaded coloured glass is used in the stair windows. The roof is grey slated, with a fishscale pattern to the tower roof; modern rooflights are also present. Coped ashlar stacks have polygonal cans. Overhanging eaves, gables, and dormerheads display decorative bargeboarding and decorative cast-iron finials on the east side, with plain bargeboarding elsewhere. Cast-iron downpipes have decorative rainwater hoppers.

Internally, there is some decorative plasterwork, panelled dadoes, and coloured glass in the timber transomed and mullioned stair windows. A part-glazed 2-leaf screen door with flanking lights and a full-width fanlight with coloured glass lead to a hall with a mutuled cornice and a cantilevered dog-leg staircase featuring timber balusters and ball-finialled newel posts. A bar to the west includes a timber fireplace and a compartmented ceiling.