Craigmhor Hotel, Newtonmore

Craigmhor Hotel is a circa 1875, two-storey and attic, seven-bay hotel facing northwest, built to cater for visitors encouraged by the arrival of the Inverness and Perth Junction Railway (later the Highland Railway) in Newtonmore in 1863. The hotel's front facade is of coursed grey granite, while the flanks and rear are of mixed rubble with tooled granite dressings. The off-centre entrance is sheltered by a continuous first-floor balcony that links two two-storey, four-light rectangular bay windows in the outer bays, and extends over a wide, canted ground floor bay window near the centre. An ornate cast-iron balustrade runs along the balcony. A squat, markedly bellcast piended tower breaks the wallhead, featuring segmental-headed dormers and topped with a square, corbelled platform with a decorative cast-iron balustrade. Second-floor windows also break the wallhead under gablets. The lower sashes of the windows are plate glass, while the upper sashes are divided into four panes. Coped end and ridge stacks are present, and the roofs are slate. Craigmhor Hotel represents a good and virtually unaltered example of a hotel built during a period of increased tourism in the Highlands. Details from the first (1870) and second (circa 1900) editions of Ordnance Survey maps provide further context.