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Latitude: 55.9505 / 55°57'1"N
Longitude: -3.1891 / 3°11'20"W
OS Eastings: 325840
OS Northings: 673687
OS Grid: NT258736
Mapcode National: GBR 8PG.HD
Mapcode Global: WH6SL.ZPJN
Plus Code: 9C7RXR26+59
Entry Name: 40 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh
Listing Name: 36-40 (Even Nos) Cockburn Street
Listing Date: 12 December 1974
Category: B
Source: Historic Scotland
Source ID: 370858
Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB30090
Building Class: Cultural
ID on this website: 200370858
Peddie and Kinnear, Architects, 1859-61. 3-storey and attic symmetrical tenement block with shops to ground floor; 2 crowstepped gables with apex stacks and scrolled skewputts. Squared and snecked lightly stugged ashlar with polished dressings (painted to shops). Continuous cornice to ground floor; String course stepping up over blank panels to 2nd floor. Windows in stop-chamfered surrounds. Timber-panelled door with plate glass fanlight in moulded, shouldered surround. 2 bipartite windows to 1st floor; 4 segmental-headed windows to 2nd floor; small windows with projecting cills to gables. Timber dormer with finialled, swept roof to attic at centre.
4-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows. Grey slates.
A Group comprises 1-63 (Odd Nos) and 2-6 and 18-56 (Even Nos) Cockburn Street. Known briefly as Lord Cockburn Street, Cockburn Street was named after the doyen of conservationists, Lord Cockburn, who died in 1854. It was built by the High Street and Railway Station Access Company, under the Railway Station Acts of 1853 and 1860, to provide access to Waverley Station from the High Street. The serpentine curve of the street (anticipated in Thomas Hamilton's Victoria Street) gives a gradient of not more than 1:14; James Peddie and Henry J Wylie were the engineers. One of the aims of the design was to conceal the diagonal line of the street from Princes Street. A watercolour perspective drawing of the street by John Laing, published in THE BUILDER of 1860, shows how this was to be achieved. Stylistically, the intention was 'to preserve as far as possible the architectural style and antique character of the locality.' Peddie and Kinnear's Cockburn Street designs are an innovative adaptation (much imitated later) of the Scots Baronial style, previously used by Burn and Bryce in country houses, to the urban situation, with shops and tenements enlivened by crowstepped gables, corbelling and turrets.
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