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Latitude: 55.9504 / 55°57'1"N
Longitude: -3.1886 / 3°11'19"W
OS Eastings: 325870
OS Northings: 673676
OS Grid: NT258736
Mapcode National: GBR 8PG.LF
Mapcode Global: WH6SL.ZPRQ
Plus Code: 9C7RXR26+5G
Entry Name: 50 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh
Listing Name: 50 Cockburn Street
Listing Date: 12 December 1974
Category: B
Source: Historic Scotland
Source ID: 370861
Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB30093
Building Class: Cultural
ID on this website: 200370861
Peddie and Kinnear, Architects, 1859-61. 3-storey and attic tenement with modern shops to ground on narrow, sloping site between Jackson's Close and Fleshmarket Close, 2 bays to Cockburn Street, that to NE circular, corbelled out at 2nd floor to circular stair tower with finialled, fish-scale slated conical roof. Squared and snecked lightly stugged sandstone. Continuous cornice to ground floor. Blank crowstep-gabled bay with blank inscription panel to Fleshmarket Close. Gabled bay to Cockburn Street with mullioned bipartite windows to 1st and 2nd floors.
Plate glass in timber sash and case windows; bowed glass to corner tower. Grey slates. Stone skews.
A Group comprises 1-63 (Odd Nos) and 2-6 and 18-56 (Even Nos) Cockburn Street. Restored by the City Architect's Department, 1878-81. 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 application (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, linked by moulded string courses.
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