Merchants House

The Merchant's House in Brechin High Street, Angus, was first brought to the attention of TBPT in 1997 by Paul Mitchell, Angus District council's Conservation Officer. The Building had sat empty for around twenty five years and as can be seen from the photographs on the left was suffering badly from neglect. Further damage to the roof was prevented during the 1960s when the local council re-roofed the building with asbestos sheeting. But unfortunately at the same time they removed dormer windows and a windowed nepus gable, a Scottish term for a tympan or tympanum gable, from the front elevation.

The trust proceeded to undertake a feasibility study, produced with the aid of grants from the Architectural Heritage Fund and Angus Environmental Trust, with the aim of restoring the building for community use. The study was completed in 2002. As well as being listed category B under the Scottish planning system, which is equivalent to grade II listing in England and Wales, the building stood in the centre of a large outstanding conservation area and within an area of archaeological interest. All of this area of the town was once owned by the near by Brechin cathedral with the archaeological remains of the Bishops Palace being discovered a little further up the street from the Merchants house. The building had been constructed in three phases to a U-plan with the two later phases and a central passage extending to the rear of the main building. The earliest of the two rear extensions holds a dated door lintel of 1717 which suggested that the main building was much earlier. Archaeological investigations undertaken on behalf of TBPT by the Scottish Urban Archaeological Trust revealed much earlier foundations beneath the later phases and a resistivity survey of the garden to the rear has shown further remains.

Despite the buildings poor condition it still retained many of its architectural features. These include two sets of crow-stepped gables, or as the Scots prefer, corbie stepped, corbie being the old Scots for crow. Examples of Lath and horse hair plaster work can be seen throughout the building along with an 18th century wash boiler, salt cupboards, ornate cornicing and original shutters.

The crowing glory of building is an extremely rare example of an ashlar post roof construction in the main building, complete with carpenters marks in roman numerals and pegged mortice and tennon joints, which were common to Scotland during the 1600s. Similar examples exist in Queen Mary's House and Stirling Castle. A dendrochonological analysis of the roof structure undertaken by AOC Archaeology revealed that some of the oak timbers had been reused from an earlier building, dated from 1470 and had been imported from Sweden or Denmark. It is now thought that these reused timbers originated from the Bishop's Palace and historical records of its demolition may yet be unearthed to provide a more precise date for the construction of the Merchant's House.

As a result the feasibility study and the investigations that it generated Historic Scotland reassessed the listing of the building and changed it to category A, equivalent to grade I in England and Wales. The study was also used as one of the major documents in support of a successful Townscape Heritage Initiative application for Brechin town centre.

Building preservation trusts exist as restorers of the last resort, that is to say when buildings are so neglected and derelict that no one else is willing to undertake the task. Although highly successful in this role funding and completing projects may take many, many years. TBPT were therefore delighted when the Merchant's House was bought by sympathetic private owners whom whilst restoring the building back to its original residential use intend to retain many of the historic details uncovered by the study.