Description

Mid - later 19th century. Single storey symmetrical 3-bay square-plan classical villa with basement. Polished sandstone ashlar; stugged rubble to sides and rear. Base course; eaves course; cornice; blocking course; architraved windows with aprons.

W (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: decorative cast-iron balusters and handrail to steps up to doorway; pilastered doorpiece; 6-panel timber door with plate glass fanlight; single windows to flanking bays.

4-pane timber sash and case windows. Grey slate piended roof; coped wallhead stack to N; corniced wallhead stack with corniced cans to S.

INTERIOR: not seen 1996.

BOUNDARY WALLS: painted coped boundary walls to street, with piers flanking; coped mutual rubble boundary walls with No 17 and No 21.

Statement of Interest

Dr Benjamin Bell of Hunthill, an eminent Edinburgh surgeon and farmer, speculated on the potential for development in the lands of Newington. In 1806, aware of the demand for countrified dwellings near the city, he advertised his intention to sell 58 plots of land within his 8.5 acres. On his death in the same year his son George Bell, also a surgeon, inherited the land and, in 1825, commissioned James Gillespie Graham to design a plan for new streets within the grounds of Newington House, bounded by the back garden walls of Minto Street, Salisbury Road, East Mayfield and Dalkeith Road. Feus were offered for sale and Blacket Place began to take shape, the houses possibly being built speculatively by one builder or building company. Security was an important feature of the development, with Gothic gates, the octagonal piers of which survive, locked at night and single storey lodges at the entrances from Minto Street and Dalkeith Road.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17793137

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Sussex: West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  London 1: The City of London: City of London v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Georgian Style and Design for Contemporary Living