Description

Sir James Gowans, 1859-60. 2-storey with attic and basement, symmetrical 4-bay rectangular-plan pair of idiosyncratic houses. Polished sandstone ashlar, polychromatic banded masonry, stugged rubble sides. Base course; dividing band course; bracketed cornice; banded quoins and central banded pilaster; architraved windows, with aprons at ground; semicircular pediments and carved keystones to ground and attic windows; bracketed cills and cast-iron window guards to 1st floor windows.

W (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: slightly recessed single storey entrance porches with glazed sides to N and S; glazed conservatory above N porch. Semicircular pediments to architraved doorways with round- arched fanlights. Venetian windows to inner bays at ground; round- arched single windows to outer bays at ground; single windows to 1st floor; round-arched dormers to attic; regularly fenestrated basement with decorative iron guards.

4-pane timber sash and case windows to ground and 1st floors; Venetian windows flanked by 2-pane lights; 4-pane sash and case; 6-pane sash and case to attic. Grey slate mansard roof with 1 mutual and 2 pairs of wallhead stacks, crowstepped, banded and with bracketed cornices; decorative iron brattishing roof, in front of basement fenestration, and along coping of wall to street.

INTERIORS: not seen 1996.

BOUNDARY WALLS: coped boundary wall to street; later railings; coped mutual boundary wall and gatepier to Nos 21 and 27.

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. This pair of Gowans houses forms a highly unusual interlude in the generally restrained classical character of the Blacket Estate.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17572153

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

• 
  London 3: North West: North West v. 3 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Kent: North East and East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Somerset: North and Bristol: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Cambridgeshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Harrow on the Hill: A photographic portrayal of listed buildings and structures (Historic Buildings Picture Guides)