Description

Later 18th century. 3-storey, basement and attic, 3-bay tenement on sloping site. Random rubble with dressed margins. Regular fenestration.

S (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: to ground floor, timber-panelled door with letterbox fanlight to centre; flanking window to left with cast iron balconnette, recess for basement window below. To 1st floor, timber-panelled door with 4-light letterbox fanlight, flanked by window to left and right. Canted tripartite dormer to roof, flanked left and right by piended dormers.

N (REAR) ELEVATION: 3 piended dormers to roof.

W ELEVATION: only upper elevation visible, remainder obscured by No. 16-18 adjoining (see separate List description). To left, window to 1st and 2nd floors; smaller window above.

GLAZING etc: predominantly 12-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows; 8-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows to side sections of canted dormer. Dormers have timber fascias with grey slate haffits and roofs. Pitched roof; graded grey slate, stone skews and skewputts. 2 rendered gablehead stacks with circular cans to W gable.

BOUNDARY WALLS: S elevation is approached by stone flagged ramp. Access to No 20 between 2 ashlar gatepiers with cornice and pyramidal cap; platt flanked by cast iron railings to left, harled wall to right; teps to door with cast iron railings and hand rail. No 22 is approached by 2 stages of stone steps; harled wall to left, rubble to right; to left ashlar gatepier with square cap; wrought iron overthrow; stone copings and cast iron railings surmounting both walls. N (rear) elevation: rubble wall encloses garden on all 3 sides.

Statement of Interest

A-Group with 16, 18, 24, 26 and 13 Calton Hill and Rock House, Calton Hill.

Important as one of the few remaining examples of early tenement design outside the Old and New towns, this tenement stands on land feued in the 1760s to John Horn, wright, and William Pirnie, bricklayer, and was possibly built by the same.

This building is one of the last remains of the old Calton or Caldtoun Village, which formed the heart of the Barony of Calton. This was, before the development of Waterloo Place and the Regent Bridge, a community quite remote (both in social and infrastructure terms) from the City of Edinburgh proper. The village was part of the parish of South Leith, and members of the community travelled to Leith to worship. It was however considered unsatisfactory to bury the dead of Calton at Leith, and so the Incorporated Trades of Calton (est. 1631) bought and maintained a burying-ground for the use of the Barony. Before the construction of Regent Bridge formed a new direct route to Calton Hill from the New Town, the only means of access to the original burying ground and Calton Hill itself was via the "steep, narrow, stinking spiral street" (Cockburn) now known as Calton Hill (formerly High Calton).

The Regent Bridge and Waterloo Place development required the intersection of the burying-ground (now known as the Old Calton Burying Ground), and also resulted in the demolition of many of the old houses of Calton Burgh. In the 1970s, the remaining old village houses on the lower portion of the north side of Calton Hill were demolished. The street is cobbled, and on the south side retains a wide iron gutter into which a wedge attached to carts and carriages could be fitted, in order to assist braking on the steep and dangerous descent.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17795325

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

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