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Summary

Description

Later 18th century. Terraced tenement building on steeply sloping site, partly below street level; 2-storey, basement and attic, 3-bay, with central nepus gable to front and rear elevations. Harled rubble with polished ashlar margins. Regular fenestration.

S (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: stone steps down to basement recess; timber-panelled door flanked by window to left and right. Ground floor timber-panelled door with 3 ogee-headed light fanlight, approached by flyover platt overarching basement recess. Cill band to ground floor. To 1st floor, extra bay to far right with timber-panelled door with 3-light fanlight, approached by street level platt.

N (REAR) ELEVATION: timber and glazed door at far right. To attic floor, dormers flanking nepus gable to left and right.

GLAZING etc: predominantly 12-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows; 9-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows to dormers. Dormers have grey slate cat-slide roofs, timber fascias and lead haffits. Pitched roof; graded grey slate; stone skews and skewputts. Gablehead stacks with circular cans to both nepus gables.

BOUNDARY WALLS: front garden area; two tiers of random rubble arches, supporting platts for entry to No. 18 and No 20. Cast iron railings along platt to door of No 18. Cast iron railings and gate between garden and pavement; large obelisk-like stone feature. Rear garden area; high retaining random rubble wall to east, two doorways, one above the other, above ground level. Random rubble wall to north; segmental coping; doorway with dressed margins, carved lintel with patera and fluting; drip-mould above. From rear of building to north wall, stone balustrade with square section balusters and feather-edged coping.

Statement of Special Interest

A-Group with Nos. 20, 22, 24, 26 and 9-13 Calton Hill and Rock House, Calton Hill.

Former tenement, restored for the Cockburn Conservation Trust by Robert Hurd and Partners, 1981. It is important as one of the few remaining examples of early tenement design outside the Old and New towns. It stands on land feued in the 1760s to John Horn, wright, and William Pirnie, bricklayer, and was possibly built by the same. No 14, adjoining, is new, built by Hurd and partners for the Viewpoint Housing Association. Its Doric columned doorpiece comes from George Square.

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.

References

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