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Summary

Description

Later 18th century. 3-storey and attic, 2 bays (3 bay to rear) tenement building on elevated site above street level. Random rubble with dressed margins. Regular fenestration.

S (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: timber-panelled door with lozenge pattern letterbox fanlight to left bay. Canted tripartite timber dormer to roof.

N (REAR) ELEVATION: dormer to roof to right, canted tripartite timber dormer to left.

GLAZING etc: predominantly 12-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows; 4-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows to side sections of tripartite dormers. Dormers have timber fascias, grey slate haffits and piend roofs. 2 rooflights to S elevation. Pitched roof; graded grey slates; stone skews and skewputts. Rendered gable-end stack with circular cans to E gable.

BOUNDARY WALLS: paved ramp leading to stone steps (modern handrails). High rubble retaining walls with stone copes flank steps; paved pathway to door, decorative cast iron railing flanking both sides. To rear, rubble wall to E and W; low rubble N wall, surmounted by decorative cast iron railings and gate.

Statement of Special Interest

A-Group with 16, 18, 20, 20, 24, and 9-13 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.

References

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