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Summary

Description

Robert Adam, 1770-71; attic and roof refurbished by David and

John Bryce, 1876; restored by Simpson and Brown, Architects, 1992. Symmetrical 3-storey basement and attic, 5-bay neo-classical house. Polished ashlar cream Craigleith sandstone. Square cut rustication at ground terminated by band course containing Vitruvian scroll. Tripartite columnar doorpiece with stylised capitals and fluted frieze with medallions; panelled door and modern timber fanlight (radiating semicircle within a rectangle); 4-pane sidelights; single step to platt oversailing basement. 1st floor cill course; modillioned and dentilled cornice; solid coped parapet. 1st floor windows with architrave and cornice; shorter 2nd floor windows architraved.

12-pane replacement timber sash and case windows (with horns). Each bay of mansard roof with timber piend-roofed dormer (remodelled 1992) to lower section and large 3-pane rooflight to upper section; moulded hoppers; grey slates; ashlar coped skews; patched ashlar stacks.

INTERIOR: entrance Hall with glazed timber inner porch (1992), original ceiling (diamond with central rosette and swagged husks) and modern (1992) stone chimneypiece to Adam design; glazed double doors with consoled overdoor to stair hall. Apsidal ended Dining Room (now President?s room) to left with Adam?s original Bacchanalian frieze, timber chimneypiece (1992) to Adam?s design echoing frieze; modern ceiling (1992) to Adam?s design and colours; modern overdoors (1992) with dentilled cornice; pair of doors in apse curved. Study to right with timber chimneypiece (1992) and modern ceiling (1992) to Adam?s design and colours; apparently original glazed mahogany presses flank fireplace; gib door to passage. Parlour to SE with simple veined marble slip chimneypiece. Modern toilets to SW. Stair hall with consoled overdoors at centre of each landing; painted stone stair with plain square iron balusters; mahogany hand rail starts with a spiral and steps up at final stair of each landing; square panelled cupola with egg and dart cornice. Cantilevered spiral stone service stair to W starts at vaulted basement and ascends to attic. 1st (Principal) floor with pair of drawing rooms to N joined by double doors of circa 1825; overdoors with cornice and honeysuckle frieze; original ceilings with colours restored as indicated by paint scrapes (1992), cornices and original marble chimneypieces to Adam?s design reinstated in both rooms. Large Drawing Room (Cullen room) to E; rectangular ceiling with central ovals and griffons in end compartments; chimneypiece with swagged husks. Small Drawing Room (Davidson Room) to W; square ceiling with rosette in a fanned circle at centre and quadrant corners,

4 roundels painted with cherubs; consoled and fluted chimneypiece. SE Bed chamber (Duncan Room) with timber chimneypiece (1992) made to an alternative Adam design for the dining room; projecting semi-octagonal former Dressing Room, now kitchen, as link to SW Bed chamber (Gregory room) with grey veined marble chimneypiece of circa 1840; shadow of former wallpaper concealed by pier glass; W window now link to New Library corridor (see No 9). Substantial 2nd floor rooms with simple moulded original stone chimneypieces; attic ditto with large room created to E. Cornices to all rooms, elaborate to principal ones; chair rails to ground and 1st floor rooms.

RAILINGS: cast-iron railings to basement area.

Statement of Special Interest

Built for Robert Orde, Chief Baron of the Court of the Exchequer, this was one of the first houses to be erected in Queen Street, which was built to take advantage of the northern views available in Edinburgh?s New Town, one of the most important and best preserved examples of urban planning in Britain. It was then, and is still, one of the grandest houses in Queen Street, as well as being the only symmetrical one. This also makes it stand out from Adam?s terraced London houses, which generally had the entrance displaced to one side. Adam?s plan was reversed in execution. The mansard roof itself appears to be original and merely altered (see Kirkwood). The David Allan catalogue suggests that he may have been responsible for the original roundels in the Drawing room ceilings, the present cherubs are probably 19th century. The link between the drawing rooms was enlarged with double doors in the earlier 19th century, at which time the overdoors were added. The plasterwork was carried out by Thomas Clayton Jnr, but it has been suggested (by Gifford, McWilliam and Walker) that the ceiling in the Large Drawing Room is not as fine quality as its neighbour and so may be a replica, but this seems unlikely. The same authors also suggest that the main stair balusters may have been replaced. The house was acquired by the Royal College of Physicians in 1864, who had bought and rebuilt the adjoining No 9 Queen Street in 1844. It was immediately re-let to the Edinburgh Institution, but in 1876 the College reclaimed the ground to the rear to build their new library (see separate listing). The College took full possession of No 8 in 1957, making a direct link via the quadrant corridor leading to its New Library; this enters through a former window in the Gregory Room (1st floor SW). It has recently been restored by Simpson and Brown with advice from Ian Gow and new ceilings and chimneypieces by Dick Reid. The two new ceilings were installed by Classical Plasterers of York, and the roundels, of appropriate medically related mythological subjects, were conceived and painted by William Kay on canvas. It is impossible to know whether these ceilings were originally executed. As part of this restoration the chimneypieces from the principal drawing rooms were returned to their original positions, the lift which occupied the stairwell was removed, and the plate glass windows replaced. The sideboard in the Dining Room, and the pier tables, glasses and back stools in the drawing rooms, as well as the festoon curtains, were installed in a historical spirit in 1992 (furniture designed by Andrew Johnston of Simpson and Brown).

References

Bibliography

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