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Summary

Description

Peddie and Kinnear, circa 1867; later alterations with some rooms altered to form part of the interior to No. 3 Rothesay Terrace (see separate listing). Pair of 4-storey and basement, 2-bay (on ground falling to rear) terraced townhouses with Italianate classical detailing; bowed bays and Corinthian column mullions on ground floor. Basement area to street including some vaulted cellars and retaining walls. Sandstone ashlar; channelled at ground floor. Entrance platts oversailing basements. Banded base course. Corniced string courses. Similar string course at 1st floor; corniced above bowed bays and windows. Moulded cill course at 3rd floor. Corniced eaves course. Corniced and consoled doorpiece with glazed sidelights; rectangular margin-paned and multi-pane fanlights. 2-storey 3-light bowed bays fluted Corinthian columned mullions at 1st floor. Corniced bipartite window with fluted Corinthian column centre mullion and Corinthian pilasters above doorways. Consoled and corniced tripartite and bipartite windows at 2nd floor with bracketed cills. Shouldered architraved 3rd floor windows.

REAR (N) ELEVATION: 6 storeys, roughly 6 bays. Regular squared coursed rubble with ashlar quoins, cills, lintels and rybats. Some painted lintels. Regular fenestration, with full height canted bay to outer bays. Blind windows to right side of canted bay at 1st and 2nd floors.

Plate glass in timber sash and case windows; bowed glazing to bays to S elevation. Margin-paned and multipane glazing to fanlights and sidelights. Double pitch M-section roof. Corniced ashlar stacks with modern clay cans. Cast-iron railings on ashlar cope edging basement recess to street. Cast-iron rainwater goods.

Statement of Special Interest

Well detailed classical townhouses designed by Peddie and Kinnear. The dramatic design is an important component of the streetscape with characteristic features, such as fluent architectural detailing, and a fine use of Corinthian columns and pilasters in prominent bowed bays making a fine contribution to the streetscape.

Number 2 Rothesay Terrace was owned by J R Findlay (editor of the Scotsman) and used as his townhouse. Findlay had the next door property (No.3) built on an empty plot which he acquired and used the house predominantly for entertaining. Living space for him and his family remained in No. 2 until it was later sold. The side windows of the bay to the rear of No.2 were blocked at this point so that the new owner would not overlook the terrace of No.3 which Findlay still owned.

Peddie and Kinnear were an extremely successful Edinburgh practice gaining a large number of high profile public and commercial commissions including churches, hydropathics, poorhouses and numerous banks and hospitals. They also began to build speculatively, and developed high quality residential schemes from the 1860s onwards. The partnership was always forward looking and the adoption of the Greco-Italian style for this development is typical of the grander essays in this style used in their commercial buildings, especially banks. By the time the practice was involved in Rothesay Place in 1878 it had taken on John More Dick Peddie (John Dick Peddie's son). A year later in 1879 the older Peddie retired and the practice became known as Kinnear and Peddie.

Later alterations mean that some of the rooms which formerly formed part of No. 2 now form part of the interior to No. 3 Rothesay Terrace (see separate listing).

(List description revised 2009 as part of re-survey.)

References

Bibliography

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