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Summary

Description

Alexander Paterson, 1899. 2-storey and attic asymmetrical Arts and Crafts house. Corniced windows to ground floor. Swept roofs with bracketed eaves; kneelered skews to gables. Squared and snecked pink Corncockle sandstone with red Locharbriggs dressings.

N (KINNEAR ROAD) ELEVATION: advanced crowstep-gabled bay to outer left with oriel window. Mullioned and transomed stair window to left with leaded glass and carved panel above dated 1899; single storey polygonal flat-roofed extension below. Timber-boarded door off-centre left with circular astragalled window and small-pane-glazed fanlight above in pedimented roll-moulded surround. Flat-roofed 3-storey bay to outer right with small bi- and tri-partite windows. Mullioned and transomed stair window to right with carved panel above (Homeric profile and EABB); polygonal flat-roofed extension below dormer.

S (REAR) ELEVATION: bowed bay to outer left with segmental-pedimented dormer to swept conical roof. Narrow 3-storey gabled bay to outer right; Gabled bay to right with Venetian window to gable and 2-storey canted bay below. Tripartite dormer to roof.

E AND W (SIDE) ELEVATIONS: modern linking blocks adjoining. Bowed bay to E with finialled semicircular roof.

INTERIOR: original carved timber banisters and newel-posts to stairs. Several original timber chimneypieces.

BOUNDARY WALL AND GATEPOSTS: red sandstone rubble boundary wall with ashlar coping. Art Nouveau wrought iron gateposts.

Predominantly small-pane glazing to upper sashes, plate glass to lower in timber sash and case windows; leaded glass to stair windows. Graded greenish slates. Corniced sandstone stacks with cylindrical cans.

Statement of Special Interest

Built as a boarding house for the Edinburgh Academy, Scott House (named after Sir Walter Scott, who was a pupil of the Academy) is a mirrored pair with Jeffrey House (see separate listing). In 1896 Robert Mackenzie, headmaster of the Academy 1888-1901, had instigated the acquisition of the area of ground on the N edge of which the boarding houses were built, as a playing field (still known as 'New Field'). The move to build the boarding houses also came from Mackenzie, who formed The Edinburgh Academy Boarding House Company Ltd to raise the capital for their building. Previously boys had boarded in the masters' own houses. Each house was designed to have a house-master's wing, boys' accommodation ranging from dormitories sleeping seven to single bedrooms, a dining room, library, music room, sick-room and matron's room. In addition to their architectural merit the 3 boarding houses are interesting as examples of purpose-built private-school boarding houses, incorporating current ideas on health and hygiene. The average cubic air space assigned to each boy the bedrooms was 'above 800 feet in, which is the amount recommended by Dr Dukes of Rugby in his well-known book upon school hygiene.' 'Considerations of health and eye-sight determined the adoption of the electric light.'

References

Bibliography

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