Description

Circa 1835. 2-storey symmetrical 3-bay rectangular-plan classical house with single storey recessed wings. Channelled polished sandstone ashlar ground; stugged 1st floor; rubble to sides and rear. Base course, dividing band course, cill course, and cornice with modillions. Blocking course advanced at centre. Architraves to 1st floor windows.

S (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: doorcase with fluted Greek Doric columns, paired pilasters behind, and entablature with modillioned cornice; timber 4-panelled door; geometric glazing pattern to fanlight; single window above and to both floors of flanking bays.

12-pane timber sash and case windows. Grey slate piended roof with corniced wallhead stacks.

INTERIOR: not seen 1996.

BOUNDARY WALLS: low coped boundary wall with some iron railings to front, mutual coped rubble boundary walls with No 2 and No 6.

Statement of Interest

Dr Benjamin Bell of Hunthill, an eminent Edinburgh surgeon and farmer, speculated on the potential for development in the lands of Newington. In 1806, aware of the demand for countrified dwellings near the city, he advertised his intention to sell 58 plots of land within his 8.5 acres. On his death in the same year his son George Bell, also a surgeon, inherited the land and, in 1825, commissioned James Gillespie Graham to design a plan for new streets within the grounds of Newington House, bounded by the back garden walls of Minto Street, Salisbury Road, East Mayfield and Dalkeith Road. Feus were offered for sale and Blacket Place began to take shape, the houses possibly being built speculatively by one builder or building company. Security was an important feature of the development, with Gothic gates, the octagonal piers of which survive, locked at night and single storey lodges at the entrances from Minto Street and Dalkeith Road.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17793174

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Building Small Projects (New Best of Fine Woodworking)
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects by Harwood, Richard (2012) Paperback
• 
  Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of Historic Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas
• 
  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)