Description

Circa 1790. Former pair of symmetrical 3-storey basement and attic, 3-bay classical terraced houses, now united as single office. Droved Craigleith sandstone ashlar. Regular fenestration. At centre, separate steps to architraved and corniced doorpieces doorpieces; 8-panel doors with plate glass fanlights. No 32 with pair of timber piend-roofed dormers; No 33 with single broad slate-hung box-dormer (2 windows).

Round-headed basement doorways with fanlight to suit.

4-bay rubble rear elevation; later full rendered brick attic storey to No 33; tall stair windows at centre.

Timber sash and case 12-pane windows (plate glass to dormers). Ashlar coped mutual skews; mutual stacks, rendered to E, rebuilt dressed stone to W; grey slates.

INTERIOR: plans are perfect mirror image of each other; joined by archway at ground, doors at 1st and 2nd floors. Curved cantilevered stairs at centre rear, lit by tall windows in projecting bows; plain square iron banisters. No 33 with later arcaded screens to stairs. Entrance halls considerably altered and adapted; No 33 with enriched ceiling and fluted pilastered archway. At ground, shallow apsidal ended front rooms with panelled dadoes and boxed in (removed?) chimneypieces; apse with mural in No 33. Single large rooms to rear with recess in N wall (removed to No 32); Venetian windows, partly blocked, right light of No 33 now a door to rear extension; chimneypieces removed. No 32 with door under stair to single storey rear extension. At 1st floor, Drawing Rooms with panelled dados, chimneypieces removed; fluted overdoors and ceiling rose to No 33, swagged frieze to No 32 (subdivided). Single rear rooms with simple moulded chimneypieces. At 2nd floor stair to attic removed from No 32 - access via timber stair of No 33. Basement stair boxed in at No 32.

RAILINGS: diminutive cast-iron fleur-de-lys railings (plain to stairs).

Statement of Interest

Currently (1995) empty and awaiting redevelopment. The stairs must have been built as a single structural unit. There is a scrap of 19th century mock flock wallpaper in the NMRS from a 2nd floor room of No 33. Extensive 2 and 3-storey office fronting Thistle Street Lane North accessed from No 33. The facade is the matching pair for, and the same build as Nos 30 and 31. A significant surviving part of the original fabric of Edinburgh?s New Town, one of the most important and best preserved examples of urban planning in Britain; Queen Street was built to take advantage of the northern views, and has survived remarkably unaltered to this day.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17576661

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

• 
  Northamptonshire: Buildings of England Series (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Surrey (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides): Written by Charles O'Brien, 2014 Edition, Publisher: Yale University Press [Hardcover]
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
• 
  Old House Care and Repair
• 
  Churches: An Architectural Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)