Description

Mid - later 19th century. 2-storey with basement symmetrical 4-bay rectangular-plan pair of classical houses. Polished sandstone ashlar, channelled at ground, droved at basement; stugged rubble to sides and rear. Base course; dividing band course; cornice; blocking course; architraved windows to 1st floor.

W (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: steps up to doorcases in bays to outer left and right with fluted Doric columns in front of pilasters supporting entablature; panelled timber doors; plate glass fanlights; bipartite windows to 1st floor above; tripartite windows to both floors of intermediate bays; tripartite fenestration protected by decorative ironwork to basement. Small section of single storey wing to right contains pedestrian doorway; single storey wing adjoining No 29 to left contains 2 pedestrian doorways.

2-pane sash and case windows. Grey slate piended roof. Corniced mutual and (paired) wallhead stacks.

INTERIOR: not seen 1996.

BOUNDARY WALLS: low coped boundary walls to street.

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 Q77772217

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

• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
• 
  Essex: Buildings of England Series (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Hertfordshire (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]
• 
  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Shropshire)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1958)