70 Hamilton Place With Gate Piers And Boundary Walls, Aberdeen

This is a pair of semi-detached villas, built in 1886 to the design of Pirie and Clyne, with John Morgan acting as builder. They are located at 70 Hamilton Place, Aberdeen, and are accompanied by boundary walls and gate piers. The villas exhibit Egyptian-Greek detailing.

The buildings are two storeys and an attic, constructed from rough-faced pink granite with grey granite used for the bow windows and parapet, with finer detailing at the margins. A grey granite base course and ground-floor cill course are present, alongside panelled timber doors with letterbox fanlights. A grey granite lintel band runs along the first floor, and a parapet sits above the principal elevation's pediments.

The symmetrical principal (south) elevation comprises two mirrored, semi-detached villas, each with two bays. Broad doorways are centrally located on the ground floor, featuring decorative volute brackets and deep-set panelled timber doors with glazed panels, each topped by a broad fanlight with turned mullions. Single windows are positioned above them on the first floor with reveals that taper towards the base, and a sunken fillet beneath the lintels. Bowed windows extend through the ground and first floors on the outer left and right bays, forming a balcony to the attic floor. Pilastered mullions with a sunken fillet at the capital are characteristic of the first-floor windows. The attic floor is pedimented, flanked by deep scrolls, with a window in each side and decorative volutes below the lintel. Large decorative paterae are centered in the pediments, topped by a decorative stone finial. Wallhead stacks flank the pediments.

The north-east elevation is gabled, with a first-floor window centrally placed. An addition featuring a ground-floor doorway to number 68A is situated on the outer right. The north-west elevation features lean-to additions to the outer ground-floor bays, with gabled outer bays at attic level. The south-west elevation is also gabled, with a first-floor window centrally placed and an addition with a ground-floor doorway on the outer left.

The windows are predominantly two-pane timber sash and case. Corniced gablehead and wallhead stacks are topped with circular cans. The roof is grey slate with lead ridges, incorporating stone skews and cast-iron rainwater goods.

The interiors are particularly fine. Numbers 68 and 68A retain decorative timber and stone fireplaces, mouldings, and doors. Number 68A features a husked plaster frieze and ceiling, while a fine stained glass window is found within the inner door, leading to a staircase with decoratively turned balusters and elaborate wallpaper below the dado. Number 70 boasts a tiled floor in the oak-panelled porch with fine leaded glazing panels, surviving mouldings and doors, a neo-classical frieze in the hall and principal rooms, and distinctively turned balusters to the staircase.

The boundary walls are constructed from low, rough-faced pink granite in an Aberdeen bond, with grey granite snecking and coping. Gate piers, shared with numbers 64-66 and 72 Hamilton Place (listed separately), have grey granite shafts that sweep up from the plinth, with a rough-faced pink granite neck surmounted by a scrolled cap. Rubble dividing walls are found to the east and west.