Janitor's House, Bruntsfield Primary School, Montpelier, Edinburgh

Janitor's House, Bruntsfield Primary School, Montpelier, Edinburgh

This is a large three-storey symmetrical Scottish Renaissance Board School with an en suite janitor's house, designed by Robert Wilson in 1894. Single-storey outbuildings and play shelters accompany the main structure, with a basement extending to the rear. The third storey breaks the parapet line as an attic storey.

The building is constructed in grey squared and snecked rubble with red ashlar dressings and rounded arrises. A base course runs across the ground, with string courses positioned above the ground and first floors, and a first-floor cill course. A heavy eaves cornice marks the main block, and dormerheads feature coped triangular pediments. Angle pilasters with stone ball finials provide vertical emphasis. Ashlar mullions frame the windows throughout.

The south-east front elevation displays ten bays with two-storey recessed entrance pavilions flanking the composition. Four central bays contain bipartite windows to each floor and bay, with dormer windows above and the inscription "Bruntsfield Public School" positioned above the ground floor. Projecting three-bay gables to the outer left and right incorporate angle pilasters. A two-storey advanced central bay features angle pilasters and tripartite windows to ground and first-floor levels, with the first-floor window apron panelled with a figurative roundel carved with an educational theme. Single windows occupy the outer bays. The gablehead contains a diamond-panelled balustrade with ball finials to a tripartite corniced window flanked by pilasters and a semi-circular pediment with heraldic carving, with a blind arrowslit window above. The gable features coped skews, apex and skewputts with ball finials. The recessed entrance pavilions have two bays with angle pilasters, two-leaf panelled doors with three-pane rectangular fanlights and moulded margins in the inner bays, pulvinated frieze and dentilled cornices, and scrolled plaques above inscribed "BOYS" to the right pavilion and "GIRLS" to the left. Small bipartite windows sit above the doors. Slightly advanced two-storey outer bays of ashlar contain tripartite windows to each floor, with the first-floor window breaking the eaves and crowned by a finialled bellcast roof. Pedestals with decorative cast-iron lamps flank each doorway.

The north-west rear elevation spans twelve bays with projecting four-bay outer pavilions featuring angle pilasters and a blank bay towards the centre. The outer three bays are gabled with single windows at basement and ground-floor levels (including one tripartite window at basement level in the left projection with a rear door to the right of centre). Central windows in the gableheads are corniced with pilasters and semi-circular pediments, flanked by single windows. The return elevations are gabled with bipartite windows flanked by single windows to each floor and blind arrowslit windows in the gableheads. A tall square corniced stalk for a heating plant, later raised in brick, replaces the outer right windows on the return of the left projection in the re-entrant angle. Central bays feature architraved bipartite windows at ground-floor level and bipartite windows with cornices, friezes, pilasters, and heavy mullions and transoms at first-floor level, with a bracketed eaves cornice above. A single-storey three-bay flat-roofed projection in the re-entrant angle of the left projection contains two bipartite windows to the left.

The south-west elevation spans ten bays with a three-bay projection to the outer left featuring central bipartite windows flanked by single windows to each floor. The first-floor bipartite window is framed by ball-finialled pilasters and breaks the eaves with a shaped gable and water-spout finial. The centre four bays comprise two linked gables with corniced apex stacks and angle pilasters, two bipartite windows per floor beneath each gable, and stepped narrow tripartites in the gableheads. The return elevation of the two-storey entrance pavilion occupies bays to the right of centre with single windows to each floor and a blind oculus in the gablehead. A gabled dormer with a corniced apex stack and bipartite window crowns the main block behind. A recessed outer right bay contains tripartite windows to ground and first-floor levels and a bipartite dormer above.

The north-east elevation mirrors the south-west elevation.

The Janitor's House is a two-storey single-bay structure with a gabled elevation positioned at the north-east corner of the playground adjacent to a neighbouring tenement. Its front elevation displays a corniced tripartite window at ground-floor level and a bipartite window with semi-circular pediment above at first-floor level, crowned by a ball-finialled gable. The side elevation contains a two-storey square entrance porch left of centre with a half-piend roof, first-floor cill course, and small bipartite windows to each floor. A corniced doorway faces the re-entrant angle to the right, with narrow single windows in a bay to the right of centre. The rear elevation has unevenly arranged single windows.

Outbuildings and shelters are arranged around the perimeter of the ground to the rear and sides, featuring piend roofs. Stone outbuildings are detailed as the main block, while play shelters employ slender cast-iron columns supporting open timber roofs. Multi-pane glazing in timber sash-and-case windows, predominantly twelve-pane, glazes the building. The roof is green slate with lead flashings, decorative cast-iron gutterheads and brackets, and a bellcote crowning the main block with a slate-hung base, timber birdcage bellcote and Sterling Town Hall-type leaded roof.

The interior was not seen in 1992.

A high coped rubble boundary wall meets the side elevations at right angles, abutted by modern extensions. A low rubble boundary wall with gatepiers to the front incorporates plain cast-iron railings.