23 Blacket Place, Edinburgh

Sir James Gowans, 1859-60. 2-storey with attic and basement, symmetrical 4-bay rectangular-plan pair of idiosyncratic houses. Polished sandstone ashlar, polychromatic banded masonry, stugged rubble sides. Base course; dividing band course; bracketed cornice; banded quoins and central banded pilaster; architraved windows, with aprons at ground; semicircular pediments and carved keystones to ground and attic windows; bracketed cills and cast-iron window guards to 1st floor windows.

W (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: slightly recessed single storey entrance porches with glazed sides to N and S; glazed conservatory above N porch. Semicircular pediments to architraved doorways with round- arched fanlights. Venetian windows to inner bays at ground; round- arched single windows to outer bays at ground; single windows to 1st floor; round-arched dormers to attic; regularly fenestrated basement with decorative iron guards.

4-pane timber sash and case windows to ground and 1st floors; Venetian windows flanked by 2-pane lights; 4-pane sash and case; 6-pane sash and case to attic. Grey slate mansard roof with 1 mutual and 2 pairs of wallhead stacks, crowstepped, banded and with bracketed cornices; decorative iron brattishing roof, in front of basement fenestration, and along coping of wall to street.

INTERIORS: not seen 1996.

BOUNDARY WALLS: coped boundary wall to street; later railings; coped mutual boundary wall and gatepier to Nos 21 and 27.