43 Cluny Gardens, Edinburgh

41 Cluny Gardens is a two-storey and attic, two-bay double villa designed by J Sydney Farquharson and built in 1887. It features a Baronial style skyline. The building is constructed from cream sandstone, with squared and snecked rubble walls, and polished dressings on the front and sides. A moulded string course runs above the ground floor. Roll-moulded reveals, an eaves cornice, and tall, corniced stacks are also present.

The front (SE) elevation’s design is mirrored around a central point. The advanced outer bays have two-storey canted windows that corbel outwards to form a square shape in the gablehead. These feature a deep parapet, and an attic window within a consoled timber gabled dormerhead. The dormerhead has an incised semi-circular pediment and a finialled timber gable with an applied kingpost. Inner bays have single and bipartite windows on the ground floor, and bipartite windows on the first floor. A three-light dormer sits above the centre, topped with a raised moulded panel acting as a finial, and a pedimented dormerhead.

Recessed stone entrance porches are located on the side elevations, each with a roll-moulded doorway, a rectangular fanlight of leaded panes of coloured glass, a parapet with an open segmental-arched pediment, a panelled door, and a tiled vestibule. A window is included on the return of the porch. A single-storey detached garage is located at each house.

The rear (NW) elevations are three-storeys high, with a two-storey projection in the centre. This projection has a shaped, pedimented gable and a mansard roof. A tall, T-sectioned, shouldered wallhead and a mutual gable stack rise above the main block. A tall timber cross stair window at the centre has leaded panes of coloured glass, including stained glass roundels. Bipartite timber dormers have segmental-arched heads.

The SW and NE elevations are two-bay, with an entrance porch towards the rear (as described above). A single window with small leaded panes of coloured glass sits at first-floor level above the porch, and another single window is on the first floor to the right. Two shouldered wallhead stacks are linked to the roof, flanking a small dormer with a catslide roof.

The windows are timber sash and case, with plate glass glazing to the front, and four-pane and twelve-pane windows to the rear and sides. Attic windows on the front are casements with decorative astragal patterns to the upper halves. The roof is slate, with crested red ridge tiles and finials. Gabletted skewputts are present on the party wall. There are five wallhead stacks in total, along with a central stack. Moulded eaves gutters are also present.

The interior of the building was not inspected in 1992. The rear and side boundaries are defined by a tall rubble wall, with semi-circular coping; a low rubble wall to the front, with saddleback coping (altered at No. 43).