St Margaret's Tower, 88 Strathearn Road, Edinburgh

St Margaret's Tower is a villa built in 1855, featuring two storeys with a basement at the rear and a distinctive three-stage circular-section entrance tower. The exterior is constructed from squared and snecked stugged sandstone, accented with polished ashlar dressings. Notable architectural elements include a base course, a bracketed eaves cornice, long and short quoins, crowstepped gables, and chamfered reveals.

On the south entrance elevation, the villa has a four-bay layout. The circular-section entrance tower is located in the third bay, with stone dies and ball finials flanking the steps leading to a west-facing doorway. This doorway is advanced and lugged, featuring a panelled door and a plate glass fanlight above. A string course runs above the entrance, and there is a carved heraldic panel at the first floor. The ground floor has a single window with a raised surround to the south, and at the first floor, there is another single window. The second floor features two single windows with a corbel table forming hoods above them. The roof is conical, adorned with fishscale bands and topped with an iron weathervane finial. The first bay has a two-storey canted projection with two windows, a blocking course, and a crowstepped gable that includes a hoodmoulded window set in the gablehead, finished with an iron finial. The outer right bay has single windows in a crowstepped gabled bay, also with a hoodmoulded window set in the gablehead. The second bay contains a margin-paned bipartite stair window with coloured glass. There are also single-storey rendered additions adjoining the outer left side.

The north (garden) elevation consists of three bays, featuring an advanced gabled central bay with a two-storey oriel and a round-headed window set in the crowstepped gablehead. To the right, there is a window at ground level. The outer left bay has a crowstepped gable with a single window, while the recessed third bay also has a single window. The right return has two single windows on each floor, and the outer right side has a blank gable end wall that is recessed further, with a single window in the crowstepped gablehead.

The west elevation has single-storey flat-roofed additions at ground level and two single windows at the first floor. The east elevation features a secondary entrance flanked by windows at the basement level and single windows at the first floor. The villa has plate glass sash and case windows, a grey slate roof, and corniced gablehead and wallhead stacks, with a snowguard on the south side.

The property also includes corniced and capped ashlar gatepiers along Strathearn Road, and a coped rubble boundary wall that is rendered and lined directly in front of the house, along with coped mutual walls.