81, 81A Colinton Road, Edinburgh

81 and 81A Colinton Road in Edinburgh are a pair of semi-detached houses built in 1897 by Edward Calvert. These two-storey and attic homes feature two bays each, with side entrance porches and rear projections. The exterior is made of cream sandstone with red sandstone ashlar dressings, while the rear and sides are constructed from squared and snecked rubble. Notable architectural details include a red ashlar base course, a cill band course at the ground floor, and a moulded cill course at the first floor. The windows are stilted and segmental-arched at the ground floor, with decorative aprons on the first floor and attic windows. The ashlar mullions have fluted friezes and moulded capitals, and there is an ashlar eaves course. The dormers are bipartite with moulded surrounds.

The northwest (front) elevation is symmetrical, featuring a single-storey lean-to glazed entrance porch next to the outer bays. The porch has a classical ashlar front and is rubble-built at the rear. The doorway is flanked by panelled pilasters and includes a carved frieze, cornice, and blocking course, with a panelled door and rectangular plate glass fanlight. The centre bays have tripartite windows on both the ground and first floors, with a dormer above. The outer bays contain shallow full-height canted windows that are corbelled to square in a shaped gablehead, which has a shell-carved pediment. There is also a small bipartite window with decorative astragals, a shaped apron, and an open pediment at the gablehead.

The southeast (rear) elevation features a central single-storey projection with a mansard roof and a tall wallhead stack linked to the roof, flanked by quadripartite dormers. The northeast elevation has a single-storey part-glazed, part-rubble-built porch at the ground floor and a single central window at the first floor, along with a tall central shouldered and corniced wallhead stack and a dormer to the right. The southwest elevation mirrors the southeast elevation but has the glazed portion of the porch removed.

The houses have timber sash and case windows with plate glass glazing. The roofs are covered with green slates, featuring piend and platform designs with lead flashings and red crested ridge tiles on the front gables. There are three wallhead stacks and one central stack, along with a moulded eaves gutter.

The interior was not seen in 1992. A low rubble wall with saddleback coping is present at the front of the property.