32 Melville Street, Edinburgh is a Grade A listed building in the City of Edinburgh local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 14 December 1970. 1 related planning application.
32 Melville Street, Edinburgh
- WRENN ID
- hollow-obsidian-heron
- Grade
- A
- Local Planning Authority
- City of Edinburgh
- Constituency
- Edinburgh North and Leith MP: Tracy Gilbert (Lab)
- Country
- Scotland
- Date first listed
- 14 December 1970
- Address
- 32 Melville Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7PG
- OS grid reference
- NT 243 736
- Coordinates
- 55.95001, -3.21261
- Source
- Historic Environment Scotland listing
Description
32 Stafford Street in Edinburgh is an impressive classical terrace building designed by Robert Brown, built between 1825 and 1830, with Nos. 28 Melville Street and 32 Stafford Street completed in 1859. The terrace features a unified façade of three-storey and basement townhouses, each with main-door and common stair flats. At the corner, there is a taller five-bay block with advanced end bays to the east, which returns with four bays to Stafford Street. The basement area includes some vaulted cellars and retaining walls.
The building is constructed of sandstone ashlar, which is droved at the basement and vermiculated at the corner block, with a channelled ground floor. It has a banded base course, banded cill and string courses at the first floor, a corniced cill course at the second floor, and a corniced eaves course. The corner block features a parapet with a balustrade at the centre. The doorways have plain rectangular fanlights, and the outer ground floor bays at the corner block have a recessed round arched surround. The first-floor windows have architraved, bracketed, and pedimented surrounds, with corniced surrounds to the outer bays. The return to Stafford Street mirrors this design but includes semi-circular balconies at the first floor. The building also has cast-iron lamp standards.
The windows predominantly feature plate glass in timber sash and case. The roof is a double pitch M-section covered with grey slates, and there are corniced ashlar gable ends and ridge stacks with modern clay cans. The building includes single and three-bay cast iron balconies, as well as cast-iron railings on ashlar coping stone edging the basement recess.
Inside, the interior is characterized by a highly decorative classical scheme with detailed cornicing. It has been converted for office and residential use in 2008. The building also features decorative cast-iron arches with lamp holders, glass lamp bowls at Nos. 30 and 40, and an original cast-iron serpent lamp extinguisher on the railings.
Local climate
32 Melville Street, Edinburgh sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 970 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 76% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 53% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 43 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 81% of listed buildings. Of these, 25 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 1 application
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.