Lowood, Edinburgh Road, Edinburgh

Lowood is a 1910-12 mansion designed by Robert Weir Schultz, built in a 17th-century Scottish style. It is an L-shaped, two-storey building constructed of random rubble with detailed ashlar dressings. The ashlar includes roll-moulded details around the window openings. An eaves course runs around the building, and carved depictions of animals and foliage appear in the coped gabled dormerheads above some first-floor windows, breaking the eaves line.

The east (entrance) elevation features a two-storey circular entrance tower set in the re-entrant angle, topped with a conical roof. The doorpiece is bowed and banded, featuring deep brackets and a segmental-arched doorway with a keystone bearing the date 1910. A modern eight-panelled timber door is flanked by small windows, with a single window directly above. To the left is an irregular arrangement of windows, including two diamond-shaped ground-floor windows. A projecting gable to the outer left has a timber door with a three-pane fanlight above it, accompanied by single and bipartite windows to the first floor and a small single window above. The bays to the right of the re-entrant angle have a more regular window arrangement. A later harled and coped wall connects the house to outbuildings to the southeast, and a low coped wall with steps provides access to the garden to the northeast.

The south elevation is five bays wide, grouped as 2-2-1. A projecting gable to the left features a single-storey canted window on the ground floor, with two windows above and a bullseye window in the attic space. A variety of single windows are spaced along the ground floor to the right. A small window sits close to the eaves on the first floor, a bipartite window is to the right, and a flat-roofed dormer is in the attic.

The west elevation is four bays wide, with a regular fenestration pattern; a single-storey three-light canted window is positioned to the left, including a French window, steps to the garden, and plain railings.

The north elevation presents a single bay, centrally located on the north gable, with a two-storey, three-light canted window. The roof is covered in grey slate, with a red terracotta ridge. Corniced stacks break the roof pitches and are topped with circular cans, and cast-iron rainwater goods are present throughout. Coped skewes incorporate scrolled skewputts.

The interior was not inspected in 1997.

Single-storey, L-plan outbuildings adjoin the main house via a wall at the southeast angle; these have been altered with later timber additions to the south. The outbuildings are harled with vertically timbered gableheads. A six-hole dovecot sits atop the west gablehead, and a door with a canopy is found in the north gablehead, with a variety of timber doors. A louvred timber ventilator is located at the rear, and the roof is covered in grey slate with a catslide roof to the south, topped with a red terracotta ridge and a harled ridge stack with circular cans. The outbuildings generally feature predominantly eight-pane bipartite casement windows with projecting cills and cast-iron rainwater goods.

The boundary walls are constructed of rubble sandstone with semicircular coping. Circular gatepiers are capped by elongated hemispherical domes, and later wooden gates are present.