83 Colinton Road, Edinburgh

85 and 85A 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 houses also have fluted friezes and moulded capitals on the mullions, an ashlar eaves course, and bipartite timber dormers with moulded surrounds.

The northwest (front) elevation is symmetrical, with a single-storey lean-to glazed entrance porch next to the outer bays. This porch has a classical ashlar front and a rubble-built rear (with the glazed portion at No 85 replaced by a rubble forestair). The doorway is flanked by panelled pilasters and features a key-pattern frieze, cornice, and blocking course, along with a panelled door and rectangular plate glass fanlight. The central bays have tripartite windows on both the ground and first floors, with a dormer above. The outer bays feature shallow full-height canted windows arranged in a 1-2-1 pattern, corbelled to square in a Dutch gable topped with a ball finial, and a bull's-eye window with a keystone and shaped apron at the gablehead.

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

The houses feature 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 encloses the front of the property.