4 Chester Street, Edinburgh

10 Chester Street in Edinburgh is a B-listed building designed by John Lessels between 1862 and 1870. This extensive terrace features a unified townhouse façade with main-door and common stair flats behind. The design includes three-bay townhouses and taller three-storey and basement corner blocks that project outward, with a shouldered archway between Nos. 10 and 12.

The building is constructed from sandstone ashlar, with droved ashlar at the basement and channelled ashlar at the ground floor. The entrance platts extend over the basements, and there is a band course separating the basement from the ground floor. The first and second floors feature banded cill courses, which are bracketed to central terraces at the second floor. A string course runs along the corner blocks, topped by a corniced eaves course. The corner blocks are parapeted and balustraded, adorned with plain bas-relief.

Recessed round arched window surrounds are present at the ground floor of the corner blocks, while the windows at the first floor are architraved and corniced with segmental arches, featuring rosettes on the cornices of alternating surrounds. The second floor windows have moulded architraved surrounds. The elevation on the return of the corner block to Walker Street is similar but lacks pedimented first-floor window surrounds and has blind windows on the ground, first, and second floors. The centre features a stepped parapet with a bas-relief panel.

The building has plate glass in timber sash and case windows, with timber four-panel doors set in round arched surrounds and plain fanlights. Narrow sidelights are located at the corner blocks. The roof is a double pitch M-section covered in grey slates, with corniced ashlar ridge and gable end stacks topped with modern clay cans. There are cast-iron, three-bay balconies on scrolled brackets at the first-floor windows, as well as cast-iron railings on ashlar coping stone edging the basement recess to the street, along with cast-iron rainwater goods.