5, 5A Cluny Avenue, Edinburgh

5 and 5A Cluny Avenue is a double villa built in 1890 by David Bell. This two-storey and attic building features two bays and showcases Scottish Renaissance architectural details. It is constructed from cream sandstone, squared and snecked rubble, with polished ashlar dressings. The design includes a base course and rounded reveals for the bays, chamfered reveals for the other windows, corniced windows on the ground floor, a moulded cill course on the first floor, an eaves cornice, ashlar mullions, and tall corniced stacks with rounded coping.

The south front elevation is symmetrical, with inner bays featuring bipartite windows on both the ground and first floors, and tripartite timber dormers topped with finialled half-pitched roofs and bracketed overhanging eaves. The outer bays are advanced and include two-storey canted windows with fireclay balustrades, corniced windows with semi-circular open pediments in the gable heads, and recessed entrance porches. There is also a single-storey detached garage located to the outer right.

The east elevation has three bays, with a central single-storey rectangular closed entrance porch that includes a fireclay balustrade, a bipartite window with leaded panes and stained glass roundels, and a round-arched corniced entrance doorway. Above the doorway is a scroll-flanked carved panel featuring an urn and foliage, leading to a round-arched panelled door and a tiled vestibule. There is a single window on the first floor above the porch, along with a tripartite timber dormer with a catslide roof. The outer bays have single windows and shouldered wallhead stacks, with a bipartite timber dormer featuring a half-pitched finialled roof on the left.

The west elevation mirrors the east elevation. The villa has timber sash and case windows, with 9-pane upper sashes and plate glass glazing on the lower sashes. The roof is covered with green slates and red ridge tiles, and there are four wallhead stacks and one transverse stack. The building features moulded ashlar skews and scalloped skewputts, as well as moulded eaves gutters and gutterheads.

Inside, the first-floor drawing room boasts a plaster ceiling in the style of the 17th century, complete with a swagged frieze and an ornamental arch to the bay, which is supported by carved and fluted pilasters. The property is enclosed by a tall rubble wall at the rear and side, with a low wall at the front that has later gates.