3 Blackford Road, Edinburgh

3 Blackford Road is a double villa built around 1853. It has two storeys and a near rectangular plan with six bays. The exterior is made of squared and snecked sandstone, featuring polished dressings, a base course, a dividing string course, chamfered reveals, roll-moulded basket-arched doorways, boarded doors, and decorative iron hinges.

The elevation facing North Blackford Road is symmetrical and mirrored about the centre. It has advanced gabled doorways in the second and fifth bays, with round-arched windows above on the first floor that are corbelled. The ground floor features margin-panel windows on the returns, while the taller gabled third and fourth bays contain three-light windows. Above the ground floor windows are blank heraldic panels, and there are round-headed slits in the gableheads. Single windows are located in the recessed bays on the outer left and right, with first-floor windows that break the eaves in pedimented dormerheads. A shouldered and corniced four-flue wallhead stack is positioned between the third and fourth bays.

The South rear elevation is also symmetrical with six bays. It features full-height five-light canted windows in the taller third and fourth bays, with leaded dividing bands and a parapet on the third bay and a decorative parapet on the fourth bay. Single windows are found in the second and fifth bays, with first-floor windows in the outer left and right bays that break the eaves in pedimented dormerheads. A shouldered wallhead stack is located between the third and fourth bays. The East and West elevations have M-gabled roofs, a secondary entrance, and irregularly placed single windows. The windows are small-pane sash and case. The roof is covered with grey slate, and there is a wallhead stack with a barleysugar can to the North, along with corniced gablehead stacks to the East and West, and rendered wallhead stacks to the South. The entrance gables feature slab coping and stone finials, and the original rainwater goods, including hoppers and scroll skewputts, are still in place.

The boundary walls consist of a low coped squared and snecked wall along Blackford Road, with high coped pink rubble walls for mutual boundaries. There is a modern flat-roofed garage adjoining No. 1. The interiors were not seen in 1991.