Head Gardener's Cottage, East Gate, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh

Circa 1840. 2-storey, cruciform-plan cottage with central advanced gables to N and S, porch with pointed-arch doorway to N, deep blocked eaves, and corniced octagonal stacks. Snecked sandstone rubble with ashlar to porch and window dressings. Base course. Long and short undressed quoins. Raised, chamfered window margins; stone canopies to first floor windows under gables; hoodmoulds to ground floor gable windows. Irregularly fenestrated.

N (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: advanced central gabled porch; later 2-leaf timber boarded door in stop-chamfered pointed-arch opening; stone-mullioned bipartite window above with small canopy. Narrow windows at ground flanking porch.

S (GARDEN) ELEVATION: tripartite mullioned window at ground to centre; bipartite mullioned window above; canopied window at ground to right of gable; bipartite window above; non-traditional timber boarded back door to outer right.

E AND W (SIDE) ELEVATIONS: tripartite window at ground to E; bipartite window above; modern sliding door to W; canopied window above.

Non-traditional uPVC windows. Corniced octagonal stacks rising from square bases. Large graded grey slates

INTERIOR: not seen 2003, but the Facilities Manager said that all the original doors and fireplaces had been removed.

BOUNDARY WALL: coped, snecked rubble boundary wall to E.