2 Palmerston Road, Edinburgh

Dated 1868, 2 Palmerston Road is a Baronial style villa originally designed as an L-plan. It was subdivided into three dwellings in 1954. The villa is constructed of squared and snecked rubble with polished ashlar dressings and quoin margins, featuring a base course and chamfered reveals.

The west (entrance) elevation features an engaged round entrance tower which corbels to square above the eaves at the second floor, positioned within the re-entrant angle to the left of centre. The doorway has a roll-moulded, shouldered design, a heraldic tablet above, and a hoodmoulding with foliate stops; decorative gun loops flank it to the left and right. A panelled door is topped by a plate glass fanlight. There are two single windows on the first floor, and bipartite windows on the north and west elevations of the second floor. The roof is attenuated pyramidal with a finial and swept eaves. To the outer left, single windows are placed on the ground and first floors. A full-height canted window is on the outer right, with etched glass lower panels, a dividing cornice, and a swept canopy with scalloped lead flashing. A single gablehead window sits above. A castle emblem belonging to the City of Edinburgh is set into a tablet above two narrow painted glass windows with a hoodmould at the ground floor of the inner right bay; a tripartite window is on the first floor. A datestone and gablehead window are above.

The south elevation is blank, with a single-storey, flat-roofed garage from 1954 attached.

The north elevation displays a two-bay main house with single windows on the ground and first floors to the outer right. A secondary entrance with a modern porch is found on the ground floor to the outer left, with single windows above. A single-storey gabled service wing, extended in 1887, adjoins to the outer left and has irregular fenestration, with a decorative gun loop within the porch to the west. A two-storey addition to the rear, from 1887, features a dormerheaded window breaking the eaves.

The east elevation contains a two-storey addition to the outer right with single windows on the ground floor towards the east and south. Dormerheaded windows are on the first floor (two to the south and one to the east). Regular fenestration characterizes the remaining two bays of the main house, and a secondary entrance with a plate glass fanlight is on the ground floor towards the outer left.

The windows on the west elevation are plate glass sash and case, while elsewhere they are predominantly four-pane sash and case. The roof is covered with grey slate and includes ashlar gablet coping, bracketed skewputts, a 19th-century timber gabled dormer to the north, box dormers to the south and east, three gablehead coped stacks, lead flashing, moulded eaves guttering, and some original rainwater goods.

The interior features an encaustic tiled vestibule, a cast iron balustrade with a timber handrail, and decorative plaster mouldings throughout.

Low saddleback boundary walls run along the west side, rising to a high coped wall to the north. Two pairs of rubble gatepiers and one pair of ashlar gatepiers, with pyramidal copings, chamfered angles, and incised panels (similar to No. 9 Palmerston Road) mark the boundaries.