1 West Coates, Edinburgh

1 West Coates is a large baronial villa built in the mid-19th century, featuring two storeys and an attic with four bays and crowstepped gables. The exterior is made of coursed, polished sandstone ashlar, with a string course and cill course between the ground and first floors of the canted bay. It has a corbelled hood-mould and a decorative cill course above the narrow gablehead lights.

On the south (front) elevation, there is a gabled two-storey bay at the outer left that is recessed, with a window on each floor. The penultimate bay to the left is advanced and features a recessed, shouldered doorpiece at ground level, which includes a panelled timber door with a large, shouldered rectangular fanlight. Panelled piers next to the corniced walls flank ashlar steps leading to the ground floor entrance. The upper stories are corbelled out, with a window on the first floor and a light in the gable. To the right of the doorpiece at ground level, there is a window, and a canted bay on the right has a window on each face at both floors. The attic storey is corbelled to a square shape with a gablehead light. There is a modern, coped, flat-roofed single-storey addition on the left, which features a cill course and 6-pane rectangular plate glass glazing.

The west (side) elevation includes a tripartite window at ground level, with pierced brackets supporting a stone balcony above, which is also a corniced tripartite window at the first floor.

The villa has 2- and 4-pane timber sash and case glazing, a grey slate roof, and a coped, shouldered, coursed sandstone ashlar stack on the east side, which has tall cylindrical cans. There is also a coped stack at the rear with cylindrical cans and cast-iron rainwater goods.

The boundary walls consist of low, coursed sandstone ashlar walls along the street, with an obelisk on a square-plan pedestal set to the right. The mutual rubble boundary wall on the east has saddleback coping.