2 Easter Road, Edinburgh

A two-storey school building with basement, built on a sloped site. The original structure was designed by John Chesser in 1874 and extended by Robert Wilson in 1894. It is constructed in tooled coursed ashlar sandstone with buckled quoins. The building features multiple gables with stepped, scrolled and plain skews, together with ornamental moulded skew putts. It has a base course, band course and eaves course, with slightly advanced margins and sloped window sills.

South (Principal) Elevation

The south elevation displays two storeys across four bays. The ground floor contains a central door within a slightly projecting moulded surround topped by a triangular pediment, a bipartite window to the right, and a projecting bay to the left with a central bipartite window and a single window further left. The leftmost window has a moulded surround featuring G H initials and rose and star motifs. The first floor has bipartite windows to the outer bays, each surmounted by a gablet, a bipartite window to the advanced second bay with rose and star motif surround and elaborate semi-circular decoration above containing a central cherub head roundel, a rectangular plaque to the gablehead inscribed "REGENT ROAD SCHOOL" with an ornate pyramidal finial surmounting, and a single window to the third bay.

West Elevation

The west elevation is organised as three principal gables linked across three bays on the sloped site. The advanced central gable contains three regularly placed bays to ground and first floor, with a slightly taller central bay at first floor level and a semi-circular moulded plaque above it, plus a blind arrowslit to the gablehead. To the left is a two-storey, three-bay section with single windows to the ground floor at left and centre, an enclosed stone piended porch to the ground floor right with a two-leaf timber door and round carved plaque to the gablehead, and to the first floor a slightly taller central gabled bay with a plain square plaque above and plain windows to the flanks. An extreme left gable contains two windows to the ground floor outer bays and a slightly taller central bay at first floor with a semi-circular moulded plaque above and single windows to the flanks. To the right of the advanced central gable is a two-storey, three-bay section with a central bipartite window and single windows to the flanks at ground floor, and at first floor a slightly taller central gabled bay with a plain square plaque above and plain windows to the flanks. To the extreme right is a further gable with bipartite windows to both storeys and a round allegorical plaque to the gablehead. Three hexagonal ventilators with matching candle snuffer roofs sit at the roof apex.

North (Rear) Elevation

The north elevation is approximately two and a half storeys across six bays with a basement. A three-bay gable to the right contains a bipartite window to the ground floor centre and single bays to the flanks, with a band course and a slightly higher central bay at first floor level with single windows to the flanks and a narrow window to the gablehead. To the left are three regularly placed bays to both storeys with a central first floor window breaking into the wallhead gable.

East Elevation

The east elevation comprises four linked two-storey gables with basement. To the left is a three-bay gable with windows to the first floor. A recessed two-storey, two-bay gable to the right has a "JUVENILE" plaque to the gablehead with lower paired windows to both storeys. The central gable contains a window and door to the basement, paired windows to the ground floor, and three regularly placed bays to the first floor with a slightly taller central bay. Two two-storey, two-bay links to the right have small windows to the ground floor and larger windows at first floor, with the arrangement reversed on the right section. An extreme right end gable has bipartite windows to ground and first floor. Each gablehead, except the extreme right, carries a stack.

Fenestration and Roof

Windows throughout are eight and twelve-pane timber sash and case windows with shouldered outer panes in the upper sashes. The roof is piended ungraded slate with lead ridging, flashings and valleys. Painted cast-iron rainwater goods are present. Low ashlar gablehead stacks with sloped copes rise to tall hexagonal stacks with low plain cans, and replacement ridge stacks sit on the original stepped base at the centre of the south elevation.

Interior

The interior is plain with little decorative detail to the former classrooms. Timber and stone staircases are present. The building is currently in use as a technical block, though the original classroom layout survives, as do the schoolyard and an additional ancillary block with toilet facilities to the south.

Boundary Walls and Features

A tooled coursed sandstone ashlar wall with dressed tooled piers defines the south entrance, featuring an advanced base course with sloped arris and a canted pier at the southeast angle with a moulded gablet advancing from a rectangular top cope. Similar walls advance to the north and west. A higher façaded wall to the southwest (forming the rear of the outbuilding) features implied paired canted sill windows with a central pier and flanking piers finished by moulded gablet copes, and a brass school letters box inset in the right pier. General walls on lesser elevations are coursed rubble with squared copes, their height varying according to the sloped site. Low coping only runs along the flanks of the southwest entrance gate, where railings are directly adjoining.

A long low stone bench supported on square corbels is built into the east wall of the main schoolyard.

Railings

Plain wrought-iron railings with orb finials enclose the site to the south, west and north, encompassing two former schoolyards. The southwest yard gate consists of two leaves of identical design, material and height as the railings, held between a pair of wrought-iron piers with stepped rounded caps and orb finials.

Outbuilding

A coursed ashlar flat-roofed ancillary building stands to the north, with an iron-barred door to the left and three high horizontally placed windows to the right. A painted blind brick lower extension to the far left has a canted northeast elevation. The south and west elevations follow the design of the boundary walls.