20 Walker Street, Edinburgh

This is a group of classical houses built between 1814 and 1856, located on Melville Crescent, Melville Street, and Walker Street in Edinburgh. The earlier section, designed by Robert Brown in 1814, was later linked to a design by John Lessels dating from 1855-6, creating a unified facade. The buildings are three storeys high with a basement, and include both main-door and common stair flats. A later attic addition has been made to number 1 Melville Crescent. The basement area extends to street level and incorporates vaulted cellars and retaining walls.

The facades are constructed from sandstone ashlar, with the ground floor channelled. Features include a banded base course, banded cills, and string courses at the first and second floors. Stepped parapets with balustrades are present, alongside cast-iron balconies with foliate brackets on the first floor. Decorative cast-iron arches with lamp holders are positioned above the entrance platts on Melville Street.

The east-facing elevation to Melville Crescent is symmetrical, with nine bays. The central three bays and the single end bays are advanced and pilastered, featuring arched, bracketed, and corniced windows on the first floor. The southeast-facing elevations to Melville Street and Walker Street are also symmetrical, consisting of five bays with advanced flanking bays and a recessed centre. The basement is constructed with vermiculated sandstone ashlar. The main entrance, centrally located on the southeast elevation, has a round arched surround, sidelights, and a fanlight with radial glazing on Melville Street. The first-floor windows are architraved, bracketed, and corniced, while the central window has a bracketed and pedimented surround.

Predominantly timber sash and case windows with plate glass are in place. The roof is an M-shaped double pitch covered with grey slates. Corniced ashlar gable end and ridge stacks are present, topped with modern clay cans. Cast-iron railings sit on ashlar coping stones, edging the basement recess.

The interiors, which have been converted for later office and residential use in 2008, retain a highly decorative classical scheme. Number 2 Melville Street features a dog-leg stair topped by a large cupola with decorative cornicing and roundel panels, and boasts detailed cornicing throughout the ground and first floors. A ground floor drawing room is distinguished by Doric columns, while the first-floor drawing room features Corinthian columns with foliated capitals and decorated console brackets. Original marble fire surrounds with keystones and intricate relief panels containing foliate patterns remain in place.

The decorative cast-iron arches above the entrance platts on Melville Street include lampholders, some with glass bell-jar shades, and coiled cast-iron serpent lamp snuffers.

Various single-storey ancillary buildings are located at the rear, characterised by pitched and piended slate roofs and regular fenestration, some with blind windows. Coursed, random rubble boundary walls, featuring some ashlar quoins and copes, run along the rear.