42 South Oswald Road, Edinburgh

42 South Oswald Road is a villa built around 1870, with a wing added circa 1880. The building features coursed lightly stugged ashlar stone with polished dressings, a base course, a dividing band course, overhanging eaves, raised quoins, raised and lugged window surrounds, and chamfered reveals.

The south entrance elevation has three bays. There are steps leading up to an open porch supported by paired square columns and single pilasters, which hold up an entablature. Above, a stone balustrade forms a balcony for the gabled window at the first floor. The round-arched doorway is flanked by pilasters and features a panelled door with a plate glass sash and case fanlight. To the outer left, there is a full-height canted window that sweeps to a square at the gablehead in an advanced bay. The outer right bay has a corniced tripartite window at ground level, with a stone balustrade above that creates a mock window guard for the gabled first-floor window. The circa 1880 gabled two-storey and attic addition to the west has two single windows at ground level and bipartite windows at the first floor, set in the gablehead. To the east, there is a gabled two-storey, two-bay service wing that is recessed.

The east elevation has three bays with an advanced service wing to the outer right. There are single windows in the gabled bay to the outer left and in the remaining bays. The west elevation also has three bays; it features single windows in two gabled bays to the outer right and single windows in the first bay, which is gabled at the first floor. An advanced two-storey flat-roofed linking block adjoins to the north, with a bipartite window at ground level and a single window at the first floor, topped by a parapet. An advanced two-storey and attic addition to the north has a single window at ground level and bipartite windows at the first floor, set in the gablehead.

The north rear elevation includes a range of service quarters with a two-storey addition to the outer right. It features plate glass sash and case windows, a grey slate gabled roof, corniced gablehead stacks, moulded octagonal cans, and moulded eaves guttering. The interior was not seen in 1991.

The property also has corniced and capped ashlar gatepiers with chamfered angles, along with varying heights of coped rubble boundary walls. There are additional ranges of single-storey offices to the north and west, and garages to the northeast.