Conventual Buildings, St Margaret's Convent, 113, 113A Whitehouse Loan, Edinburgh

Conventual Buildings, St Margaret's Convent, 113, 113A Whitehouse Loan, Edinburgh

This is a Grade B listed building comprising the conventual buildings designed by James Gillespie Graham in 1835, which incorporate a circa 1670 Whitehouse mansion. The complex forms an L-plan accommodation block with a square-plan pend tower, constructed in pink and cream sandstone rubble with heavy pointing. The windows have raised surrounds with chamfered reveals, and the building is articulated by quoin strips.

The west elevation facing Whitehouse Loan presents the principal front, with the pend tower flanked by a 6-bay range to the right and a 3-bay range to the left, forming the street boundary. The pend tower features an architraved round arch with heavy rope-moulding and knot label stops, topped by modern gates and wrought-iron tympanum. Above this rise single windows to all three storeys, a deep cornice, and an ogival fishscale roof with scalloped lead flashings and an iron finial. The 6-bay range includes an advanced and gabled bay at its outer right with a single second-floor window. Single windows light the first and second floors of the remaining bays. The second bay is advanced and gabled; the fourth and fifth bays are gabled with stone-finalled pediments above the first and third bays. The 3-bay range to the left has two single windows breaking the eaves within stone-finalled pediments in the second and third bays, a gabled timber dormer between bays, and in the advanced first bay a single window with string course and a piend-roofed dormerhead containing a single window breaking the eaves above. A segmental-arched doorway with chamfered margins occupies the outer left.

The east elevation is more complex, comprising an advanced 3-storey wing to the outer left adjoining a 4-storey re-entrant tower, a 4-bay range, the pend tower, and a 2-storey 3-bay range. The advanced wing's east elevation displays a round-arched doorway with chamfered margins and hoodmoulding, panelled door, and single windows above and to the right. The re-entrant tower has single lights to each face and stage. Bipartite windows light the first bay of the 4-bay range, with single windows in the remaining bays. The pend tower repeats the treatment described on the west elevation. In the 3-bay range, the second bay contains a pedimented doorway with studded door and plate glass fanlight, with a single window above. The third bay features a full-height canted window with a facetted pyramidal roof, topped by three pedimented dormers. The first bay has a bipartite ground-floor window with a single offset window above.

The south elevation comprises a 3-bay block adjoining the school (listed separately), though the ground floor was not visible at survey in 1991. The first floor carries three basket-arched windows, two of which are pedimented. The north elevation contains a 3-bay wing recessed in the second bay, with a single-storey flat-roofed addition to the first bay containing single windows above. The north elevation of the west range terminates in a crowstepped gable.

A former dairy, built as a single-storey rectangular-plan structure, is linked to the conventual buildings and chapel (listed separately). It has two gabled bays to the north and south, with a gablehead bellcote and bell to the west and deeply corniced polygonal stacks. Plate glass sash and case windows face west, while predominantly 12-pane sash and case windows are found elsewhere. The roof is grey slate with corniced gablehead and ridge stacks, moulded eaves guttering, and gabletted crowsteps and skewputts to the north elevation of the west range.

The interior was not seen at survey in 1991.

An early 18th-century baluster-type sundial with cut-out hemispheres stands in the garden to the rear of the conventual buildings and former school.

The boundary treatment includes the west range forming part of the Whitehouse Loan boundary. High coped boundary walls extend along Whitehouse Loan, Stratheran Road, and Thirlestane Road. A basket-arched pedestrian gateway serves Whitehouse Loan, flanked by coped ashlar gatepiers with ball finials. Waterleaf capitals of unknown origin are employed as garden ornaments elsewhere on the site.