Nelson's Monument, Calton Hill, Edinburgh

Nelson’s Monument is a castellated building dating from 1807, designed by Robert Burn and completed by Thomas Bonnar between 1814 and 1816. It occupies an elevated site on Calton Hill in Edinburgh. The structure comprises a pentagonal single-story building surrounding a five-stage circular tower, with a narrower sixth stage at the top.

The exterior is constructed of droved ashlar. It has a chamfered base course, a string course, and a single blind quatrefoil to each bay of the corner sections. Further moulded bands mark the divisions between the stages of the tower. Decorative features include a hatched frieze, a machicolated and crenellated parapet, a moulded band with a quatrefoil frieze above, and a final machicolated and crenellated parapet. A compass mast and time ball are situated at the top of the tower. The fenestration is largely regular; the central sections of the pentagon have architraved, tripartite, round-headed windows on the ground floor, while the projecting sections have arrow-slit windows. The tower has four openings to each stage, with windows recessed into architraved, round-headed surrounds; blind windows are present on the northwest, northeast, and southeast sides of the tower.

The east-facing elevation features a two-leaf, timber-panelled door with flanking margin lights and a segmental fanlight with intersecting tracery, all within an architraved, round-headed opening. Above the door is a panel commemorating Nelson, surmounted by a sculpture of the stern of the San Joseph. A timber-boarded door with glazing is located above to the northeast side of the tower’s sixth stage.

The majority of the lower sashes in the ground floor windows have four panes, while the upper sashes have five panes with Y-tracery. Tower windows primarily feature 16-pane glazing, with the bottom two panes fixed. The ground floor has a flat roof.

The interior contains a rectangular entrance lobby with an interior glazed vestibule and secondary door. The upper walls are panelled with shallow relief ship sculptures. Reeded doorpieces, embellished with lions' head detail, are located at the corners. A petal-style lampshade is suspended from a foliate ceiling rose. A cast iron turnstile provides access to a spiral staircase leading up the tower. The stair walls are constructed of whitewashed rubble. The outer ground floor rooms feature apsidal ends to the larger reception rooms, curved timber-panelled doors, predominantly reeded or architraved doorpieces, low-level timber wall panelling and ornate ceiling cornices. Several smaller, ancillary rooms are also present.