Inchdrewer house, 299 Colinton Road, Edinburgh

Inchdrewer House, 299 Colinton Road, Edinburgh

A large villa designed by David Robertson in 1876, with a single-storey billiard room extension added by Sir Robert Lorimer in 1901. The main house is a substantial 6-bay, 2-storey structure with gabled roofline and gablet dormerheads. A lower, narrower former service wing is recessed to the northeast, and the Lorimer addition with curvilinear gables is positioned to the southwest. The building is constructed in stugged snecked sandstone with stugged ashlar long and short quoins and window dressings. Stone mullioned windows and shouldered stacks are characteristic throughout. The roof features short stone finials to the gables and dormers, with graded grey slate and ashlar-coped skews with kneelered skewputts. Cast iron downpipes with decorative brackets serve the gutters.

On the northwest (entrance) elevation, a timber-panelled front door with plate glass fanlight sits within a segmental-arched, roll-moulded, stop-chamfered architrave, with a blind panel and hoodmould above. A bipartite window flanks to the left. The advanced gable to the right contains a 5-light canted bay at ground floor with decorative corbelling rising to a square at first floor, topped by a bipartite window and blind panel at the gable apex. The Lorimer addition features 4 pairs of bipartite windows beneath a cornice with ball-finialled nook-shafts. The recessed former service wing to the left has a slightly advanced gable with bipartite windows at both levels.

The southeast (garden) elevation displays an advanced gable with a 5-light canted bay at ground floor and corbelled square at first floor, topped by a tripartite window and slit window at the gable apex. A narrow dormer sits centrally, while an advanced bay to the right contains bipartite French doors at ground level and a bipartite dormer breaking the eaves above. The former service wing is irregularly fenestrated with a gablet-headed window to the inner bay. The Lorimer addition projects with a large mullioned and transomed canted window and an oval oculus at the gable apex.

The southwest elevation features an advanced ingleneuk at the centre with a canted stack, stained glass windows to the returns set within roll-moulded trefoil architraves, and a bipartite window to the outer right. Windows throughout are plate glass within timber sash and case frames. The stacks are shouldered and corniced with coped tops and short clay cans.

The interior of the former billiard room is notably decorated with oak panelling and contains an oak-panelled ingleneuk reached through an arch. A large bay window opens to the southeast beneath a barrel-vaulted ceiling with decorative plaster. Deep cornicing sits above the panelling. Oak pilasters flank the ingleneuk and windows, embellished with floriate and foliate marquetry decoration and fruit carving to the capitals. Similar marquetry inlay adorns the spandrels of the ingleneuk arch. The ingleneuk contains two stained glass windows, one dated 1901 and the other inscribed "GATHER ROSES WHILE YE MAY", with an oak mantlepiece featuring a roll-moulded marble inset beneath. The barrel-vaulted ceiling displays delicate decorative plaster including vine motifs, whilst decorative plasterwork to the tympanums shows a tree of life to the northwest and a dated 1901 composition to the southeast within a stylised foliate frame incorporating thistle, rose and fleur-de-lys motifs. The remainder of the house was substantially altered during army requisitioning, though some decorative plaster cornices and a barley-twist stair bannister remain.

To the northwest of the main house stand associated buildings. A rectangular-plan former coachman's house features a gable with kneelered skewputts and gable-head stack, with irregular fenestration in random rubble under graded grey slate. Opposite stands a stable and coach-house with a recessed central doorway, a dormered hayloft entrance breaking the eaves, a large coach-house door to the left, and two windows to the right. An L-plan piend-roofed gardener's cottage, also designed by Robert Lorimer in 1901, is attached to the rear of these structures and is irregularly fenestrated. All outbuilding doors and windows are currently boarded up.

The boundary comprises a coped sandstone rubble wall, with sections containing plain cast-iron railings. Plain ashlar gatepiers mark the entrance. A later extension to the northeast is excluded from the listing.