War Memorial, George Heriot's School, Lauriston Place, Edinburgh

The gatehouse at George Heriot's School in Edinburgh was designed by William Playfair and built in 1828. It features a rectangular plan with an embattled design and bartizans. The entrance is a round-arched rib-vaulted structure, flanked by single-storey lodges. The building is constructed from coursed ashlar with polished ashlar dressings, including a base course, a moulded band at the impost level, and voussoirs decorated with roses and mullets. The entrance has timber panelled doors set in corniced moulded surrounds with strapwork pediments, leading to the lodges, which are also flanked by small aedicular windows. The parapets include loopholes and decorative brackets with gargoyles, while the lodges feature aedicular windows with strapwork pediments on the north, south-east, and west elevations.

Surrounding the main building are balustered terraces, with carriage entrances and steps located at the north, north-east, north-west, south-east, and south-west.

The war memorial, created by James B Dunn in 1922, consists of a stone pelican on a square base atop an octagonal column, which is supported by an octagonal base. It features carved arms and inscriptions, alternating with copper panels that bear the names of those who fell in the First World War. Additions and repairs made by Reid and Forbes in 1949 include an ashlar wall at the rear of the balustraded platform, which has inset copper panels listing the names of the Second World War dead.

The boundary wall is a low coursed ashlar structure topped with rounded ashlar coping and features tall stone obelisks at intervals. It is complemented by spear-headed cast-iron railings and tall decorative cast-iron gates leading to the entrance tunnel. To the east, there is a tall ashlar-coped rubble wall that marks the boundary with Greyfriars churchyard, with coping that sweeps down to tall corniced obelisk-topped ashlar gatepiers, which are adorned with decorative wrought-iron two-leaf gates featuring a lamp and the Heriot crest.