5 Magdala Crescent, Edinburgh

2 Magdala Crescent is a terrace of two houses built between 1869 and 1876 by John Chesser. It is a two-storey and attic terrace, with each house having two bays. The houses feature canted, mansard attic bays. The construction is polished sandstone ashlar with polished stone dressings. A base course is present, as is a band course at ground level, corniced at the canted bay; a string course; a banded eaves course; and a cornice. The doorpieces are elaborately decorated with foliage and consoles, sheltering panelled timber doors (sometimes double-leaf) with fanlights and margin-paned surrounds. Windows above the doors have block cills and consoled cornices. The roof features round-headed, finialled, keystoned dormers, with a tripartite arrangement on the polygonal mansard roof of the canted bays – smaller, round-headed, finialled, keystoned dormers flank a central dormer, all similarly detailed. Coped skews are also present.

On the principal (west) elevation, alternate pairs of houses are slightly advanced (Nos 1 and 2, 5 and 6, 9 and 10). The ground floor features a doorpiece on the bay to the right, with a single window above. A three-light canted bay is present at ground and first floor level on the left. Number 1 is similar to the others, but with the bay arrangement reversed – the entrance is on the left and the canted bay on the right.

The north (side) elevation, visible from 45 Coates Gardens, is three bays wide. It has a canted bay at centre, at both ground and first floor levels, topped by a polygonal mansard roof with dormers detailed as above. A blocked window is present at ground level, with a consoled cornice above it on the first floor. A blocked round-headed window is in the skewed gable above. A bay to the left is advanced at ground level, with paired margin-framed windows. A single window, with a consoled cornice, is located above. A single dormer, detailed as previously described, is present in the roof. A single-storey, pitched-roof addition adjoins the building on the left, hidden behind a boundary wall.

The windows are principally timber sash and case windows with two panes. The roof is covered in grey slate, with fish-scale tiling to the mansards. The mutual and gablehead stacks are of coped, channelled sandstone ashlar, with tall, predominantly original, moulded octagonal cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods are also present.

Low coped sandstone boundary walls run along the street, with cross-pattern iron railings at some properties. An extended single-storey sandstone wall, with a boarded door on the right and an entrance gate on the left, connects 45 Coates Gardens with 43.