Gates And Gate-Piers, Boundary Wall, Talgarth, 6 Spylaw Park, Edinburgh

This is a large, two-story villa with a garage, built in 1914 by George D McNiven and a garage added in the 1920s, situated within the Spylaw Park area of Edinburgh. The villa is of irregular plan, with a piended roof, deep eaves, and harled exterior contrasted with brown sandstone dressings. The design incorporates various architectural elements, including an advanced entrance bay with a Dutch gable, advanced end bays, and a swept-roofed verandah to the south elevation, as well as a service wing to the east.

The north (entrance) elevation features a prominent, Dutch-gabled bay with a two-leaf oak panelled door set within a stop-chamfered, roll-moulded Tudor-arched architrave, detailed with carved spandrels. A Tudor-arched window is situated above the door. The west (side) elevation has three bays incorporating a canted window at ground level and a smaller canted window above, supported on brackets. A shouldered wallhead stack is located to the right of the windows. The south (garden) elevation presents three principal bays and a recessed service wing. A central verandah with a swept roof and tapered columns provides access to the rear, and a piend-roofed dormer sits above. The east (side) elevation includes the service wing, now part of the building, with a flat-roofed outshot at ground level, a later extension, a timber panelled front door, and a gabled dormer.

Most windows are timber sash and case, with plate glass in the lower sashes and small-pane glazing above. The villa has plain rendered stacks topped with red clay cans, and a red tile roof with red ridge tiles.

The interior features a half-glazed timber panelled door leading to an inner lobby with hand-modelled floral plasterwork to the ceiling and above a picture rail. An inner hall is timber panelled, with a beamed ceiling and a painted stone chimneypiece incorporating a roll-moulded, stop-chamfered, Tudor-arched opening, and a staircase accessed through a roll-moulded Tudor arch with barley-twist timber balusters, some with carved floral motifs. The drawing room showcases 17th century style plasterwork, a roll-moulded fireplace flanked by bookshelves, and an advanced canted chimney breast within an elliptical-arched ingleneuk, with decorative plasterwork.

The property is enclosed by a triangular-coped random rubble boundary wall with cylindrical rubble gatepiers featuring cornices and rounded tops. There are two-leaf timber gates with wrought-iron decoration above. The garage, dating from the 1920s, is roughcast with a piended red tile roof and a later garage door.