9 Hermitage Terrace, Edinburgh

A terrace of twelve two-storey and attic houses with gabled end blocks, designed by R Rowand Anderson and built in 1886-1887. The terrace, known as 2 Hermitage Terrace in Edinburgh, is built in a Queen Anne style. The houses are constructed from cream sandstone, with coursed and squared rubble walls and ashlar dressings. The rear walls are of squared and snecked rubble. Chamfered reveals feature on the windows, and the entrances have architraved doors with rounded arrises, alongside ashlar mullions, panelled doors, and tiled vestibules. Small rectangular fanlights with leaded glass are above the doors.

The west elevation, facing Hermitage Terrace, presents mirrored paired elevations around a central point, with the exception of the end blocks. Each house has an entrance door centrally located within the two bays, with a single window above. The outer bays are distinguished by a variety of canted windows. Numbers 1, 2, and 3 have corniced doorpieces and pedimented timber dormers above. They also have full-height, parapeted canted windows in the outer bays, with corresponding bipartite, pedimented timber dormers. Houses 4, 5, 6, and 7 feature pedimented doorpieces, with No. 4 elaborately carved and No. 5 bearing the date 1887. Numbers 4, 5, and 7 have projecting rectangular windows at ground floor (a pattern of one, two, and one window), with corbelled canted windows above at the first floor. Nos. 4 and 5 have carved panels and iron railings to the canted windows, and their dormers have finialled half-piend roofs. Nos. 6 and 7 have canted windows that break the eaves into corresponding dormers with finialled half-piend roofs. Numbers 8, 9, 10 have doorpieces with a dentilled cornice, and fanlights framed by rectangular panels. Numbers 6, 8, 9, and 10 have bipartite windows at ground floor to the outer bays, with canted oriel windows above. Similar houses (8, 9, 10) have carved aprons to the parapets of their canted windows, and tripartite, pedimented dormers above. The gabled end blocks have a pattern of one, two, and one window at ground floor and three windows at first floor, with the centre window pedimented and the outer windows corniced. Bipartite windows are present at the first floor, featuring a bracketted cill and a segmental pediment with a carved roundel in the gablehead.

The rear elevation, facing east, shows gabled end bays; Nos. 9 and 10 are two-storey and attic with dormer windows, while Nos. 1 to 8 are three-storey with wallhead stacks. Single-storey rear wings with half-piend roofs are also present.

The south elevation, facing Cluny Avenue, incorporates an entrance door and single window, flanked to the left, with a doorpiece featuring a dentilled cornice and a fanlight framed by blank rectangular panels. A single window and a tall, narrow stair window are to the right, the latter breaking the eaves in the gablehead. A small, pedimented timber dormer is positioned to the left.

The north elevation, facing Nile Grove, displays a corniced entrance door flanked by a single window to the right. There are two windows at the first floor, and a ground floor window to the left. The gablehead has an apex chimney located above. Timber sash and case windows are present throughout, featuring multi-pane upper sashes and two-pane or plate glass glazing to the lower sashes. The building is roofed with slate, with red ridge tiles, corniced mutual stacks, wallhead stacks, a single apex stack, and tall, tapering cans. Moulded eaves gutters and corresponding gutterheads are also present. The interior of the houses was not inspected in 1992. A low rubble boundary wall runs along the front, punctuated by cast-iron gates and railings, except for numbers 6 and 5.