Gillis College, 113A Whitehouse Loan, Edinburgh

Gillis College, built in 1861 to a design by Edward Welby Pugin, is a range of school buildings with pavilion blocks forming an H-shaped layout. The building is constructed from squared and snecked sandstone with polished ashlar dressings, and features dividing band courses, an eaves cornice, and hoodmouldings with label stops above the segmental-arched ground floor windows. First-floor windows are basket-arched and bipartite, with relieving arches above.

The east garden elevation has pitched-roof porches to the outer pavilions, with boarded doors. Single windows are located on either side of the porch in the pavilion on the outer right, and similarly flank a three-light, pointed-arch traceried window. A trefoil oculus is set in the gablehead, surmounted by a cruciform stone finial, with single windows to the returns. A central panel to the pavilion on the outer left has a modern fire escape for emergency access; a quatrefoil oculus is set within a pointed arch at the panel’s head, with single windows to the right return. Between the pavilions is a seven-bay range with basket-arched bipartite windows to the basement level.

The south elevation features a two-storey flat-roofed block adjoining the building on the outer left. Ground floor openings are not visible, with two single windows at the first floor level and a strip window inserted under the eaves.

The west elevation on Whitehouse Loan showcases a central panel to the pavilion block on the outer right, with a slit window at first floor and a bipartite pointed-arch window with a quatrefoil head. Bipartite windows flank the panel to the left at first floor, mirroring the design above. A later single window sits to the right of the panel. A single-storey flat-roofed addition with basket-arched windows adjoins the pavilion at ground level, alongside a two-storey flat-roofed block. A pavilion on the outer left connects to conventual buildings (listed separately), featuring a gablehead oculus and a cruciform stone finial. The seven-bay range between the pavilions incorporates an advanced chimneybreast offset to the centre. The building utilizes a mixture of casement and plate glass sash and case windows.

The grey slate roof is punctuated by a truncated gablehead stack to the west of the south pavilion, and a shouldered and corniced wallhead stack with moulded octagonal cans to the west. Interior features include iron barley-sugar balustrades and a timber handrail, stained glass stairwindows, a wagon roof in the library, a cove roof to the first-floor rooms of the central range, panelled doors with moulded surrounds, decorative plasterwork, encaustic tiles, and timber beams in the ground floor corridor.