5 Napier Road, Edinburgh

5 Napier Road, Edinburgh, was designed by James Campbell Walker in 1863. It is an asymmetrical cottage-style villa of single storey and attic design, accompanied by parallel single-storey service wings to the northeast. The building is constructed of cream sandstone, with squared and snecked rubble walls contrasted by long and short bull-faced dressings having polished edges. Window reveals are chamfered, and the first-floor windows have keystoned, shouldered-arch lintels. The overhanging eaves feature exposed rafters, while the gables and dormers have decorative bargeboards, king-posts, and timber brackets supported by stone corbels.

The front (southeast) elevation features a central advanced, swept canted bay that transitions to a square shape at the gablehead. A panelled entrance door with a rectangular plate glass fanlight and sidelights is centrally positioned, alongside a window in the gablehead. A single window is located at ground floor to the right, and a first-floor window breaks the eaves within a gabled dormerhead. A small, gabled timber conservatory sits on the left, and a single window is found in the outer-right service wing.

The southwest elevation is three bays wide. The central bay contains two ground-floor windows, and a first-floor window breaks the eaves in a gabled dormerhead. The outer bays are angled canted bays with tripartite windows at ground floor, corbelled outer faces, and a single window at first floor that breaks the eaves in a gabled dormerhead.

The northwest elevation features a central advanced gabled bay with single windows at ground and first floors. A service wing on the left has a projecting central bay with a window under a catslide roof, a secondary door, and single windows. The northeast elevation consists of gable-ended service wings; the right wing has three ground-floor windows, a gablehead window, and an apex stack to the southwest. The left wing has a shouldered-arch ground-floor window and a shouldered wallhead stack to the northwest, plus a secondary door in the passage between the wings. The main block’s gable shows two single windows and a carved tablet. It has a wallhead stack.

The windows are timber sash and case, with mostly plate glass glazing at ground floor and four-pane windows at the first floor. The roof is covered in purple slate with lead flashings, with several wallhead and apex stacks, topped by some octagonal cans.

The interior was not inspected in 1992.

The property is enclosed by a tall boundary wall built of distinctive polygonal stonework with flat bull-faced coping. The wall includes square gatepiers with ashlar coping and an ornamental cast-iron gate.