Dundas House, 36 St Andrew Square, Edinburgh

William Chambers, 1771; later alterations, including Archibald Elliot II, 1825 and 1828; William Burn, 1836; John Dick Peddie, 1857; Gratton & MacLean, 1958. Free-standing Palladian villa with forecourt to Square, much extended to rear to form extensive banking premises.

ORIGINAL HOUSE: symmetrical 3-storey 5-bay villa. Polished cream sandstone ashlar. Rusticated at ground; architraved windows, pedimented at 1st floor. Pedimented tetrastyle Corinthian centrepiece with band course between 1st and 2nd floors; gilded Royal coat of arms in tympanum (added 1794); rusticated porch to centrepiece added 1828. Delicate scrolled frieze with modillioned and dentilled cornice and blocking course.

Timber sash and case 12-pane windows (6-pane to 2nd floor). Piend and platform roof; corniced ashlar stacks; grey slates. Flagpole.

BANKING HALL AND QUADRANT WALL: to rear of house; stugged ashlar with shallow lead dome. Corniced screen walls to front, that to N dated and signed PK 1858. Rubble quadrant screen wall to N with pilastered and corniced gate at centre.

S RANGES: concave quadrant ashlar link with small pavilions and pedimented window at 1st floor centre, dated 1958, to early 19th century 2-storey 3 by 8-bay droved ashlar range running E; base course, panelled aprons at ground, 1st floor cill course, cornice and parapet. Modern office block to rear.

Timber sash and case 12-pane windows. Piended roof; grey slates.

INTERIOR: very fine. All Dick Peddie at ground; vestibule with 1st floor landing and double height screen of coupled Corinthian above Ionic columns; 2-storey hall beyond with fishscale coving; stair to N with carved timber banister, bronze lamps on newells and Rococo ceiling. Magnificent Banking Hall on main axis, 18m square, with 4 wide arches springing from low in corners to support dome with 5 concentric tiers of diminishing glazed stars and central oculus; pendentives contain figures representing Commerce, Agriculture, Navigation and the Arts, by James Steell; restrained plaster relief decoration; white Italian marble and bronze counters of 1972; decoration restored 1989. Much of Chambers? work survives to upper floors; at 1st floor NE Drawing Room (Boardroom) of 1771, with carved white marble chimneypiece, corniced overdoors with carved friezes and magnificent neo-classical ceiling by Richardson, with roundels in oval centre and ends. Fret pattern original chimneypieces at 2nd floor; also the original head and oval skylight of the staircase hall, above glazed landing skylight. Iron-framed, galleried library to E; pitched roof with skylights.

RAILINGS AND LAMP STANDARDS: elaborate cast-iron spearhead railings, gates and corresponding lamp standards throughout site of 1827, by Anderson?s Leith Walk Foundry; porch lamp standards of 1828.

For Hopetoun Monument see separate listing.