Minto House, 18-20 Chambers Street, Edinburgh

Minto House comprises three connected buildings dating from the late 19th century, with a later addition. It originally served as a medical school and Free Church, incorporating a section of a former brewery.

The western buildings (numbered 18 and 20) were designed by R Thornton Sheills (1876-8) and Peter L Henderson (1878). They are two storeys high, with a basement and mansard attic, and feature six bays in a French Renaissance style. The building is constructed of ashlar, with channelled details to the ground floor. It has a band course, dentilled cornice, and segmental-arched window openings with deep cornices. A projecting porch, supported by Corinthian columns, provides access to the main entrance. The first floor has keystoned, segmental-arched windows with balustrades.

A four-storey link building, constructed in 1971, connects the former medical school to the northwest, where a four-storey former maltings building stands. The maltings building has a pyramidal roof over its former kiln and is built of snecked rubble.

The eastern building (numbered 22) was designed in an Italian Romanesque style as a Free Church. It is two storeys high with a basement, and symmetrical with three bays, and features a three-storey and attic French pavilion-roofed entrance tower to the right. Constructed of ashlar, it has channelled pilasters, a string course, an arcaded corbel course, and blocking course. The windows are round-arched with Corinthian-columned mullions, recessed in segmental arches. The entrance tower has a wide round-arched doorway with Corinthian colonettes.

The windows are predominantly timber sash and case with plate glass on the west, while the east side has vertical, multi-pane, non-traditional glazing. The roofs are covered with grey slates, with decorative brattishing above the entrance bays.

The interior, viewed in 2007, has been largely altered but retains some original features, including an open-well staircase with a timber barley-sugar twist balustrade, a timber and glass cupola, and a room in the eastern building with a coved ceiling supported by cast-iron Corinthian columns. Some exposed timbers remain in the former maltings.

Spear-headed cast-iron railings with an integral gate run along Chambers Street.