2 Hillside Crescent, Edinburgh

2 Hillside Crescent, Edinburgh

A Grade A listed building designed by William Henry Playfair in 1823 and built from 1825, forming part of a near-symmetrical classical terraced range. Numbers 6 and 7 Hillside Crescent and 2 Brunswick Street were built to Playfair's designs with slight alterations during the 1880s, with Numbers 7 Hillside Crescent and 2 Brunswick Street constructed as flats.

The building is a three-storey townhouse with basement, featuring an additional attic storey to the pavilions and the Brunswick Street elevation. The main Hillside Crescent elevation comprises three-bay pavilions flanking a 15-bay centre section, while the Brunswick Street elevation has 7 bays. Advanced pavilions project to the outer left and right. A Greek Doric colonnade and continuous balconette articulate the first floor.

The exterior is finished in polished ashlar, with droved ashlar to the basement and squared coursed rubble with droved margins to the rear. A projecting band divides the basement and ground floors. A plain entablature separates the ground and first floors, with a cill band to the second floor. The central section features a mutuled eaves cornice and blocking course, while the pavilions and Brunswick Street elevation have a mutuled cornice dividing the second and attic floors, an attic floor cill band, eaves cornice and blocking course.

The fenestration is predominantly regular with segmentally headed windows to the basement and architraved windows to the first, second and attic floors. The first floor windows to the pavilions have cornices.

On the Hillside Crescent elevation, the ground floor contains steps and platts overarching basement recesses at the third, fourth, seventh, tenth, thirteenth, sixteenth and nineteenth bays from the left, leading to two-leaf timber-panelled doors (single-leaf to No. 7) with letterbox fanlights. Paired engaged fluted Greek Doric columns divide the bays. A modern metal ramp serves No. 5 to the left of its platt. A continuous cast-iron trellis design balconette with Greek key borders runs along the first floor. Decorative cast-iron window-box holders appear on the second floor windows to the left pavilion.

The Brunswick Street elevation features a central bay with steps and platt overarching a basement recess leading to a timber-panelled door with letterbox fanlight in an architraved opening. The doorpiece comprises engaged fluted Doric columns supporting an entablature with a wrought-iron trellis design balconette with Greek key border. Sunken aprons are present to the ground and first floor windows.

Windows are predominantly plate glass in timber sash-and-case frames, with 12-pane glazing in timber sash-and-case windows to Nos 1, 2 and 4 (ground and second floors), and 15-pane glazing to the first floor windows of Nos 1 and 4.

The roofs comprise an M-valley roof with gutter to Nos 1–6 and a piended roof with flat top to No. 7 Hillside Crescent and 2 Brunswick Street, both laid with graded grey slates and stone skews and skewputts. Rooflights and cupolas crown the piended section. Multiple corniced ashlar ridge stacks, with linked individual octagonal flues, rise from the Hillside Crescent elevation, while a double-linked corniced ashlar wallhead stack and a corniced ashlar gablehead stack feature on the Brunswick Street elevation.

At 4 Hillside Crescent, the ground floor interior includes a lobby opening to a stair hall flanked by Ionic columns in anta, now filled with a modern timber and glazed screen and doors, beneath a compartmented ceiling with good plasterwork. The stairs and stair hall feature stone stairs with cast-iron balusters, wrought iron lamp brackets, and an oval cupola with compartmented cavetto surround set in a sail-vaulted ceiling with good plasterwork.