Bank Of Scotland, 8 Morningside Road, Edinburgh

The Bank of Scotland, located at 8 Morningside Road in Edinburgh, was designed by Peddie and Kinnear and completed in 1873. This building is a two-storey structure with a basement at the rear and an attic, featuring a symmetrical five-bay design in a palazzo style with a mansard roof. The exterior is made of tooled coursed ashlar stone, with snecked squared and stugged rubble at the rear. It includes a base course, cill courses, a hoodmould course, and prominently bracketed eaves. The building has long and short quoins, along with raised, lugged, and stop-chamfered window architraves.

On the southeast (principal) elevation, there are segmental-arched windows in the three central bays on the ground floor, flanked by timber-panelled doors with fanlights set in key-blocked corniced and consoled doorways at the outer bays, with a cash-point inserted into the original door on the left. The attic features three timber pedimented dormers.

The northeast elevation is irregularly fenestrated, with an ashlar pedimented single window off-centre to the right, breaking the eaves at the attic floor level. A 'PK' monogram is located below the eaves course on the far left.

The northwest (rear) elevation has a modern door to the left and is also irregularly fenestrated. The southwest elevation is regularly fenestrated on the ground floor, with panelled aprons beneath the windows. Above the first-floor string course, there is a square moulded date stone panel marked '1873'.

The principal elevation features plate glass in timber sash and case windows, while the sides and rear predominantly have four-pane timber sash and case windows. The roof is piended and platformed, covered with grey slates, and has coped and corniced wallhead ashlar stacks on the southwest and northeast, a coped ridge stack at the rear, and circular clay cans on the southwest and northwest. Cill and hoodmould courses pass over downpipes.

Inside, the ground floor has been completely redesigned for modern banking operations, but the original stair at the right-hand entrance remains, featuring a decorative pierced cast-iron balustrade and a mahogany banister. The first-floor drawing room and dining room retain deep cornices and original chimneypieces, with a plain large Doric-pilastered chimneypiece in the drawing room. The attic bedrooms have canted corner fireplaces, which are blocked.

The property is enclosed by a boundary wall and gatepiers, consisting of two pairs of coped and corniced ashlar square-plan gatepiers at the southwest and southeast corners, connected by a curved low ashlar wall with modern cast-iron railings.