Gates And Railings, Gate Piers, Northcliff House, North Queensferry

Gates And Railings, Gate Piers, Northcliff House, North Queensferry

Northcliff House is a 2-storey mansion with basement, designed by Kinnear & Peddie in 1882 as a reworking and extension of an earlier 19th century square-plan house. It was subsequently subdivided into flats in the later 20th century. The building is a 3-bay classical villa constructed in narrow courses of ashlar sandstone, yellow to the earlier work and grey to the later. It features droved, stugged and polished ashlar dressings, broad pilaster quoins, a base course, eaves course, stone mullions, and chamfered arrises.

The principal south elevation is symmetrically composed. The centre bay contains a shallow bowed and balustraded portico with Doric columns, two-leaf panelled doors with additional glazed outer doors, a segmental radial-astragalled fanlight, and narrow flanking lights. Above the portico is a balustrade with central two-leaf French doors and a three-part fanlight. The flanking bays have full-height canted windows.

The east elevation features an off-centre left bowed bay with an altered ground floor French window and a broad tripartite window on the first floor above. To the right is a first floor window with a later single storey bay below containing two windows. An advanced bay to the far right has two ground floor windows and a dormer window matching the west elevation.

The north service elevation is asymmetrically fenestrated with a variety of elements. The ground floor has a boarded timber door with a two-part fanlight at the centre, and the first floor has dormer-headed windows.

The west entrance elevation is a 4-bay stepped composition arranged as 1-3. An angled doorcase sits in a re-entrant angle, with part-basement to the left. The advanced bay to the left has a boarded timber door to the raised basement and two ground floor windows. A segmentally-arched window breaks the eaves with a dormer gablet on moulded consoles; to its right return is a square-headed window breaking the eaves with a similar dormer gablet. Set-back bays to the right contain a large ground floor window to a bowed centre bay with a broad first floor tripartite window above. A blank bay to the right has a blind ground floor window. Above a pedimented doorcase to the left is a first floor window, the doorcase featuring a deep blank frieze, stepped blocking course, moulded doorway, part-glazed panelled timber door, and plate glass fanlight.

The windows throughout are timber sash and case with 4- and 12-pane and plate glass glazing patterns. The roof is piended and platformed with grey slates, timber brackets to overhanging eaves, plain bargeboards, cavetto-coped ashlar stacks, and circular clay cans.

The interior is now divided into six flats. Some decorative plasterwork cornices remain, along with grey marble and timber fire surrounds, sideboard arches, and brass door furniture. A part-glazed screen door and decorative cast-iron balusters serve a dog-leg stair with an arcaded landing, now part-blocked. Doors are panelled with 4- and 6-panel designs.

The former laundry is a single storey building of dressed ashlar and squared rubble with a piended slate roof. It has four bipartite windows to the south, a panelled timber door with plate glass fanlight to the east with flanking windows, and Velux rooflights.

The walled garden features roughly coursed rubble walls with larger squared stones, punctuated at intervals and topped with semicircular coping formed over the wall depth. Within this garden stands a potting shed incorporating a stone inscribed and dated "J B DRUMMOND VINTNER Jany 17th 1766".

The terraced garden has terrace walls of regular squared rubble with stone steps to the south-east. To the south is a high snecked rubble serpentine wall with a balustraded ashlar parapet and monumental brick buttresses.

The gatepiers are rectangular-plan structures of dressed ashlar with cornices and flat copes. They are accompanied by fine decorative cast-iron two-leaf gates bearing a cast eagle and the motto "NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSET", with inset railings.