King's Park Primary School, Crofton Street, Dalkeith

King's Park Primary School, Crofton Street, Dalkeith

A 2-storey school range designed by Thomas T Paterson in 1903, comprising 15 bays arranged symmetrically (3-3-1-1-1-3-3) with Queen Anne detailing. The building is constructed from cream sandstone with rock-faced ashlar, featuring red ashlar dressings. The base course is coped, with red rock-faced cill and lintel courses and coping throughout. An eaves cornice runs along the principal facades, and the design includes chamfered reveals and Gibbsian quoins.

The principal south-facing elevation features a slightly advanced gabled centre bay with a bipartite window at ground level and another breaking the eaves at first floor, topped by Gibbsian details and a cornice. Above is a gablehead with a needle finial and urns to the skewblocks. The flanking bays are recessed, while the centre bays of the penultimate trios each carry a transomed window breaking the eaves with a dormerhead above. The outer piended bays are advanced, with bipartite windows to ground and first floors of the gabled centre bay, keystone detailing, cornice above, and gablehead with urn finials and ball finials to skewblocks. Fenestration is regularly disposed with ground floor windows taller than those above.

The west elevation includes a single-storey 3-bay porch on the left with cornice and blocking course. A Gibbsian doorpiece with smooth quoins frames a 2-leaf panelled door; the blocking course above the panel was previously inscribed "Girls" but is now largely erased. Remaining bays are fenestrated, with a bipartite window at first floor left and a small flanking window to the right.

The east elevation mirrors this arrangement, with a single-storey single-bay porch to the right detailed similarly but featuring stone balustraded steps. The panel was previously inscribed "Boys". A bipartite window sits to the right at first floor with a small window flanking to the left, and a blocked small window appears to the left of the porch.

The north elevation is more complex, featuring a lean-to block advanced between outer bays, with modern single-storey brick and pebble-dashed additions to blank pebble-dashed re-entrant angles. Two doors are positioned at left and right of the advanced block. Fenestration is irregular in size and disposition, including two mullioned and transomed stair windows flanking the centre. Single-storey kitchen and dining ranges are adjoined to the main building by a passage at the centre, with a gabled range featuring a tripartite window to the east and a smaller piend-roofed range adjoined to the north, displaying a piended bipartite window to the east and a gabled facade to the north.

The roof displays a variety of features: a colonnaded timber cupola with finial sits on a deep lead-hung plinth with bracket details, positioned at the centre ridge. Two leaded ventilator shafts occupy the ridge in the third bays from the centre. A corniced shouldered wallhead stack stands at the centre, positioned above the eaves line on the west pitch, with a painted bell and cast-iron fixture attached to its base. Two corniced wallhead stacks sit on the lean-to pitch. A ventilator shaft rises at the north-east re-entrant angle, and cupola-like ventilators crown the roofs of additional ranges. Grey-green slates cover the piended roofs, with red ridge tiles featuring scrolled finials. Some original rainwater goods survive.

Windows throughout employ a variety of small-pane glazing patterns, predominantly in sash and case form, with some shaped gableheads and dormerheads.

The interior is double-pile in plan. Two half-turn staircases with landings and iron balustrades occupy the north side, with segmental-arched openings flanking the corridors. Corridors feature a cornice and dado rail, while classrooms to the south are equipped with glass-panelled doors and 9-pane top-hopper windows opening onto the corridor, with timber boarded dadoes. An original bell is preserved in the west stair well.

The boundary features a low semicircular coped rubble retaining wall with later railings to the south. To the north on Croft Street stands a set of four corniced red sandstone gatepiers with iron gates and railings, together with a semicircular coped rubble wall.

A 2-storey harled block designed by William Scott in 1925 is situated to the west.