Willie's Temple, Melville Castle is a Grade A listed building in the Midlothian local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 15 February 1991. Summerhouse.
Willie's Temple, Melville Castle
- WRENN ID
- steep-ember-gorse
- Grade
- A
- Local Planning Authority
- Midlothian
- Constituency
- Midlothian MP: Kirsty McNeill (Lab)
- Country
- Scotland
- Date first listed
- 15 February 1991
- Type
- Summerhouse
- OS grid reference
- NT 305 668
- Coordinates
- 55.88975, -3.11214
- Source
- Historic Environment Scotland listing
Description
Willie's Temple at Melville Castle is a single-storey, circular-plan summerhouse built around 1760, situated on a hilltop. The structure is made of polished ashlar sandstone and features four arched openings with Gibbsian surrounds. Between these openings are four intermediate piers, each adorned with tall, blind arched panels framed by panelled pilaster strips that end in a convex moulding at the base, with one scrolled console remaining. The building has a moulded cornice and a stone, bell-cast roof that was originally topped with a stone pineapple finial, which collapsed around 1994.
Inside, the summerhouse may have originally had a plastered stone domed ceiling, and it includes small, round-headed niches set within the ingoes of the arched openings.
Local climate
Willie's Temple, Melville Castle receives an average of 960 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 74% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 52% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 39 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 74% of listed buildings. Of these, 23 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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