King's Gate, Dalkeith House

King's Gate, designed by William Burn and David Bryce in 1852, serves as a grand entrance to the Dalkeith Estate from the Old Dalkeith Road (A68), comprising a tripartite gateway, screen walls, and a lodge to the northeast.

The central gateway features three substantial ashlar piers, the two central piers being taller and connected to the outer piers by screen walls which incorporate pedestrian walkways. The piers feature a bracketed cornice and are topped with large floreated urns. The pedestrian gateways are framed with lugged architraves, each bearing a coroneted shield inscribed “BQ," and the screen walls are finished with moulded coping. Ornate wrought-iron gates, with two-leaf semicircular arches at the centre and decorative scrollwork above, provide access, along with similarly detailed pedestrian gates.

Curving quadrant walls extend to the southeast and southwest, constructed of stugged ashlar with moulded coping. Pier details mirror those of the main gate piers, each with a bracketed cornice and massive ball finials. Beyond these piers is a wall constructed of saddleback-coped squared and coursed rubble.

The lodge is a single-storey and attic structure, built on a raised basement to the east due to the sloping ground. It presents an asymmetrical gabled facade in cream sandstone ashlar with a deep base course. Windows are predominantly ashlar transomed and mullioned, both bipartite and single-light, with chamfered reveals and cills. Mannered buckle quoins are present, and the eaves overhang with scrolled bargeboarding and kingposts to the west and north.

The west (entrance) elevation features a three-bay arcaded porch, designed as a loggia, to the left, set in the re-entrant angle formed by an advanced gabled bay to the right. The porch’s shouldered openings have a corniced pierced balustrade. Steps lead up to a gabled entrance bay to the outer left, featuring a moulded panel within the gablehead. A boarded door sits centrally, with cast-iron hinges, alongside a window to the left. An advanced bay to the right incorporates a canted window with an ashlar half-piend roof and a cornice continuous with the moulded string course; an attic window is positioned above. A window is found to the left return, and a screen wall with a boarded door adjoins the building both to the right and to the outer gatepier to the east.

The north elevation mirrors the west, showcasing an advanced gabled wing and a canted window with a corresponding roofline and cornice. A window and a basement-level single-light window are also present.

The east elevation is asymmetrically gabled with irregularly arranged windows and a boarded door at basement level. A single-storey and basement wing, built of squared and snecked rubble, adjoins the lodge to the left.

The south elevation features an L-plan block advanced to the right, encompassing a courtyard to the left enclosed by screen walls. A window at ground level and a gabled dormer window breaking the eaves are present to the left, while a later leaded gabled dormer window marks the right.

The windows throughout feature a large square-pane glazing pattern, with some lying-pane details. The steeply pitched roof is covered in graded grey-green slates, complemented by two rendered coped ridge stacks with stop-chamfered and incised details. Moulded eaves gutters and original rainwater goods complete the composition.