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Summary

Description

John Chesser, 1875. Large Baronial house with French Gothic detailing and of picturesque composition, now in hospital use. 2-storey and attic, L-plan, with main elevations to SE and SW to garden, slightly lower wing extending NW adjoining service court at rear. Coursed cream sandstone with polished ashlar dressings and advanced bays; battered base course, cill courses, stone mullions, cornice, pedimented dormerheads with gablet coped crowsteps and stone finials. Blind armorial panels in moulded surrounds to gableheads. Timber sash and case windows with plate glass.

SE (FRONT) ELEVATION: assymetrical, 2 shallow steps with stone balustrade to entrance to left of centre in advanced, gabled bay. 2-leaf timber panelled door with fanlight over in round-arched, moulded door suround with keystone and foliate carving to spandrels, paired corner consoles supporting projecting cornice with balustrade above, carved corner urns. Tripartite at 1st floor with stepped string course over around armorial panel. Corbelled gablehead breaking eaves with battlemented skews and finial. To left of doorway: advanced crowstepped gabled bay with projecting stone piended bay through 2-floors, bowed at ground floor with 4-light window, canted at 1st floor. To right of doorway: tripartite bow projecting at ground floor with battlemented parapet, single window above breaking eaves in pedimented dormerhead. Broad, advanced bay to outer right, string courses stepped over bipartite at ground floor and 1st floor, 2 bartizans with small window to attic.

SW ELEVATION: main block of house has advanced, gabled bay to left with stone-piended canted bay projecting through 2 floors, armorial shields in relief panels to 1st floor window apron. Gabled bay to right with tall 4-light window to each floor, apron detail as above. Tower in angle, rising through 2 floors and attic, with 2 tall windows at ground floor, 1 at 1st floor, 2 small windows lighting attic, corbelled parapet, conical roof with fish-scale slates and 4 tiny lucarnes with kingpost detail. Range continues to NW in slightly lower, 2-storey block with 2 recessed bays with 2 pedimented dormerheads to 1st floor windows, and large projecting canted bay with ogee dome with finial, bipartites to each floor, pedimented dormerheads, and bartizan to S return. Range continues in recessed single storey and attic wing; 3-bay range to centre with 1st floor windows breaking eaves in pedimented dormerheads with finials, broad advanced gabled, crowstepped bay to outer left with bipartite to each floor. Wing returns into service court at rear, additional range of single storey and attic to N returning to E with ashlar gatepiers to courtyard. Fire escape and timber lean-to addition in courtyard.

Grey slates, tall shouldered ashlar stacks to main block with grouped, moulded flues, dentilled frieze and broad cornice. Simpler, ashlar coped stacks to rear wings.

INTERIOR: vestibule leads into stair hall via glass door and passage flanked by 2 tall grey and liver marble columns. Timber panelled dado, stair with tall mullioned and transomed window with coloured glass margins, stairwell has lift shaft installed. Little interior detailing survives; rooms now in use as hospital wards.

Statement of Special Interest

Built on the site of an earlier house, Southfield became a TB sanatorium early in the 20th century, the conversion seems to have been carried out by Dick Peddie and McKay, and has remained in hospital use since. Chessr?s plans in the NMRS show a single storey stables block adjoining the W wing rather than the 2-storey range as built. The two early 20th century former TB pavilions and X-ray block (Dick Peddie & McKay, 1933), sited to the NE are not included in the listing. The walled garden mentioned in the EDINBURGH volume has been lost to housing currently being built to the S (1995). John Chesser was surveyor to the Heriot Trust, and architect for most of Edinburgh?s western New Town, including Grosvenor, Douglas, Magdala, Eglinton, and Glencairn Crescents built on the Wester Coates estate feued by the Trust.

References

Bibliography

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