Private Homes \ Two Houses, Circus Lane, Edinburgh

Our client owned a warehouse-shed occupying a site of two mews widths (approximately five metres each) but of an unusual depth of fifteen metres and had, as we discovered during site investigations, the possibility that made up ground at the rear of the site could be excavated to form a basement level.

The consequence of this unusual site configuration is that what appear as small houses to the lane mask substantial properties internally. The façade follows the idea first built at Royal Terrace Mews of expressing a major ground floor and minor upper floor in stone, juxtaposed externally with a revealed internal lining of lead, glass block and timber which reverses the relationship.

Internally the houses are 'upside-down' with bedrooms on the ground and lower floors, lit by a lightwell to the north, leaving the upper floors as a continuous space of living kitchen and dining room in a stepped section flowing onto an external terrace to the rear.

Slate pitches to north and south are separated from a flat roof in the centre by two generous roof lights. A stair and rolling roof hatch gives access to the roof to make a second and spectacular roof terrace to each house; thus a narrow site develops unexpectedly into two four-storey, four-bedroomed houses with substantial and unexpected external areas.

17 Circus Lane is currently available for rental, more information is available from www.seventeencircuslane.com.