By the eminent Sir William Chambers, 1771; interior work by John Dick Peddie, 1857. Free-standing Palladian villa with forecourt to St Andrew Square. Interior is all Dick Peddie. Magnificent banking hall, 18m square with 4 wide arches springing from low in corners to support dome with 5 concentric tiers of diminishing glazed stars and a central oculus; pendentives contain figures representing Commerce, Agriculture, Navigation and the Arts, by James Steell; restrained plaster relief decoration; white Italian marble and bronze counters. Much of Chambers’ work survives to upper floors; at 1st floor NE Drawing Room.
A grander version of Marble Hill, built for Sir Laurence Dundas (aka Dundas House); its forecourt, the prospective site for St Andrew’s Church, supposedly snatched from under the eyes of the Town Council by Dundas who already owned the land and gardens to the E. Dundas, however, was responsible for pushing the bill allowing Edinburgh to extend its Royalty (and thus build the New Town) through the House of Commons, and this may have been his reward. Built by the mason William Jamieson. The house was acquired by the Excise Office in 1794 (thus the Royal coat of arms exterior tympanum), and the Royal Bank in 1825. The Bank called in William Burn in 1838, who created a new stair hall, subsequently removed by Dick Peddie. A very significant surviving part of the original fabric of Edinburgh’s New Town, which is one of the most important and best preserved examples of urban planning in Britain.
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