Doors Open Day: Couperfield House

The Edinburgh Doors Open Day is organised by The Cockburn Association (Edinburgh’s Civic Trust), in partnership with Edinburgh World Heritage.

This is one of the gateposts that used to say, left and right, “Couper Street School”.

This is the house: it used to be the janitor’s house for Couper Street School, which no longer exists. The bell is from the school days.


This is the garden: small, inside high walls, but sheltered. Cosy seems an odd word to use about a garden, but the right one for this: in the corner of the photo, you can see the beginnings of the new extension’s sedum roof.

The garden used to be bigger, but a large part of it is occupied by a new extension, with copper cladding on the walls. (You can just see the extension from Coburg Street: I took a photo earlier in the year.)

The first clue that this isn’t just an architect’s design being shown off: on the decking and inside the front hall, visitors have been asked to take off their shoes. This is a family home that we have been invited to wander round.

It’s not a large house inside: it would be just one room, sitting-room and open-plan kitchen, but built across the room from one corner to the other is a kind of mezzanine floor (can you say mezzanine when there’s no floor above it?) edged with a balcony, decorated with ivy.

Looking down from the balcony makes you better appreciate the proportions of the room and the windows:

The upper floor was reached from the ground floor by a beautiful spiral staircase…

…mundanely, with a baby gate at the top.

I liked the ceiling lights, too:

The inside of the extension is still a work in process: you can see the bones of the house here.