Four storey blond sandstone tenements run in straight rows below the Meadows.
What Marchmont looks like
Streets run as a grid of four storey tenements in blond sandstone, rising to five storeys on Bruntsfield Links. The blocks sit on a north to south axis, so the upper windows along and look out across the Meadows toward Castle Rock and the Old Town.
Warrender Park Road, Marchmont Crescent and Marchmont Road went up before 1900 in the Scottish Baronial style the original feu charter required. Crowstepped gables, corbelled turrets and carved stone panels repeat block to block. Spottiswoode Road and Street, and date from after 1900. They use a plainer, more standardised front, the turrets and carving dropped.
Many of the streets are setted and lined with trees, and most tenements keep a small hedged garden to the pavement. Short parades of shops sit at the junctions, their Victorian fronts set hard against the pavement under the flats above.
The corner tenement at Marchmont Crescent and Road has an ornate gable with twin corbelled turrets topped by a lion and shield. Stone common stairs run up behind identical close doors down each block, and communal back greens sit enclosed behind the buildings, out of view from the street.
Shot in Marchmont
The corner cafe at 2-6 Spottiswoode Road has traded under more than one name, among them Freemans and Redbox. Pramface filmed there in 2013 and Department Q in 2025, each under the name the cafe carried at the time.
Redbox cafe
2-6 Spottiswoode Road. One corner cafe, two productions filmed years apart, each under the name the premises carried at the time.
Department Q
The Netflix crime series Department Q filmed at Redbox cafe on Spottiswoode Road, with Matthew Goode leading the cast. The cafe sits in a ground floor corner unit of one of the plainer, post 1900 tenement blocks the street is built from. Street View
Pramface, Season 2
The BBC Three sitcom Pramface filmed its second season at the same premises years earlier, when it traded as Freemans Cafe. The address has carried a cafe at ground level since, through at least one further change of name. Street View
Marchmont's four storey blond sandstone tenements carry the same bay windows and repeated block design as Hillhead's, built across roughly the same decades. Warrender Park Road and the streets off it repeat one tenement design block to block, the way Hillhead's do around Great George Street. Marchmont's own streets run wider and flatter than Hillhead's side streets, so a shot needing a real incline should look elsewhere. Try searching sandstone tenement bay windows now.
Four storey sandstone tenements with bay windows and cornices repeat along the streets, close in scale and period to the tenement grid east of Shields Road. Both areas carry a conservation area designation over largely intact Victorian frontages. Marchmont's sandstone runs paler than Pollokshields' and its streets are wider, both worth checking in a wide shot. Try searching sandstone tenement cornices now.
Dennistoun in Glasgow, Scotland
Dennistoun is also predominantly three and four storey Victorian tenements, with Duke Street flanked by sandstone blocks over ground floor shops much like Marchmont's own junction parades. The stone there runs red rather than Marchmont's blond ashlar. The red sandstone would give the match away in colour film or a wide daylight shot, so this works best tightly framed or graded. Try searching red sandstone tenement shops now.
