The big reveal - A designer who took on a neglected Edinburgh town house was delighted to find its original features still intact, though hidden under chipboard. By Jessica Doyle. Photographs by Douglas Gibb Discovering a perfectly preserved period feature behind a boarded-up wall is something of a holy grail for property enthusiasts. This is just what happened when interior designer Roderick Murray and his partner, Andrew Keith, bought a neglected Georgian house in the New Town area of Edinburgh three years ago.

The building had been used as lawyers' offices for the past 60 or so years, and as such had remained unrenovated, with chipboard floors and trunk wiring snaking over the plasterboard walls. ‘We had assumed we'd have to get new flooring, but we lifted up the chipboard and there was the original wooden floor,’ Murray recalls. ‘Then we found a 200-year-old marble fireplace behind some boarding. That's when we knew we had something really special.’......