Gate-Lodge And Gate Piers, St Margaret's Hope, North Queensferry

Gate-Lodge and Gate Piers, St Margaret's Hope, North Queensferry

This gate-lodge and its associated piers date from 1829, with significant enlargement undertaken in 1916 by the architect Ernest Newton. The complex is listed as a building of national interest, principally due to Newton's involvement as an architect of acknowledged importance.

The gate-lodge itself comprises a 2-storey and part single-storey building formed of three telescoping blocks that step down towards the north, following the fall of the ground. The walls are rendered with painted ashlar margins, cills and quoins; stone cills run throughout, and a band course marks the level between the 2-storey blocks. The building features open pedimented gables and ornamental timber porches flanking the entrance doors.

The west (entrance) elevation presents five bays arranged in groups of 2-2-1. A single-storey piended block occupies the left side, containing two windows. To the right stand two 2-storey blocks: the central block has a 2-leaf timber boarded door with an ornamental timber porch featuring chevron-banded bargeboards and a pendant finial, flanked by a bipartite window. Above this door is a small first-floor window, with a further bipartite window to its left. An advanced single bay projects to the right, with bipartite windows at both ground and first floors. The south elevation displays an open pedimented plain gable, with a timber boarded door and ornamental timber porch identical in character to those on the west front. This porch originally had open lattice sides at first-floor level and formerly opened onto elevated ground near the entrance gates, though this access is now blocked.

The east (roadside) elevation comprises a recessed single bay to the left with bipartite windows at ground and first floors, a 2-storey flat-roof extension to the right containing single windows to its left and right returns and a bipartite window at first floor, and a single-storey piened block to the far right with a central bipartite window. The north elevation is plain at wallhead level.

Windows throughout are predominantly 8- and 4-pane timber sash and case design, with lying-pane windows to the centre block. The roofs are pitched and piened, covered in grey slates with wide ashlar coped skews to the pitched gables. Rendered coped stacks terminate at gablehead and wallhead, with circular cans fitted throughout. The interior has not been surveyed.

The gate piers, also dating from 1829 with 1916 additions, comprise two large channelled ashlar piers on square plans, each with plinth, cornice and ball finial. They are decorated with carved rope and anchor motifs added during the 1916 works. The piers retain their original iron spear-finial cast-iron railings and gates.

The site occupies a steep hill overlooking the Forth to the southwest. St Margaret's Hope is the small bay between Rosyth Castle and Long Craig, renowned as the landing place of St Margaret, future queen of Scotland, who arrived here in 1069 with her brother Edgar Atheling and sister Catherine, en route from Orkney to Dunfermline. The land was acquired from the Guildry of Dunfermline in 1825 by Elias Cathcart of Auchindrane, who constructed the principal house (St Margaret's Hope) in or shortly after 1829. The property subsequently passed to Captain William Elder in 1855 and through his inheritors before being acquired by the Admiralty in 1916 for the Commander in Chief, Coast of Scotland, at which point it became known as Admiralty House during the First World War. The gate-lodge originally comprised two separate dwellings, which were amalgamated during the 1916 enlargement. The house remained the official residence of the Rosyth Naval Commander until 1996, when it passed to the Scottish Executive and was subsequently leased to the private company Universal Steels. The gates, though contemporary with the 1829 construction of the main house, were substantially modified in 1916 to accord with Newton's alterations.