Walled Garden, St Margaret's Hope, North Queensferry

St Margaret's Hope is a substantial two-storey house in North Queensferry, overlooking the Firth of Forth towards the southwest from a steeply sloping site between Rosyth Castle and Long Craig. The building has a complex history: the original house was built in or shortly after 1829 by Elias Cathcart of Auchindrane, who had acquired the land from the Guildry of Dunfermline in 1825. In 1916, when the property was acquired by the Admiralty for use as the residence of the Commander in Chief, Coast of Scotland, the prominent English Arts and Crafts architect Ernest Newton (1856–1922) was commissioned to remodel and substantially extend the house in a neo-Georgian style. No other Scottish works by Newton are currently known. The house was known as Admiralty House during the First World War and remained the residence of the Rosyth Naval Commander until 1996, when it passed to the Scottish Executive and was subsequently leased to Universal Steels. The original 1829 house was presumably symmetrical; its northern half survives largely intact and forms part of the northern end of the present building, while its southern half was absorbed into Newton's 1916 additions. The listing includes the boundary walls, the walled garden to the south, and the archway on the drive to the north.

The building is constructed of coursed squared sandstone rubble with droved ashlar dressings. There is a base course at the 1829 block and a cill course at first-floor level to both blocks. The original openings at the rear (sea-facing) elevation have moulded architraves, while the later window surrounds have plain architraves with recessed apron panels set within them. A carved panel dated 1916 appears to the central advanced bays. Single-storey service blocks and modern garages adjoin to the south.

The principal (east) elevation is eleven bays wide, projecting and receding irregularly. To the left are seven bays of the 1916 addition. The far left comprises a two-storey, three-bay section advanced forward, with three windows at ground and first floor. To its right is a recessed section with one ground-floor window and two bipartite first-floor windows. Further right is another advanced two-storey, three-bay section with three ground-floor windows and two first-floor windows flanking a carved central panel bearing a Royal Naval wreath and anchor motif dated 1916, with a hood-mould above. There are also windows to the right and left returns of this advanced right-hand section at first-floor level. To the right of these seven bays is the recessed four-bay 1829 section. This begins with a two-storey single bay to the left with ground and first-floor windows, followed by a further recessed two-storey single bay with a projecting three-bay ashlar pilastered entrance porch featuring a shallow pediment and blocking course. The centre bay of the porch is slightly advanced and contains two-leaf timber panelled outer doors with a half-glazed inner door, flanking windows, a first-floor window centred above, and a small square window to the left. To the penultimate right bay is a single-storey pedimented bay with a window (roof lights here illuminate a cupola within the building). The far right bay has a blind window.

The north elevation is only partially visible. It has an open-pedimented plain gable with a small blocked opening to the right.

The west (shore-front) elevation is two storeys on a plinth course. The 1916 addition to the right has six bays arranged in a 2-1-2-1 pattern, with the window bays projecting. The right-hand projecting bay is pedimented and has a tripartite window at first-floor level; a further tripartite window appears to the fifth bay from the left. The 1829 block to the left has two substantial canted bay windows — two storeys to the right, single storey to the left — with a timber balcony with roof set between them at ground-floor level, and a small modern timber conservatory projecting from the centre of the left canted bay. A single-storey block is deeply recessed to the far left.

The south elevation adjoins a double piended single-storey service block. There is a central first-floor window, and a rectangular piended dormer with a bipartite window centred above.

Windows are predominantly twelve-pane timber sash and case throughout. The roofs are piended and pitched, covered in grey slates, with wide ashlar coped skews to the single-storey north gable. The 1916 section has seven coped stop-chamfered ashlar stacks; the 1829 section has two octagonal stacks. Chimney cans are circular clay.

The interior retains much of the late Georgian decoration of the original house. The hall is in the 1829 section and features moulded door surrounds, a key-blocked arch leading to the 1916 addition to the south, a timber staircase with alternate barley-twisted and rectangular-section balusters, a circular leaded cupola to the right of the entrance, and an Adam-style chimneypiece surround on the north wall.

The drawing room is also in the 1829 section, to the rear. It is a long rectangular double room fronted by canted bay windows overlooking the sea, divided by a large pilastered opening that was blocked by a permanent wall around 1996. It has a Greek key and egg-and-dart cornice, a moulded picture rail, and two white marble rococo or Louis XV chimneypieces — the southern one with scallop and fern carving, the northern one with a scrolled heraldic panel over a small scallop. Both have 1916 neo-Georgian grates and slips with elliptical bas-relief panels depicting allegorical scenes. These rococo fireplaces were acquired in 1917 after the Admiralty took over the house.

The dining room (currently used as a drawing room) is in the 1916 section to the front. It has a vigorous dentilled cornice, dado panelling, and a panelled surround and overmantel to an 18th-century-style fireplace. The fireplace has a blue-veined bolection-moulded marble slip set in a lugged timber chimneypiece with a plain pulvinated frieze and dentilled cornice, and an original cast-iron grate decorated with swags, bows, and violins.

The board room is in the 1829 section, in the single-storey end block. It has a decorative rosebud and thistle cornice, a moulded picture rail, and a projecting corner cupboard with a gothic tracery timber panelled door.

To the west, along the shore front, there are coped random rubble boundary walls at the upper level bordering the house, and further walls at the shore encapsulating the lower garden.

The walled garden to the south dates from around 1829 and encloses a rectangular garden that tapers towards the south. Its north wall forms the boundary to the main road. It is built of random rubble with hammer-dressed quoins, and has a double timber boarded door to the centre of its north elevation and a further timber boarded door to the right.

The archway on the drive to the north dates from the earlier 19th century. It is a wide segmental rubble archway incorporating relocated 17th-century fragments from the Wrychtshouse at Bruntsfield. This building — built for William Napier (WN) and his wife Eliza Park (EP) at Bruntsfield — was demolished in 1800, and its Renaissance pediments were subsequently reused here. The south face has a semicircular pediment with a cartouche inscribed and dated "WN IF SICVT OLIVA FRVCTIFERA 1376", meaning "Fruitful as an olive". The north face has a triangular pediment with a coat of arms inscribed and dated "WN EP DITAT SERVATA FIDES 1570", meaning "Faith preserved maketh rich".

The site has considerable historical associations. St Margaret's Hope is the small bay between Rosyth Castle and Long Craig, and is known as the place where St Margaret — future wife of King Malcolm Canmore (reigned 1058–93) — landed in 1069 with her brother Edgar Atheling and her sister Catherine, on her journey to Dunfermline from Orkney. Five cottages known as Welldean Cottages, built on the estate on land below the existing driveway in the later 19th century, were demolished in the 1960s to make way for garages. The house is listed as a group with the St Margaret's Hope gate lodge.