Archway On Drive, St Margaret's Hope, North Queensferry

St Margaret's Hope is a substantial country house in North Queensferry, Fife, sitting on a steep hillside overlooking the Firth of Forth to the south-west. It has a fascinating layered history: an original house built around 1829 was remodelled and significantly extended in 1916 by Ernest Newton (1856–1922), a major English Arts and Crafts architect for whom no other Scottish works are currently known. The listing covers the house itself together with its boundary walls, walled garden to the south, and an archway on the drive to the north.

The site takes its name from the small bay of St Margaret's Hope, which lies between Rosyth Castle and Long Craig and is traditionally identified as the place where St Margaret — future wife of King Malcolm Canmore (reigned 1058–93) — landed in 1069 during her journey from Orkney to Dunfermline. The land was acquired from the Guildry of Dunfermline in 1825 by Elias Cathcart of Auchindrane, who built the earlier house on the site in or shortly after 1829, naming it St Margaret's. The house subsequently passed to Captain William Elder in 1855 and then to his inheritors, before being acquired by the Admiralty in 1916 for use as the residence of the Commander in Chief, Coast of Scotland, at which point Ernest Newton was engaged to carry out the remodelling and extensions. 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 was handed over to the Scottish Executive and subsequently leased to a private company, Universal Steels. 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 original 1829 house is presumed to have been symmetrical. Its northern half survives largely intact and forms part of the northern end of the present building; its southern half was absorbed by the 1916 additions. The building as a whole is two storeys in height for most of its length, with a single-storey section at the original house and single-storey adjoining service blocks and modern garages to the south. It is built 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 across both blocks. The original openings at the rear (sea-front) elevation retain moulded architraves, while the later window surrounds have plain architraves with recessed apron panels set within them. A carved panel dated 1916 appears on the central advanced bays.

The east (principal) elevation is eleven bays wide, projecting and receding irregularly. The seven-bay 1916 addition occupies the left-hand portion. On the far left, a two-storey, three-bay section advances forward, with three windows at ground and first floor. To its right is a recessed section containing one ground-floor window and two first-floor bipartite windows. Further right, another advanced two-storey three-bay section carries 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 returning around the right and left sides of this advanced right-hand section at first-floor level. The recessed four-bay 1829 section to the right begins with a single two-storey bay carrying ground and first-floor windows. Next to it, slightly further recessed, is a single two-storey bay with a projecting three-bay ashlar pilastered entrance porch with 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, flanked by windows; a first-floor window is centred above the porch, with a small square window to its left. Moving further right, a single-storey pedimented bay contains a window (with roof lights within illuminating an internal cupola). The far-right end bay has a blind window.

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

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

The south elevation shows an adjoining double piended single-storey service block with a central first-floor window and a rectangular piended dormer with a bipartite window centred above.

Windows throughout are predominantly 12-pane timber sash and case. The roofs are piended and pitched, covered in grey slates. There are 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. All stacks carry circular clay cans.

Internally, the original house retains much of its late Georgian character. The hall, located in the 1829 section, has moulded door surrounds and a key-blocked arch leading south into the 1916 addition. The timber staircase has alternate barley-twisted and rectangular-section balusters. To the right of the entrance is a circular leaded cupola. An Adam-style chimneypiece surround is set into the north wall. The drawing room, also in the 1829 section at the rear, is a long rectangular double room fronted by the canted bay windows overlooking the sea. The two halves are divided by a large pilastered opening, now permanently blocked by a wall inserted around 1996. The room has a Greek key and egg-and-dart cornice and a moulded picture rail. There are two white marble rococo or Louis XV-style chimneypieces: the southern one features scallop and fern carving, the northern one 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 house was taken over by the Admiralty. The dining room (now used as a drawing room), located in the 1916 section at the front, has a vigorous dentilled cornice, dado panelling, and a panelled surround and overmantel around an 18th-century-style fireplace. This features 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, located in the 1829 section within the single-storey end block, has a decorative rosebud and thistle cornice, a moulded picture rail, and a projecting corner cupboard with a gothic tracery timber-panelled door.

The boundary walls to the west (shore-front) are of coped random rubble at the upper level bordering the house, with a further section 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. The north wall forms the boundary with Main Road. The walls are of random rubble with hammer-dressed quoins. The north elevation has double timber boarded doors at its centre and a single 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 — a building erected for William Napier (and his wife Eliza Park) which was demolished in 1800. The archway has a semicircular pediment to the south bearing a cartouche inscribed and dated "WN IF SICVT OLIVA FRVCTIFERA 1376" (translated as "Fruitful as an olive"), and a triangular pediment to the north carrying a coat of arms inscribed and dated "WN EP DITAT SERVATA FIDES 1570" (translated as "Faith preserved maketh rich").

The house is listed as a group with the St Margaret's Hope gatelodge.