O flowers of Scotland

A million bulbs in one garden are not the only objects of beauty across three Scottish estates new to the market, two with houses

- Robert Adam

QUALITY not quantity is the phrase that best describes the current state of play in the Scottish estates market. The highlight of the year to date is the launch in today’s COUNTRY LIFE of the historic, 764-acre Newliston estate at Kirkliston, near Edinburgh, which has never before been seen on the open market.

Evelyn Channing of Savills Edinburgh office (0131–247 3720) seeks ‘offers over £15 million’ for the ‘pastoral oasis’, with its Category A-listed mansion built in 1792–93 by Robert Adam within an important designed landscape, both designated of ‘outstanding architectural and historical interest’ by Historic Scotland. Despite its location 10 miles from Edinburgh city centre and four miles from Edinburgh airport, the estate is sheltered from the outside world by acres of gardens, woods and farmland that create a sense of seclusion and tranquillity within easy reach of central Scotland’s motorway network.

Only two families—the Dundases and the Hogs—have owned Newliston since the 15th century. According to Sir Robert Douglas’s Baronage of Scotland (1798), the Dundas family, descendants of Duncan, 1st Dundas of Newliston, owned Newliston and other properties for the best part of three centuries. In 1669, Elizabeth, the 8th and last Dundas of Newliston, married Sir John Dalrymple, later Earl of Stair, and it is to their son, Field Marshal the 2nd Earl of Stair, that Newliston owes much of what remains today.

Lord Stair had a successful career as a soldier and, from 1715–20, was ambassador to the court of France at Versailles, where he was greatly influenced by the layout of the gardens and grounds. However, he fell out of favour for a time in the wake of the South Sea Bubble scandal, and, according to estate records, ‘lived in comparative seclusion from 1722 to 1742, during the greater part of each year at the house of Newliston’.