Ancient And Modern

On a recommendation from Miss Flum, we explored the environs of Whitehill House, near Rosewell. We found the house had many other fascinating architectural features besides this juxtaposition of elegant chimneys and television aerial.

Described in The Buildings Of Scotland as 'a large Tudor-Jacobean revival house of prodigious authority' designed by William Burn and David Bryce, the house was built for Wardlaw Ramsay, proprietor of nearby Whitehill colliery, in 1844. There is more detail than you need here.  Later acquired by the engineer Archibald Hood., in World War I it was used as a Red Cross hospital.

Until the late 1990's, when care in the home became the norm, known as St Joseph's Hospital, the house was run by nuns of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, as a hospital for children with learning disabilities, and was visited by Pope John Paul II during his visit to Scotland in 1982.

Now category A-listed, privately-owned, and surrounded by a golf course, the house is planned for conversion to flats, the policies provide pleasant walks with woodland, birdsong and roe deer in evidence.

Extra photo 1 shows the frontage, with its grand porte-cochère. Extra 2 a collage of bracket fungus ?Dryad's Saddle, Polyporus squamosus on a dead sycamore stump; common spotted orchid, Dactylorhiza fuchsii; white-tailed bee on small thistle; and everlasting pea.