A charming anomaly - Rosebery House, Midlothian The home of Lord Dalmeny

A late-Georgian shooting lodge became the favoured retreat of the Victorian Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery. It escaped ambitious remodelling at his hands and has recently been the object of sympathetic restoration, as John Martin Robinson reports

- John Martin Robinson

IT is a charming, but disconcerting anomaly that the Earl of Rosebery lives at Dalmeny House in West Lothian, whereas his son Lord Dalmeny lives at Rosebery House in Midlothian. The Rosebery estate, although not continuously owned by the family, was acquired in the 17th century as an augmentation of the Roseberys’ original landholding nearby at Carrington. Then called Clerkington, it was bought in 1695 by Archibald Primrose (1664–1723), Commissioner for the county of Edinburgh to the Scottish Parliament, who changed the name to Rosebery after Roseberry Topping, a hill in Yorkshire. It was from this that he took his title when he was created a viscount in 1700 and 1st Earl of Rosebery in the Scottish peerage in 1703, in honour of his heiress wife, Dorothea Cressy, who owned land near Wetherby in the North Riding.

By acquiring Clerkington, the 1st Earl was emphasising the origins of his family in Midlothian. This was before the acquisition of the baronies of Barnbougle and Dalmeny on the shore of the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh, which, in turn, became the main family seat in the 18th and 19th centuries. The property was alienated by James, the 2nd Earl of Rosebery, in 1749, a spendthrift who wasted the family lands and fortune, but it was re-acquired after a gap of 70 years in 1821 by Archibald, the 4th Earl, a more prudent and financially astute man. To emphasise the restored connection, when he was given a UK peerage in 1828, Archibald took the title Lord Rosebery of Rosebery.