The dazzling, Gothic revival mansion set within rolling parkland to the west of Edinburgh overlooking the Firth of Forth, is the setting for Tatler’s August issue cover shoot. Highly apt, given it is the family seat of the Hon. Delphi Primrose, our glowing cover star. A triple threat given she is a Scottish society beauty, TikTok phenomenon and supermodel in the making.
Dalmeny House, designed by William Wilkins, was completed in 1817 and is home to the 7th Earl and Countess of Rosebery. The very first in Scotland to be built in the Tudor Revival Style with a façade reportedly modelled on Norfolk’s East Barsham Manor – another important work of Tudor architecture.
Dalmeny – first and foremost a family home, but one that opens its gilded doors to the public in the summer months – offers far more comfortable accommodation than the family’s former ancestral residence, the 13th century Barnbougle Castle, an impressive seaside tower (but 10 minutes away on foot). The castle, rebuilt as the seaside retreat of a Victorian Prime Minister, is a true hidden treasure that has very recently been repurposed as a heritage event space large enough to accommodate a 200-person feast.
The estate was acquired in 1662 by Sir Archibald Primrose whose son was created Earl of Rosebery in 1703. It was in 1774 that Neil Primrose, 3rd Earl of Rosebery, commissioned the great Robert Adam (behind the interiors at Harewood House) to design a new house at Barnbougle – however it wasn’t until his son, Archibald Primrose succeeded as 4th Earl in 1814, that the ball was really set into motion. He turned to Jeffry Wyatt for his new house – the famous architect and garden designer – whose Tudor Gothic plans were approved, even if he wished to employ William Wilkins, a contemporary of his at Cambridge to complete the job.
Of course, Delphi and her four siblings’ glamorous friends today flock to the castle for Scottish dancing, but arguably there have been no more illustrious guests than Queen Mary, the wife of King George V, who visited with her daughter Princess Mary in 1927. Although, before then, in the 19th century, Archibald Philip, the 5th Earl of Rosebury – arguably Dalmeny’s best-known inhabitant – who served as Prime Minister between 1894-95, will have likely invited the famous likes of Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone over.
Unlike the Gothic exterior, most of the principal rooms are created in the Regency style, with the exception of the thoroughly Gothic hammerbeam roof in the hall (a design described as ‘the most spectacular endeavour of the English Medieval carpenter’) and not dissimilar to the ones you might see at Windsor Castle and Middle Temple. Inside, the house is a tour de force of beautiful objects – paintings and pieces of furniture from both the Rosebery and Rothschild collections (thanks to the 5th Earl’s 1978 marriage to Hannah, daughter and heir of Baron Mayer de Rothschild).
Much of the 18th-century French furniture and extraordinary art collection was kept at Mentmore Towers, the Rothschild’s Buckinghamshire mansion, before being inherited by Hannah and they remained in the Rosebery family until 1977 when Mentmore was sold. Dalmeny also holds one of Britain’s largest collections of Napoleonic memorabilia – not to mention a governmental red box that belonged to the 5th Earl, previously mentioned.
If the house is one thing, the grounds are surely another. In the cover interview the gardens are described with ‘dramatic views’ over the River Leader and with Lady Dalmeny cited as a ‘passionate gardener’ – with ‘meticulously planted beds blooming with forget-me-nots, roses, foxgloves and, of course, primroses’. It’s quite a house – indeed, for quite a cover star with a very bright future ahead of her.
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