Wallyford House

Lothians: About 1.5 miles east and south of Musselburgh, on minor roads east of A6094 (Salters Road), to east and south of Wallyford, at site of Wallyford House.

Site   NT 370722   OS: 66   EH21 8LT

Site of old house, C-plan in shape, which may have dated from the early part of the 17th century (or earlier), although the lintel over the doorway was dated 1672. The exterior was plain except for a Renaissance doorway, but there were fine interiors.

‘Walyfoord’ is marked on Adair’s map of East Lothian (before 1722), and is shown as a substantial building in a rectangular garden, probably with parterres.

The lands were held by the Binning family, who came to prominence after one of the family recaptured Linlithgow Castle by driving a cart under the portcullis. One of the family was Sir William Binning of Wallyford, Lord Provost of Edinburgh from l675-7. Laurence Binning of Wallyford is on the Petition of the shire of Mid Lothian, dated 1701.

The house was the birthplace of Margaret Oliphant Wilson, the well-known, prolofic 19th-century author, who wrote as Mrs Oliphant (she married her cousin, Frank Wilson Oliphant). She was conpared to Jane Austen, George Eliot and Anthony Trollope. Full list of her works.

  The house was burnt out towards the end of the 19th century (probably autumn of 1884) and was demolished in 1948, when already ruinous, for the building of a new housing estate.