Ross Caldwell can still vividly recall his first viewing of Tigh-Na-Mara (“House by the Sea” in Gaelic) five years ago. He was looking for a new place to call home for himself and his family after a decade of living in London. He travelled to the five-bedroom hilltop house in North Queensferry, Fife, and adored it immediately.
“I still remember walking into the master bedroom — it was a nice sunny day — and looking out across the Firth of Forth and just going, ‘OK, we’re buying this house,’” he says. “The views are absolutely astonishing; right across the Forth estuary, all the way down to Berwick Law. You can see the Bass Rock on a clear day. You can see across to Edinburgh — the castle, Arthur’s Seat.”
And those are only the views to the east and southeast. From the west-facing rooftop balcony, accessed from the attic room which Caldwell uses as a home office, you can see the blinking tower tops of the Queensferry Crossing looming near by, all the way to the Ochil Hills at the northern boundary of the Forth Valley 20 miles away. “It’s lovely in the summertime because the sun sets just behind the hills,” he says. “You can sit and have a sundowner and catch the last rays of the day.”
The previous owners are partly to thank for the views. For almost half a century, Tigh-Na-Mara had been a flat-roofed house but they expanded upwards, building a third floor inside an apex roof. In addition to the west-facing rooftop balcony set into the new roof, the extension also has a large east-facing glazed section in the middle designed for gazing out over the Forth.
It was added in a such a seamless way, handsomely blending the property’s Edwardian and contemporary architecture, that it’s hard to imagine it looking any other way. “It’s a very striking-looking house, I think, if hard to describe,” says Caldwell. “My mum always says it looks sort of Arts and Craftsy, so I’ll go with that.”
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With three large reception rooms plus smaller side rooms including a kids’ playroom, reading room, utility room and home gym, the ground floor is ideally configured for a large family. An impressive structural improvement during Caldwell’s time owning the house has been the addition of a garden room with bi-folding patio doors. It flows into the kitchen and family room to create a large, open-plan space at the heart of the home, which spills out during warmer months into the walled garden, where the children have the run of a private enclosure with a play area including a treehouse. There’s even a small beach at the bottom of the hill.
North Queensferry station is less than a five-minute walk down the street, from which about 50 trains a day run directly to Edinburgh (where Caldwell works as a partner in a law firm), taking just over 20 minutes via the Forth Bridge. With its combination of breathtaking views, modern family comforts and commuting convenience, it’s easy to see how Caldwell fell in love with Tigh-Na-Mara at first sight.
Offers over £995,000; savills.com
