Lauriston Castle

On a summer afternoon there may be a game of croquet under way in front of the house, and the flower beds and clipped hedges are kept as neatly as the rooms inside.

Inside, it is an Edwardian home held still: fine furniture, ceramics and prints, and the personal things of the family who lived here last, just as they left them. Outside, the grounds run down towards the water. A gravel path between stone urns and clipped conifers leads to a small garden pavilion, and at the edge of the woods an iron gate under a tunnel of trees opens on the Firth of Forth. Bring a picnic, and give the gardens as long as the house.