Niddrie-Marischall, a mansion in Liberton parish, Edinburghshire, on the left bank of Burdiehouse Burn, 2 miles S by W of Portobello and 3 ½ ESE of Edinburgh. The park is entered by an ivy-clad archway; and the house itself is a fine old baronial building, bearing date 1636, but modernised towards the close of last century by William Adam. Lord Cockburn tells in his Memorials how for many years almost all his `Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays were passed at Niddrie. I sighed over every holiday as lost that was not. Part of the house is very old, but it never had any architectural or much historical interest. But the garden! the garden! unseen and unseeing, it was a world of its own. That unwalled flat space of only four or five acres contained absolutely everything that a garden could supply for "man's delightful use;" peaches and oaks, gravel walks, and a wilderness "grotesque and wild," a burn and a bowling-green, shade and sun, covert and lawn, vegetables and glorious holly hedges - everything delightful either to the young or the old. Eden was not more varied. And Eden is well worthy of its reputation if it was the scene of greater happiness. After a long and unbroken course of domestic security and pleasure, death began, about 1815, to extinguish, and circumstances to scatter, the gay and amiable family of which I was virtually a member; and I have since seldom revisited the generally silent walls. But the days of Niddrie are among the last I can forget.' Hugh Miller, too, worked as a mason for ten months here in 1823, and lodged in a one-roomed cottage near the village of Niddry Mill. In My Schools and Schoolmasters he describes his rambles in the Niddrie woods, his introduction to the Carboniferous System, the lately manumitted collier slaves, his comrades' debauchery, and their unsuccessful strike. Near the W end of the house stood St Mary's chapel, founded by Robert Wauchope in 1387, and demolished by a mob from Edinburgh in 1688. This Robert was probably the first of the Wauchopes of Niddrie-Marischall, illustrious members of which family were Gilbert, who sat in the Reformation parliament of 1560, and John, a distinguished Covenanter, who was knighted by Charles I. in 1633. William John Wauchope, Esq. (1841-82), the late proprietor, held 670 acres in the shire, valued at £2894 per annum. Afire in Niddrie colliery cost seven lives, 24 May 1884.—Ord. Sur., sh. 32, 1857.
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