A district of Edinburgh, lying 3 miles (5 km) northwest of the city centre. The old Silverknowes Farm (which lay on the Muirhouse Estate) was developed in the 1920s; the eastern part by private developers, who built detached bungalows, and the western part by the city to provide public housing in the form of small blocks of flats. The streets were laid out as a series of concentric semi-circles, divided by Silverknowes Road. Peculiarly, these semi-circles never actually meet on Silverknowes Road, perhaps an attempt to keep the two different communities apart. Actually, private development infiltrated the public housing, a situation accentuated by the right-to-buy legislation of the 1980s, which has resulted in much of the public housing being bought by the tenants. The old farmhouse remains on Silverknowes Road towards the centre of the development. Another house known as 'Silverknowe' appears on old maps to the north, on what is today Marine Drive by the Firth of Forth. The defence engineering company Ferranti once had a plant on Ferry Road between Silverknowes and Muirhouse producing navigation and display systems for military aircraft. The site is now occupied by the Ferry Gait development.
Close by, to the northwest, is Lauriston Castle and, to the north, Silverknowes Golf Course, a fine municipal course.