• Introduction
• Scotland Office
• Past Secretaries
• Dover House
• - The Site
• - The Building
• - Sir Matthew Featherstonehaugh
    and others 1756-1788
• - Frederick, Duke of York 1788-1792
• - The Melbourne family 1793-1830
• - The Dover Family 1830-1885
• - The Scottish Office 1885-1999
• - The Scotland Office 1999-Present

• Text size:
•    
•     
•     

In the later part of the nineteenth century, with the growth all around of Government Departments, Whitehall would no longer be a fashionable location for an aristocratic Town House. In 1885 Lord Salisbury, as Prime Minister, gave it as an office to the first Secretary of Scotland, the Duke of Richmond and Gordon. It is interesting to note that had Dover House not been quite so splendid, Gladstone the Prime Minister during the previous year might have made it his "No 10", but he chose not to do so. The size of Dover House would, he said, oblige him "to receive", and he valued his privacy. Scottish Office legend has it that Salisbury recounted this story to Richmond and Gordon on a sleeper journey from Glasgow to London. It is alleged that the Secretary of Scotland not wishing to miss the main chance asked if in the circumstances of it not being required as a residence for the Prime Minister, he might have it as his office. The Prime Minister agreed, whereupon the Scottish Secretary asked him to sign a piece of paper in effect passing the House to the Scottish Office. No one knows if this paper still exists but in any case it makes a nice story!

The Scottish Office was for long a tiny department. Treasury parsimony as well as a lack of real power saw to that. There was thus little call for change in the layout of the House and to this day it has survived the rigours of time. It was in Lady Melbourne's apartments on the ground floor that the Secretary of what was, even officially, known as the Scotch Education Department, laboured mightily – laudably giving Scotland a state secondary education system at a time far ahead of that of her Southern neighbour. In the 1930s it was in the Secretary of State's room on the first floor that the Scottish renaissance from the gloom of industrial depression began under successive Secretaries of State. In 1941 the building of James Paine and Henry Holland with its style and lavish history was thought, (after some near misses, particularly one in 1940 that hit the old Treasury building next door), to be unsafe and the Scottish Office was housed for some years in Great College Street near Westminster School. Dover House continued to have some temporary occupants. It was the headquarters of Viscount Montgomery when the establishment of NATO was being planned. Indeed the present Viscount relates how as an undergraduate he climbed Holland's Rotunda Steps in an unsuccessful attempt to seek additional funds from his father. But the great rooms were for long neglected and unused. A lady working in the building recalls looking into what had been the Secretary of State's room to find a rat perched on his desk. However, in the late 1940's and early 1950's Dover House was given a thorough overhaul and with a few minor exceptions which are to this day being discovered and rectified, great care was taken to preserve its 18th century and Regency character.