General view from south-west, 1976
Originally erected in 1696 as the residence of David Crawford, Secretary to Duchess Anne (1632-1716) this handsome and substantial house was sited near the foot of the 'Hietoun' close to the precincts of Hamilton Palace. It was built to the designs of the architect, James Smith (c.1645-1731) who was then working for the duchess on 'The Great Design' for the palace.

This view across Muir Street shows the building in 1976 following its conversion to a museum in 1967, a function which it continues to serve as part of a new and enlarged complex of museum buildings. Its general formal appearance with its symmetrical and pedimented frontage continues to provide a surviving reminder or echo, albeit on a much lesser and more simplified scale, of Smith's main south front of the palace as re-designed for Duchess Anne.

David Crawford (d.1736) was a hard-working, lawyer-secretary to Duchess Anne, the most highly paid of her employees, who had first entered ducal employment in about 1680 but for many decades combined these demanding duties with his own Edinburgh-based legal business. This house is one tangible manifestation of the wealth he thereby created for himself, a point not lost on one of the duchess's sons who recorded that 'Mr Crawford has built a fine house where Mrs Naismith's house was, but nearer to the park … It is after the fashion of the Laird of Livingstone's house, and as many windows in front as his, by which you may see some folks are not losers by Her Grace's service'.