Scotland · Still standing
Bemersyde House
Bemersyde House is a historic Scottish house in Roxburghshire whose core originates as a 16th‑century peel tower. It sits on the Bemersyde Estate in the Scottish Borders and is the ancestral seat of Clan Haig. The estate includes gardens and outbuildings recorded in heritage inventories.
Its prime
1600
Today
Still standing
As it stood in 1600
What Bemersyde House looked like in its prime.
A stone-built house whose core is a 16th-century peel tower: a vertical masonry block of dressed local stone forming the dominant mass, adjoined by lower domestic ranges with pitched roofs and chimneys. The composition presents a clear tower silhouette rising above surrounding lower house elements, all set within broad estate grounds; nearby outbuildings and planned garden plots lie close to the main house. At its prime the masonry and rooflines are complete and occupied.
Its story
The story of Bemersyde House.
A Border Peel Tower and the Rhymer's Prophecy
Bemersyde House sits in Roxburghshire, in the Scottish Borders, with Newtown St Boswells, Melrose and Dryburgh as its nearest towns. It dates back to the 16th century as a peel tower, and was listed category A on 9 June 1971.
The house is bound to one surname by a piece of verse. A 13th-century poem attributed to Thomas the Rhymer predicted that there would always be a Haig at Bemersyde: 'Tyde what may betyde, Haig shall be Haig of Bemersyde'. The Earls Haig take their family motto, 'Tyde what may', from those lines.
From the 1921 Purchase to the Third Earl
In 1921 the British Government bought Bemersyde and presented it to Field Marshal the 1st Earl Haig, the British commander in the First World War. The house is the seat of the chief of Clan Haig, a position held by Alexander Douglas Derrick Haig, 3rd Earl Haig. The William Wallace Statue stands on the Bemersyde estate.
Step inside
5 places to explore in 1600.
The record describes 5 distinct spots at Bemersyde House, including the full exterior approach. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
Build Your Own Castle
Recreate Bemersyde House with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1600, a photoreal reconstruction that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
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Clans who held Bemersyde House.
The families that held Bemersyde House for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Haig
Ancestral seat of the Haigs; bought by the British Government in 1921 for Field Marshal the 1st Earl Haig, and still the seat of the clan chief.
