Carberry Tower

King David I granted the lands under the name "Caerbairin" to the monks of Dunfermline Abbey, and the first landowner or lessee recorded there was John de Crebarrie. The Johnstone family were the first owners of Carberry Tower itself, a simple square tower house built more for strength than ornament. In 1541 Hugh Rigg, the King's Advocate, leased the lands from the abbey, apparently on an agreement with the Abbot of Dunfermline running to 1585.

Both John Knox and George Buchanan recorded an unflattering story about Rigg's part in the Battle of Pinkie in 1547, fought close by: that he advised Regent Arran to change the position of the Scottish army. Buchanan noted that Rigg was known for his corpulence rather than his military skill, and Knox suggested the manoeuvre was meant to keep the English away from Carberry.

In June 1567, on Carberry Hill within the Carberry estate, Mary, Queen of Scots faced an army assembled by a confederation of her lords. She quickly surrendered herself to them, and was then imprisoned. A monument nearby, the Queen's Mount, commemorates the encounter.

In 1587, after the Scottish Reformation, the lands and tower of Carberry were annexed by the Crown and the Maitlands of Lauderdale appointed as new superiors; the Rigg family were re-installed. The Riggs owned ships as well as land. In 1599 Mungo Rigg of Carberry and James Rigg went to law over the purchase of a ship called the Angel and its cargo of Norwegian timber from Harry Watson, a Scotsman based in Bergen, and on 1 April 1600 they received a charter for their lands at 'Carberrie' from Anne of Denmark, wife of James VI.

The estate passed in 1659 to Sir Adam Blair of Lochwood, whose family lived there only thirty years before transferring it to Sir Robert Dickson of Inveresk. Dickson's son, also Robert, was Chief Baillie of Musselburgh in 1745, when the rebel Jacobite troops passed between Carberry and Musselburgh on their way to the Battle of Prestonpans on 21 September. In 1760 John Fullerton moved into the tower and began its alteration and enlargement, the extensions going up piece by piece in what looked like an anti-clockwise progression.

Fullerton's niece Elizabeth married the Hon. William Elphinstone in 1774, and the house passed into the Elphinstone family in 1801. Further alterations to the old tower began in 1830. William Elphinstone, 15th Lord Elphinstone, succeeded to the estate in 1861 and was largely responsible for its complete redesign; the arboretum was started during his tenure.

His son Sydney Herbert, 16th Lord Elphinstone, married Lady Mary Bowes-Lyon, sister of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and the young Elizabeth visited her sister and helped at a Red Cross bazaar held at Carberry Tower in 1915. The couple laid out the formal garden in 1911 and planted specimen trees and other varieties through the park; the modern laundry facilities were featured in Country Life in 1913. Sydney died in 1955 and Lady Mary in 1961, bequeathing the tower to the Church of Scotland.

The Church of Scotland used the tower as a conference centre, building an annexe and a chapel in the park. Much of the estate was sold in small parcels, though most of it is in the ownership of the Buccleuch Estate. From 1986 the resident wardens Jock and Margaret Stein ran the Carberry Festival, a Christian arts festival that reached its peak in the 1990s and ran for 22 years until 2008, with concerts in the small chapel by artists including Fischy Music and the Riding Lights Theatre Company.

The tower was sold in 2004 to the Gartmore House charitable trust, and it underwent major refurbishment in 2008. In April 2011 Clarenco LLP acquired the property, refurbished it again and traded it as a wedding and events venue and hotel. It was put up for sale in June 2015 at £3 million and sold to Kingsland Estate Ltd. The house has been protected as a Category B listed building since January 1971.