Scotland · Still standing
Floors Castle
Floors Castle is a grand 18th-century country house in Roxburghshire that serves as the historic seat of the Duke of Roxburghe. The present building was begun in the 1720s and was substantially remodelled and embellished in the 19th century; it stands beside the River Tweed and is open to the public as a listed estate. The composition is a central main block with two symmetrical service wings linked by forecourts and pavilions.
Its prime
1935
Today
Still standing
As it stood in 1935
What Floors Castle looked like in its prime.
A wide, symmetrical ashlar stone composition: a three‑storey central block with a prominent triple‑arched entrance, flanked by matching low service wings that terminate in rounded pavilions. The roofline is crenellated with carved pinnacles, numerous tall chimneys and small domed or helmeted cupolas atop corner towers. The façade has regular sash windows and carved stone detailing. The house sits behind a broad paved forecourt and formal lawns, with the River Tweed and the Cheviot Hills visible beyond.
Its story
The story of Floors Castle.
Kelso Abbey Lands and the Kers of Cessford
The Kers, Earls and later Dukes of Roxburghe, have held land in Roxburghshire since the 12th century; their origins are not certain, though the family was probably of Norman stock. The lands of Floors themselves belonged to the monks of Kelso Abbey until the Reformation, when James VI handed them to Robert Ker of Cessford (1570–1650), later the first Earl of Roxburghe.
Floors stands opposite the site of Roxburgh Castle, the medieval fortress at whose siege in 1460 King James II was killed, in country that until the early 17th century was raided by gangs of reivers. A tower house of the kind common in the Borders may have stood here; the present building has no defensive capability at all, and went up in a period when private fortresses had become obsolete in lowland Scotland.
William Adam's Plain Block, 1721–1726
John, Earl of Roxburghe (1680–1741), had a hand in securing the Union of England and Scotland in 1707 and was rewarded with the dukedom. He commissioned the Scottish architect William Adam, father of Robert Adam, to design a new mansion, possibly incorporating the earlier tower house. Built between 1721 and 1726 on the bank of the Tweed, it was a plain block with a tower at each corner, flanked by pavilions housing the stables and kitchens — the common 18th-century layout of a main block with two symmetrical service wings.
Playfair's Turrets and Mary Goelet's Tapestries
Sir James Innes succeeded to the dukedom in 1812, and the family has used the double-barrelled name Innes-Ker ever since. Around 1837 James Innes-Ker, 6th Duke of Roxburghe, commissioned the fashionable William Henry Playfair to remodel and rebuild the plain Georgian house he had inherited. The turrets and battlements that give Floors its castle outline date from that work, and the building keeps the form he gave it.
In 1903 Henry Innes-Ker, 8th Duke, married the American heiress Mary Goelet, who brought from her Long Island home a set of Gobelins tapestries — worked into the ballroom in the 1930s — and added modern pictures by Walter Sickert and Henri Matisse to the collection.
Step inside
8 places to explore in 1935.
The record describes 8 distinct spots at Floors Castle, including 3 interiors: ballroom with gobelins tapestries, service kitchen in pavilion, stables and coach room in pavilion. 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 Floors Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1935, a photoreal reconstruction that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate this castle →Castle Siege
Play Castle Siege at Floors Castle.
A strategy game played on Floors Castle’s real ground plan: the same surveyed walls shown in the archive below. Post your finite garrison on the battlements between assaults, then hold out as rams, siege towers, trebuchets and sappers arrive in ever-worse waves.
Sign in free to see the garrison muster. One castle costs 150 Clan Coins and is yours forever.
Sign in to take command →Whose castle
Clans who held Floors Castle.
The families that held Floors Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
The Ker Earls and Dukes of Roxburghe have held lands in Roxburghshire since the 12th century; Floors was granted to Robert Ker of Cessford by James VI and remains the family seat.
Innes-Ker
The double-barrelled name used by the Dukes of Roxburghe since Sir James Innes' accession as Duke in 1812.
