Smailholm Tower

The Pringle family — originally Hoppringle — held the lands of Smailholm from the early 15th century as followers of the Earl of Douglas, and managed part of Ettrick Forest for their feudal superior. They built the tower on its crag of Lady Hill, about five miles west of Kelso, in the 15th or early 16th century. In December 1482 James Hoppringill of Smailholm, son of David Hoppingrill, was sued for 300 merks by Margaret Kerr; his heir David married Margaret Lundy, and their eldest son was another David.

Smailholm was built, as Scottish peel towers were, to shelter its occupants from sporadic English raids. English soldiers attacked in 1543, again in 1544, and in 1546 the garrison of Wark Castle sacked the tower and carried off prisoners and cattle. The upper works were remodelled in the 17th century, including a gunloop in the west gable covering the barmkin. In 1640 the tower was successfully defended against the English by Sir Andrew Ker of Greenhead.

Around the time of that defence Smailholm was obtained by the Scotts of Harden, ancestors of Sir Walter, who rebuilt parts of the tower and its barmkin. A single-storey hall house of the 17th century was raised inside the courtyard wall to the north, with a two-roomed kitchen block to the south, extending a tower that offered only around 200 square metres of floorspace. In the 18th century the tower fell into decay after the family moved into nearby Sandyknowe.

Walter Scott visited his paternal grandfather here as a boy, and spent considerable time at the tower in his youth, reportedly for the benefit of his health. Smailholm is the setting of his ballad The Eve of St John and appears again in Marmion. As a result of that poetry his uncle restored the tower and made it safe, around 1800.

J. M. W. Turner visited Smailholm with Scott in the author's later years, and his sketch of the tower was printed in Scott's Poetical Works. Turner's journey with Scott traced scenes from Marmion, and not long afterwards Henry Fox Talbot, the English pioneer of photography, repeated the itinerary and published Sun Pictures in Scotland, considered the first photographic travelogue, in homage to both men.

The last owner, the Earl of Ellesmere, handed Smailholm into state care in 1950. It was restored in the 1980s and now operates as a museum, a scheduled monument in the care of Historic Environment Scotland, displaying an extensive array of model figures made by two local artists to illustrate the history of Smailholm and Scott's stories. In June 2007 VisitScotland awarded it maximum five-star status as a tourist attraction, a rating then held by only eight other sites in Scotland. Experiments run on the roof from 2006 tested damp-proofing methods for buildings of this kind, among them turf and mats of sedum; a restoration project in 2010-11 reinstated a turf roof over the whole structure.