Scotland · Still standing
Wedderburn Castle
Wedderburn Castle near Duns, Berwickshire is an 18th-century country house in the Adam 'castle style' built around a 15th-century tower house; it remains a Category A listed building and estate. The principal block is a three-storey, battlemented ashlar house with corner towers and a central carriage arch leading to an internal courtyard. The house contains an entrance hall with a double staircase, a long gallery, drawing and dining rooms and associated service rooms; ancillary stables form a square court on the approach.
Its prime
1794
Today
Still standing
As it stood in 1794
What Wedderburn Castle looked like in its prime.
Three-storey pale sandstone ashlar elevations with continuous battlemented parapets and two projecting round turret towers at the outer ends form a rectilinear main block; tall vertical sash windows are regularly spaced across the façade. A large arched carriageway pierces the ground floor, giving on to an internal courtyard that originally contained a medieval tower house. The house sits back from a long tree-lined drive, set in parkland with lawns and scattered mature trees.
Its story
The story of Wedderburn Castle.
The Douglas Feu and the Home Superiority, 1413–1550
Around 1413 the barony of Wedderburn was held by the Earls of Douglas as feudal superiors, and it was Archibald Douglas, 4th Earl of Douglas, who granted it in feu to his esquire, Sir David of Home; the superiority itself had passed to the Douglases by forfeiture from the Dunbar family. By 1550 the Homes held the barony's superiority direct of the Crown: a sasine of that year names David Home, full brother and heir of George Home of Wedderburn, who had been killed at the Battle of Pinkie, as holding it in chief.
Robert and James Adam's New House, 1768–1775
Patrick Home of Billie, who had already built Paxton House nearby, commissioned the architect brothers Robert Adam and James Adam to design a new Wedderburn Castle; construction began in 1768–69 and the house was built between 1771 and 1775 under the supervision of James Nisbet of Kelso. The new building absorbed an older tower house standing on the site — dated to the 15th century in one part of the record and to the 17th century or earlier in another — of which only a heraldic panel now survives, its remaining north-east range demolished in the early 19th century. Battlemented three-storey elevations give the house a symmetrical Adam Castle-style front that conceals an internal courtyard, reached through an archway at the rear.
The entrance, set beneath the Home of Wedderburn coat of arms, opens into a hall with a double staircase, its iron balustrade rising to a balcony behind a long gallery that links the drawing room and dining room; a minstrel gallery above the front door connects the same two rooms. The drawing room keeps a white Carrara marble chimneypiece by Piranesi, dated 1774.
From the Arbuthnot Lease to the Home Miller Succession
Wedderburn Castle was leased to the Arbuthnot family from 1898 until 1973, when it returned to Home ownership under Georgina Home Robertson, who held it until 2010. Daughters of the line had long kept the Home name, appending it to their married surnames as Forman Home, Milne Home, Home Robertson and Home Miller; the current owners are David Home Miller and Catherine Macdonald-Home. The house has been a Category A listed building since 1971 and is now used, together with its 18th-century stables, as a wedding and events venue.
Step inside
11 places to explore in 1794.
The record describes 11 distinct spots at Wedderburn Castle, including 7 interiors: principal entrance hall and double staircase, minstrel gallery and balcony, long gallery and more. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
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Clans who held Wedderburn Castle.
The families that held Wedderburn Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Home
Seat of the Home of Wedderburn family from around 1413, when Sir David of Home received the barony in feu, into the 21st century.
