Abbotsford House
Just a short journey south from Galashiels, rising-up from the banks of the River Tweed, is the stately home of Abbotsford House, designed to satisfy the Romantic inclinations of Sir Walter Scott (1771 -1832). The famous writer and lawyer lived here from 1812 until his death 20 years later.
Scott, thanks to his fervid 'Romantic' imagination, was probably Scottish tourism's best propagandist. His long narrative poems, such as The Lady of the Lake, followed by an astonishingly long list of historical novels, including Waverley, Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, Redgauntlet and Kenilworth, ensured that the world fell in love with the image of heroic Scotland; no longer was it sneered at as a barbaric out-post. Seriously told and thoroughly documented, the main body of his work lifted fiction high above the Gothic romances of his contemporaries. As a part of the Romantic movement in Britain, he wrote of Scotland as a place of Highland wilderness and clan romance, shaping outsiders' perceptions of Scotland and what it was to be 'Scottish' in a way that to a certain extent survives today. His contemporaries, such as Wordsworth, Coleridge and Washington Irvine, along with other famous poets and thinkers of the day, called upon Scott at Abbotsford, and by so doing 'authenticated' this dawning of Scotland's 'new age'.
Sir Walter Scott
In 1811, Scott bought a farmhouse on the banks of the Tweed called Cartleyhole, a site from which the monks of Melrose Abbey had once used to ford the river; neither the property nor the name were to the poet's liking. He demolished the farm and renamed the new property Abbotsford, in memory of its original usage. The house was built in the Scottish Baronial style with fanciful turrets and castellations, incorporating copies of medieval originals; Scott was proud of his folie de grandeur, which gradually became a storehouse of Scottish curios and is now crammed with fascinating mementoes and objects reflecting his passion for Scottish history.
Despite all the exterior pomp, the interior of the house is surprisingly small, but no less fascinating for that. The wood-panelled study has a small writing desk made of salvage from the Spanish Armada, at which Scott wrote his Waverley novels at some speed. The heavy wood-panelled library boasts the writer's collection of more than 9000 rare books and an extraordinary assortment of memorabilia and historic artefacts. The centrepiece is Nelson's pen case and blotting paper, but elsewhere it is mostly Scottish in origin including Rob Roy's purse and skene dhu (knife), a lock of hair from both Bonnie Prince Charlie and Nelson, Flora MacDonald's pocket book, the inlaid pearl crucifix that accompanied Mary, Queen of Scots to the scaffold, a carriage clock once owned by Marie Antoinette and even a piece of oatcake found in the pocket of a dead Highlander at Culloden. Visitors can also see Henry Raeburn's famous portrait of Scott in the drawing room, and an assortment of weaponry, notably Rob Roy's broadsword, in the armoury. A model of the skull of Robert the Bruce sits ghoulishly in the Entrance hall.
Despite all of his fame Scott's later years were plagued with financial worries, paying off creditors from a failed publishing house venture and the enormous cost of building Abbotsford. The quality of his writing deteriorated with its increased speed and effort, finally breaking his health, and he died on Sept. 21st 1832 at his beloved Abbotsford.