 Smailholm Tower from the north-west. Smailholm Tower is a peel tower that stands around five miles west of Kelso in the Scottish Borders. Its dramatic situation, atop a crag of Lady Hill, commands wide views over the surrounding countryside. The tower is located at grid reference NT637346, just west of Sandyknowe farm, and is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument in the care of Historic Scotland. In June 2007 it was awarded the maximum "five-star" status as a tourist attraction from VisitScotland, a rating only bestowed on eight other sites in Scotland.[1] Image File history File links Size of this preview: 450 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (480 × 640 pixel, file size: 57 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Smailholm Tower, Scotland. ...
Image File history File links Size of this preview: 450 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (480 × 640 pixel, file size: 57 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Smailholm Tower, Scotland. ...
Peel towers (spelt Pele towers in England) are small fortified keeps, built along the English and Scottish Borders, intended as watch towers where signal fires could be lit to warn of approaching danger. ...
Kelso is unique in Scotland for having a cobbled square fed by four cobbled streets - 360 degree panorama by David Kilpatrick Kelso (made up name in Gaelic) is a market town in the Borders area of Scotland, located where the rivers Tweed and Teviot have their confluence. ...
Scottish Borders (often referred to locally as The Borders or The Borderland) is one of 35 local government unitary council areas of Scotland. ...
A Scheduled Ancient Monument is defined in the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 and the National Heritage Act 1983 of the United Kingdom government. ...
Historic Scotland is the Scottish agency looking after historic monuments. ...
VisitScotland is Scotlands national tourism agency. ...
History
Smailholm Tower was originally built in the 15th century or early 16th century by the Pringle family.[2] Followers of the Earl of Douglas, the Pringle (anciently spelt Hoppringle) family had held the lands of Smailholm from the early 15th century, and managed part of Ettrick Forest for their feudal superior. The title of Earl of Douglas was created in the Peerage of Scotland in 1358 for the senior, or Black line of the great Douglas family. ...
Smailholm Tower was designed, in common with all Scottish peel towers, to provide its occupants with protection from sporadic English raids. The tower was attacked by English soldiers in 1543, 1544 and again in 1546, when the garrison of Wark Castle sacked the tower and carried off prisoners and cattle. The castle was successfully defended against the English in 1640, by Sir Andrew Ker of Greenhead.
Smailholm was obtained by the Scotts of Harden around this time.[3] The Scotts, ancestors of Sir Walter, rebuilt parts of the tower and barmkin. In the 18th century the tower decayed, after the family moved into nearby Sandyknowe. The last owner, the Earl of Ellesmere, handed the property into state care in 1950. It was restored in the 1980s, and now operates as a museum. The title Duke of Sutherland was created for George Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Marquess of Stafford, in 1833. ...
The tower
 The ruins of the west barmkin of the tower. Smailholm was a relatively small tower house, offering around 200m2 of floorspace, later extended by construction of a hall house and second kitchen within the barmkin, or courtyard. Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1600 × 1200 pixel, file size: 670 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1600 × 1200 pixel, file size: 670 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Barmkin, also spelled barmekin, is a Scots dialect word which refers to a form of defensive cattle enclosure, typically found without castles, Tower houses, Pele towers, and Bastle houses in Scotland, or in the very north of England. ...
The rectagular tower is of four storeys, situated on top of a rocky outcrop. The tower is approximately 12.1m by 9.4m, with basalt rubble walls 2.4m thick. The vaulted basement was originally divided into two floors by a wooden éntresol reached by a ladder. The door is on the south side, in a large red sandstone arch, with the turnpike stair in the south-east corner. Above the vault is the hall, with a fireplace to the north featuring a carved human face.
The top floor has an unusual elliptical stone vault, which supports a stone flag roof. Parapet walks run along the longer north and south sides, although both are interrupted; the north by a chimney and the south by a window. These upper parts of the tower, including a gunloop in the west gable covering the barmkin, were remodelled in the 17th century.
The tower is surrounded by the remains of a stone barmkin wall, within which the ruins of outbuildings and a small chapel are still visible. The east part of the barmkin once contained a small garden, all of which is now gone. The western barmkin is more intact, with walls up to first floor level around the narrow entrance in the west wall. The courtyard, around 16m by 19m, contains the foundations of a single storey hall house of the 17th century to the north, and a two-roomed kitchen block to the south.
A ditch protects the western approach to the tower, the other three sides being naturally protected by the face of the outcrop. 100m to the south-east, more earthworks mark the presence of a much older settlement, probably dating from the first millennium BC.[4]
Sir Walter Scott The tower provided inspiration to Sir Walter Scott, who visited his paternal grandfather here when still a boy. Scott spent considerable time during his youth, for the benefit of his health. Smailholm provides the setting for Scott's ballad The Eve of St John, and also appears in Marmion. Turner visited Smailholm with Scott in the author's later years; his sketch of the tower was included in Scott's Poetical Works. Raeburns portrait of Sir Walter Scott in 1822. ...
Marmion is an epic poem by Walter Scott about the Battle of Flodden published in 1808. ...
Joseph Mallord William Turner (April 23, 1775 (exact date disputed) – December 19, 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style can be said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. ...
Notes - ^ Remote tower takes visitor honour. BBC.
- ^ Lindsay (1986), and Salter (1994) suggest the early 16th century. Tabraham (1997) gives the construction date as 'mid 15th century'.
- ^ Salter states the Scotts obtained the property by marriage, while Coventry (2001) suggests the property was sold to the Scotts in 1645.
- ^ NMRS Site Reference NT63SW 1 [1].
References - Coventry, Martin The Castles of Scotland (3rd Edition), Goblinshead, 2001
- Lindsay, Maurice The Castles of Scotland, Constable & Co. 1986
- Salter, Mike The Castles of Lothian and the Borders, Folly Publications, 1994
- Tabraham, Chris Scotland's Castles, BT Batsford/Historic Scotland, 1997
Historic Scotland is the Scottish agency looking after historic monuments. ...
The National Monuments Record of Scotland (NMRS) is an archive of the sites, monuments and buildings of Scotlands past maintained by Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. ...
External links Coordinates: 55.60365° N 2.57770° W Image File history File links Commons-logo. ...
The Wikimedia Commons (also called Wikicommons) is a repository of free content images, sound and other multimedia files. ...
Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ...
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