Smailholm
Tower is an impressive structure famed in Border ballad and associated with Sir Walter
Scott, who spent some of his childhood recuperating at Sandyknowe Farm in 1773. A sturdy
rectangular tower, built of rubble with sandstone dressings, it perches on a rock outcrop.
The rock had a barmkin wall around it, and ruins of lesser buildings exist within this
– old kitchens and halls. The gateway is at the west end, with its dressed stones
long since robbed.
The tower, however, is
virtually complete, apart from its roof slabs, though the supporting vault survives.
The tower contains dressed
models by Anne Carrick depicting Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders,
tapestries and paintings.
Smailholm was built by the
Pringles around the middle of the 15th century but passed into Scott hands in
1645. A few years after 1700 it was abandoned in favour of Sandyknowe. The English often
raided the castle in the 1540s. |
