Publication Account

Date 1996

Event ID 1019267

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1019267

Nearby stands Pinkie House figures 15 & 23.D. Although now functioning as part of the policies of a school, it is a strong and attractive reminder of Musselburgh's past and its close links with Dunfermline Abbey, as one of its abbatial burghs (see pp 16- 1 7 & pp 26- 7). The oldest part of the house is the central tower which was constructed in the sixteenth, or possibly fifteenth, century as a residence for the abbots of Dunfermline. The siting of the house probably reflected a desire on the part of the abbot to be close to his burgh, with the convenience it offered, but sufficiently removed as to be undisturbed by the populace. The tower house was acquired by Alexander Seton in 1597. He became the first Earl of Dunfermline in 1605 and married Margaret Hay of Vester in 1607. The grand extension undertaken by him c 1613 reflects this marriage: throughout the house the initials AS.ED and AS.MR can be seen. At the south end of the range he added a bay window, a novel import from England, and a tangible reminder of the impact of the recent union of the crowns. It was to this house that Charles I came as a child before his departure south in 1604. The second floor of the new range was taken up with a seventy-eight foot (24 m) long gallery, with an elaborately painted ceiling. It is quite possible that the walls were likewise painted originally and that windows on the west side gave extra light, although these are now lost through subsequent extensions in the nineteenth century by William Burn. After the battle of Prestonpans in 1745, this gallery was to serve as a casualty station for the wounded troops of Prince Charles Edward Stewart. Apart from this painted ceiling, Pinkie has some of the finest seventeenth-century ceilings in Scotland and was considered by contemporaries as one of the most desirable mansion houses in Scotland. The estate passed to the Hays in 1694, on the death of the fourth and last earl. The initials IH on the arched doorway to the eastern garden, a seventeenth-century walled garden, the work also of Seton and still intact, remind the onlooker that this doorway was added by John Hay, the second marquess of Tweeddale, amongst other improvements. In 1778, Pinkie was sold to the Hopes of Craighall, and untimately in 1951, it was purchased by Loretto School.

Information from ‘Historic Musselburgh: The Archaeological Implications of Development’ (1996).