Publication Account
Date 1951
Event ID 1097682
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1097682
37. Strichen's Close, 66 High Street.
At the S. end of the Close is a small irregularly-shaped court. The southern most building, of two storeys above the court but of three more at the back where the ground falls away, dates from the 17th century but has since then been extensively altered. Above the entrance to a modern projection within the court there has been inserted an armorial panel, in which the shield is flanked by two sets of initials, W Mand M W, with the date 1600. The shield itself is parted per pale and charged: Dexter, a chevron between two mullets in chief and a crescent in base; sinister, on a bend between two cinquefoils, three mullets. The arms and initials are, in all probability, those of Waiter Mawer, Writer to the Signet, and of his wife, Marion Waus (1). In the original front wall of the building is a moulded doorway of the late 17th century. The only features of interest inside the building are the well of a newel-stair and one end of a large and lofty vaulted cellar, which may be as early as the 16th century, and may possibly represent a remnant of the mansion of the Abbots of Melrose. Here, at a later time, dwelt Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, Senator of the College of Justice and founder of what is now the National Library, whose tomb in Greyfriars Churchyard is recorded on p. 66. His grandson's widow married Alexander Fraser, Lord Strichen, in 1731, and since then the Close has gone under its present name.
RCAHMS 1951.
(1) Mawer and his wife were infefted in the tenement, or great inn (magnum hospitium), of Thomas Waus of Petterwaick, sometime pertaining to the Abbot of Melrose. (Protocol of Alexander Guthrie, 12/4/1587, and Minutes of the Town Council,18/11/1629.)
