Field Visit
Date 21 May 1928
Event ID 1115384
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1115384
Inveresk House.
The house has been entirely modernised, but the walls of the east wing date in part from the late 16th century. Above the present entrance is inserted the pediment of a doorway which bears the date 1643 and in monogram the initials M.O.C. and K.L., for Master Oliver Colt and Katherine Logan, his wife. The lower part of the pediment is inscribed NEMO NISI VERITATIS ET PACIS STUDIOSVS INTRABIT ("None shall enter save those who ensue truth and peace"). On the western wall of the house is an armorial panel dated 1682, and on the moulded border MDCCLVIII. The shield is surmounted by mantling and a helm crested a hand grasping a baton, and is parted per pale and charged with, dexter, a stag's head erased, and, sinister, a chevron between two mullets in chief and an axe in base. On a label above the armorial is the motto TRANSFIGAM, for Colt. On the east side of the house a built drain runs at a depth of 8 feet from the surface. It is some 3 feet in breadth and 3 feet 7 inches in height. In the stable court is a vaulted cellar partly underground. In the landing at the entrance a trap door covers what appears to be a well which has been filled in. The garden contains a fragmentary structure of the Roman period, for which, see NT37SW 13.
HISTORICAL NOTE. The house was built in or soon after 1597 by Adam Colt, minister of the parish, who had bought the estate and died in 1643. He was succeeded as minister and in the estate by his son Oliver, who married Katherine Logan. Genealogical Memoirs of the Families of Colt and Coutts, by Rev. Charles Rogers, pp. 38-40.
RCAHMS 1929, visited 21 May 1928.
OS map: iv S.E. (unnoted).
