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Accessing Scotland's Past Project
Event ID 561255
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Accessing Scotland's Past Project
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/561255
Mertoun House overlooks the north bank of the River Tweed and sits within approximately 500 acres of gardens and parkland, the gardens being open to the public during the summer months. Map evidence suggests that the layout of this designed landscape was established between 1750 and 1865, and the overall plan has changed little since then.
The initial phase comprised the removal of the nearby village, and the construction of a walled garden, which still survives. Set within it is Old Mertoun House, the predecessor to the current mansion, which is now occupied by the head gardener.
A formal garden, of which rose beds and flower beds were an integral part, lay to the south-east of the mansion in the mid-nineteenth century; but this was replaced by a lawn when Lord Brackley bought the house in 1912.
After World War II, Lombardy poplars were planted in avenues along the water courses, and a new driveway was built in the 1950s. Rubble from the demolished nineteenth- and twentieth- century wings was also used to create a dry ditch or ha-ha which separated the drive from the parkland below.
Text prepared by RCAHMS as part of the Accessing Scotland's Past project
