Smailholm Tower

Smailholm Tower stands on a rocky crag of Lady Hill in the Scottish Borders, five miles west of Kelso. The peel tower was built in the 15th or early 16th century by the Pringle family, who held the lands from the Earl of Douglas. Its thick basalt walls and vaulted basement were designed to resist English raids, and the tower was attacked three times in the 16th century. After passing to the Scotts of Harden, parts were rebuilt in the 17th century and the family later moved into Sandyknowe. The tower fell into decay in the 18th century before being restored in the 1980s and placed in state care in 1950. The tower is a small rectangular house of four storeys, about twelve metres by nine, with walls two and a half metres thick. The entrance is in a red sandstone arch on the south side, and a turnpike stair rises in the south-east corner. Above the vaulted basement is the hall with a fireplace carved with a human face, and the top floor has an elliptical stone vault supporting a turf roof. The surrounding barmkin wall encloses ruins of outbuildings and a small chapel, and earthworks nearby mark an older settlement from the first millennium BC. Visitors find a museum of model figures illustrating local history and Walter Scott’s stories, created by local artists using embroidery and modelling. The tower inspired Scott’s ballad The Eve of St John and appears in his poem Marmion. Turner sketched the tower during a journey with Scott, and Fox Talbot later retraced the route for his photographic travelogue. A ditch guards the western approach, and the courtyard contains foundations of a 17th-century hall and kitchen block. The turf roof, reinstated in 2010, reflects experiments to protect similar structures.