Queen Mary's House

Queen Mary’s House stands in Jedburgh, a stone building from the sixteenth century beside the Jed Water. It has three storeys and a four-storey tower, its roof once thatched and now covered with grey slate. The house was painted by Nathaniel Everett Green and later by Arthur Perigal the younger, who showed it in a rural scene though it has always been in the town. In 1928 the building was given to the town by F. S. Oliver and restored under the architect John Wilson Paterson. It opened to the public in 1930 and became a Category A listed building in 1971. The house tells the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, who came to Jedburgh in October 1566 to hold a justice court. She fell ill after riding to Hermitage Castle to see the injured Earl of Bothwell, and her illness is recorded in treasurer’s accounts that list pomegranates and lemons sent for her recovery. During her stay the Privy Council met in Jedburgh and issued a proclamation forbidding private quarrels on pain of death. Mary wrote a testament while ill and later noted that she should have died in Jedburgh, for her fortunes worsened after that time. Inside, visitors follow a stone spiral staircase through rooms that hold artefacts and boards explaining the building’s history and the queen’s life. The grounds include pear trees planted in the twenty-first century, chosen from varieties once grown locally when pears were an important crop. Outside the walls, Jedburgh’s streets lead to the Canongate Bridge, thought to be the original approach to the house. The museum has focused on Mary’s story for the last thirty years, using the building’s rooms and gardens to bring her time in the Scottish Borders to life.