John Dunbar Livres

The Scottish Borders, one of the most architecturally enticing regions of Scotland, encompass rocky coastlines, rolling moors, and farmland. The early buildings reflect a history of conflict, as do the ruins of the numerous great Borders abbeys. The River Tweed provides a delightful setting for the burghs of Peebles, Galashiels, Melrose, and Kelso, where small weavers’ cottages and colossal nineteenth-century mills remain from the once-mighty textile industry. The region boasts country houses of exceptional quality and importance, including Thirlestane Castle, Traquair, and Paxton as well as Abbotsford, the home of Sir Walter Scott, which is world-renowned as the fount of nineteenth-century Romanticism. Other highlights of this comprehensive guide are little-known shooting and fishing lodges, rural steadings, arts and crafts villas, Art Deco schools, and the extraordinary Sunderland House, a building of Miesian purity by Peter Womersley.

Castles, both ruined and occupied, are amongst the most deeply evocative buildings in the Scottish landscape. This book considers the history of the conservation and restoration of a number of those buildings against the background of what the idea of the castle has meant to Scots over the centuries.