Smaliholm Tower - Scotland (HS)
The Pringle family, who built Smailholm Tower in the mid-fifteenth century, had at one time been squires of the Earls of Black Douglas. The precise date of construction is unknown, but stylistically it would appear to date between the much larger, but similar Douglas Newark Castle of around 1400 and the end of the Douglases power in 1455.
What remains visible today is the plain tower itself, growing directly from the bare rock, part of the Barmkin, or defensive stone wall and the foundations of stone buildings inside the courtyard. Around the crag are faint traces of cattle enclosures, tenants' cottages and other agricultural features of the time. The Tower itself consists of five storeys, one room on top of another, with small, grilled windows throughout. There are two latrine chutes on the north side and the original, protected doorway on the south side.
The views from the battlements are still stunning, but were originally more an aid to protection than for admiration. In the north wall-walk is a watchman's seat, cleverly fashioned to take advantage of the heat from the chimney flue. The first two floors were used for storage and the stone vault over the upper storage floor both helped the stability of the tower and guarded against the spread of fire. On the floor above this was the Hall, the main living area for the laird and his family. This would have been the grandest room, denoted by the heavy but elegant fireplace and window seats. Crude carvings remain at the base of the fireplace, of a bearded man and a heart.
The obligations and duties of the laird included hospitality to both his inferiors and superiors and excavations have revealed that there was a fifteenth century Hall in the west courtyard.
At the Battle of Flodden in 1513, the then laird, David Pringle, lost his three brothers and his eldest son and the dangerous and unsettled times continued after his death. The tower was built as a defendable home, necessary in the cross-border raids of the Reivers; there is a gun-loop directly above the doorway. There are records of very large numbers of cattle, horses and prisoners taken during these raids throughout the sixteenth century.
In the later sixteenth century, the Pringles acquired a chapel in the south aisle of Melrose Abbey for their family burials. The Smailholm estate was sold in 1645, due to insolvency after Sir James Pringle's death in 1635 and was bought by Sir William Scott of Harden, already related to the Pringles through marriage. The writer Sir Walter Scott was directly descended from Sir William.
Recent archaeological excavations have shown the balance of residence on the site alter at this time from the main tower house, to a new house within the courtyard, built over the old outer Hall. Even so, the site was very exposed, sitting as it does on top of Smailholm Crag. At the beginning of the eighteenth century however, a more comfortable and sheltered farmhouse was built below the crag at Sandyknowe and it was to this house that the young writer came as a sickly boy in 1773.
In later years, Scott acknowledged the profound affect his stay at Sandyknowe had. Not only was it a place of freedom and clean air, but the ruined Tower of his ancestors, together with the Scottish Ballads and songs told to him by his Aunt Janet, engendered an affectionate interest in his country's literary past, leading eventually to his own phenomenal success as an author. The three upper floors of Smailholm are devoted to his collection of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, published in 1802. Together with a like minded friend, Robert Shortreed, Scott had traveled the countryside collecting the oral tales of romance and daring. In the upper floors of Smailholm, scenes from these ballads are represented in tapestries and costumed figures by two Border artists, MacDonald Scott and Anne Carrick. If you are familiar with the ballads, this will obviously help. The Tower is now maintained by Historic Scotland.