Paxton House is a historic house at Paxton, Berwickshire, in the Scottish Borders, a few miles south-west of Berwick-upon-Tweed, overlooking the River Tweed.
It is a country house built for Patrick Home of Billie in an unsuccessful attempt to woo a Prussian heiress. Attributed to James Adam (possibly in concert with John Adam), it was built between 1758 and 1766, under the supervision of James Nisbet, with extensive interiors (c1773) by Robert Adam, as well as furniture by Thomas Chippendale. The East Wing was added in 1812-13 by architect Robert Reid to house the library and picture gallery. [1]
Other inhabitants were Alexander Home and his son George Home WS FRSE (of Wedderburn and Paxton). [2]
In 1852 Jean Milne, the wife of David Milne, inherited the house and he renamed himself David Milne-Home.
Formerly the seat of the Paxton family, who became Forman-Home, Milne-Home, and finally Home-Robertson as the direct male lines failed and the inheritance progressed through a female. In 1988, the last laird, John David Home Robertson, a socialist member of Parliament, placed the house and grounds into the Paxton House Historic Building Preservation Trust. It is now open to the public and is a Partner Gallery [3] of National Galleries Scotland.
In 1780 Patrick Home of Wedderburn returned from his eight-year-long Grand Tour with an extensive collection of British and European paintings and died before the paintings were unpacked. Later on, Jean Home, who was to inherit the house and the paintings, employed the Master of Work to the Crown of Scotland, architect Robert Reid (1776–1856), to build what is now the East Wing of Paxton House to accommodate a library and a gallery. The gallery is now the only room housing a collection of paintings.
The Paxton Trust in association with National Galleries Scotland have restored the Gallery to its original colour scheme. Patrick Home's pictures are now dispersed; a collection from the National Gallery has been hung in their place in the 19th-century manner.
Robert Adam was a British neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam (1689–1748), Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him. With his older brother John, Robert took on the family business, which included lucrative work for the Board of Ordnance, after William's death.
Sir Henry Raeburn was a Scottish portrait painter. He served as Portrait Painter to King George IV in Scotland.
Eyemouth is a small town and civil parish in Berwickshire, in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland. It is two miles east of the main north–south A1 road and eight miles north of Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Duns is a town in the Scottish Borders, Scotland. It was the county town of the historic county of Berwickshire.
John David Home Robertson is a retired Labour politician in Scotland. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Berwick and East Lothian and East Lothian from 1978 to 2001 and a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for East Lothian from 1999 until 2007.
Sir Robert Lauder of the Bass was a Scottish knight, armiger, and Governor of the Castle at Berwick-upon-Tweed. He was also a member of the old Scottish Parliament. The Lauders held the feudal barony of The Bass, East Lothian, Edrington Castle and lands in the parish of Mordington, Berwickshire, Tyninghame in Haddingtonshire, and numerous other estates and properties elsewhere in Scotland.
Gosford House is a neoclassical country house around 2 miles (3 km) northeast of Longniddry in East Lothian, Scotland, on the A198 Aberlady Road, in 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) of parkland and coast.
Wedderburn Castle, near Duns, Berwickshire, in the Scottish Borders, is an 18th-century country house that is now used as a wedding and events venue. The house is a Category A listed building and the grounds are included in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland.
Lamberton is a hilly, former landed estate in Berwickshire, Scotland, its eastern boundary being the North Sea. It is 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Berwick-upon-Tweed, on the Great North Road.
Edrington is a medieval estate occupying the lower part of Mordington parish in Berwickshire, Scotland, five miles (8.0 km) west of Berwick-upon-Tweed. From probably the 14th century, if not earlier, a castle occupied the steep hill above the mill of the same name on the Whiteadder Water. The castle ruin is still marked on today's Ordnance Survey maps, and still appears in locality references in The Berwickshire News. The principal farm of the estate is Edrington Mains.
Foulden is a civil parish and village in the Berwickshire area of Scottish Borders, Scotland, situated not far above the Whiteadder Water, and 7 miles (11 km) west of Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Mordington is an agricultural parish in the extreme south-east of Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders region. It is five miles from Berwick-upon-Tweed and borders Northumberland to the east, and south, Foulden to the west, and Lamberton to the north. The parish is bisected by the A6105 Berwick to Duns road. The lower part of the parish is covered by the Edrington estate. It is possibly the warmest parish in Scotland; the annual hours of sunshine are said to be almost as high as at Dunbar, which records the most hours in Scotland.
Robert Reid was the King's architect and surveyor for Scotland from 1827 to 1839. He is responsible for a number of public works particularly the façade of Parliament Square in Edinburgh, which houses the Court of Session. Stylistically he was heavily influenced by Robert Adam, but Reid's style is more austere. The style is now seen as the main character of the northern Edinburgh New Town and without Reid Edinburgh would today be a very different city.
Fishwick is a parish with a small mediaeval village in the Scottish Borders, Scotland, in the traditional county of Berwickshire, seven miles from Berwick-upon-Tweed. The parish church is now a ruin and the parish is united with Hutton and Paxton. Today the parish consists of farms and scattered housing. There is also an old WWII airstrip, still occasionally used. Fishwick borders the north of the River Tweed which here constitutes the border with England.
David Milne-Home of Milne Graden FRSE FGS PGSE LLD (1805–1890) was a Scottish advocate, geologist and meteorologist. He was the founder of the Scottish Meteorological Society in 1855, and served as its chairman. From 1874 to 1889 he served as president of the Edinburgh Geological Society
Colonel David Milne Home was a British soldier and Conservative politician.
Blackadder House was an estate and stately house near the village of Allanton, in Berwickshire, Scotland. It was built on the site of the earlier Blackadder Castle. The house was vandalised by troops in World War I. Since there was no money to repair it, the house was demolished around 1925.
Events from the year 1733 in Scotland.
Alexander Esmé Gordon was a Scottish Modernist architect, writer, and painter who served as Secretary of the Royal Scottish Academy between 1973 and 1978.
John Blair was a Scottish painter, predominantly of watercolour landscapes. Of humble beginnings in Berwickshire, he moved to Edinburgh to study and spent the rest of his life there. His paintings mainly reflect the landscapes around him, both of urban settings and also of the castles, sea and lochs of the Borders, although he also painted figures and still lifes. As well as his original work, his paintings were viewed by a wide audience in the form of picture postcards, book endpapers and illustrations.
Borders and Berwick, by Charles A Strang, Rutland Press, 1994, p. 54, ISBN 1-873190-10-7