Blackadder House

The Blackadder family were an integral part of the constant Borders feuds, and extended their lands by grants from James II bestowed as a reward for repelling English raids, with great ferocity. During an invasion of Scotland in 1482, the Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III of England, came to Blackadder Castle, and his ally Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany, ordered the "great house and tower of Blackadder" to be destroyed. The Borders holdings of Blackadder of that ilk were taken into the family of Home (now the Home Robertson family) by the forced marriage of Beatrix and her younger sister, the only heirs of their father Robert, to younger sons of Home of Wedderburn in 1518. According…

Within Allanton's main street still stand a pair of splay-fronted lodges (Lydd Cottage and Westside Cottage), defining the entrance to the former Blackadder House. The farm of Blackadder Mains along with Blackadder Bank, Blackadder West and Blackadder Mount and the nearby village of Allanton were all originally part of the Blackadder Estate which surrounded Blackadder House. While the house is gone, impressive ruins remain that make a walk through the estate worthwhile. Little remains of the house other than a folly walkway with stone balustrade which was at the back of the house below ground level, cut into the rock of a cliff face that overlooks the river Blackadder below. Where the house…