Castellar Classicism

Sympathetic restoration has enhanced this outstanding house, which was dramatically enlarged in the 18th century by the addition of a tower. Roger White investigates

A Common image of the Scottish country house, at least before the 18th century, is of a domesticated castle with rooms stacked one above the other and linked by tight spiral stairs. It is assumed that such houses— in effect, towers, their outlines enlivened by jettied walkways and pepperpot turrets —fell out of fashion when life became sufficiently settled for the protection they offered to be unnecessary.

In the Borders at least, tower houses thereafter spread outwards, with the addition of low subsidiary ranges into generous architectural maturity. nisbet  House, just a few miles north of the border near Duns in Berwickshire, however, is an intriguing example of an early-17th-century house that was enlarged in the peaceful late 18th century by the addition of a massive tower.

Dates for nisbet are hard to come by. The impetus for its initial creation—allowing for the usual possibility that the building invisibly incorporates an earlier tower house—may have been the cessation of cross-border hostilities in 1603, in a region hitherto so turbulent and yet agriculturally so fertile. nevertheless, an enduring nervousness (in the Borders, bad neighbours could be more of a day-to-day menace than the English) is betrayed by the peppering of the entrance front with gunloops designed to facilitate the downward angling of muskets.

This no doubt came in handy in the 1640s when Sir Alexander Nisbet of that Ilk (knighted in 1633 and died in 1665) is said to have garrisoned Nisbet  against his creditors.