Nunraw
Nunraw is an estate in
White Castle
It is likely that the White Castle was first settled by the ancestors of the Votadini tribe, whose main eastern capital was Dunpender, due north. The fort is ideally placed to strategically control the northern end of one of the main passes through the Lammermuirs, along the Whiteadder Water. With the further fortifications three miles further east at Blackcastle and Greencastle it would have been ideally placed for a beacon to alert the tribe in case of an invasion from the south.
The hillfort was excavated over four years between 2010 and 2013 by Murray Cook and David Connolly of Rampart Scotland http://www.rampartscotland.co.uk/, and dates to the second half of the 1st millennium BC, though there was also evidence of limited Neolithic and Early Bronze Age activity.
Nunraw
It is thought that the first 'modern' feudal superior of the lands of Nunraw was the Church. The name Nunraw denotes the nuns' row or hamlet, and Martine adds that "old nuns came from Italy and settled down at Nunraw". The Lauder of The Bass family appear to have later held it as a feu. Acta Dominorum Concilii, July 1501, records a dispute between Jonet, prioress of the Convent of Haddington, (represented by David Balfour of Caraldstone) and
The conflict seemed to continue, however, as the Justiciary Records, under date 25 February 1510, narrate how "Thomas Dicsoune (Dickson) at the Monastery of Hethingtoune (Haddington) and others, came in the King's will for oppression done to Robert Lauder of The Basse, knight, coming under silence of night to the lands of Whitecastle, and casting down the house built there by the said Robert" (presumably the Pele Tower there). His father having died in the interval, the son Sir Robert Lauder of The Bass (d.1517) was present in person at his hearing. The offender was fined 15 merks.
In July 1547, during the war of the
By the middle of the sixteenth-century Patrick Hepburn of Beanston was in possession of this estate and Tower. In The
Patrick Hepburn of Whitecastle (d. November 1583.) was one of the '
The Hepburns were still in possession in the 18th century. On 23 December 1735 the Garvald Kirk Session elected Francis Hepburn of Nunraw as an Elder, and as Deacon, for the united parishes of Garvald & Bara,(NAS). He was dead by 15 January 1747 when a Sasine registered on that date referred to "Christian Anderson, relict of Francis Hepburn of Nunraw" (NAS:RS27/132/279). Of their known children are two sons, Patrick and Francis.
Nunraw House
Colin McWilliam states that today's baronial mansion at Nunraw, built in 1860 in a castellated deep red sandstone, "incorporates the Hepburns' 16th-century tower house" although it would appear that the tower almost certainly dates from much earlier. Martine states that the fortalice was originally connected with the monastery at Haddington and cites Keith's Scottish History. The possession by the Lauder of The Bass family has already been noted. The old building consisted of a long block running east to west, with two square towers to the north-east and south-west, and round stair-turrets in the two north-west angles. Only the north-east tower is externally unaltered. There also remain vaulted cellars to the two turnpike staircases. Robert Hay carried out alterations and additions between 1860 and 1864 which were decidedly antiquarian in intent, and with a zeal for a kind of authenticity. During the alterations in 1864 to the first floor room at the east end of the main block a tempera-painted board-and-joist ceiling was discovered. It bears the joint monogram of Patrick Hepburn and Helen Cockburn (see above). After 1880 Walter Wingate Gray installed much oak panelling, and also made the painted room into a chapel. Mr. Wingate Gray was still in possession of the estate in 1890, and is buried with his wife Mary Stephenson J.P. in the grounds.
Present day, Sancta Maria Abbey
In 1946 the building was acquired by the
References
- National Archives of Scotland, Garvald Kirk Session Books, CH2/167/p/69.
- The Royal Families of England Scotland and Wales, with their descendants, etc., by John and John Bernard Burke, London, 1851, volume 2, pedigree XXV, for mention of Patrick Hepburn's (d.1583) daughter Jean's marriage with Robert Swinton of that Ilk.
- Fourteen Parishes of the County of Haddington, by John Martine, Edinburgh, 1890.
- Acta Dominorum Concilii, edited by James Clyde, LL.D., for The Stair Society, Edinburgh 1943, numbers 230, 233 and 326.
- The Buildings of Scotland - Lothian (except Edinburgh), by Colin McWilliam, London, 1978, ISBN 0-14-071066-3