Neidpath Castle

Around 1263 to 1266, while serving as High Sheriff of Tweeddale, Simon Fraser of Oliver Castle probably raised the first stronghold on this ridge above the River Tweed. In the early 14th century the barony passed by marriage to the Hay family, when Margaret, granddaughter of that sheriff, married into the line. Sir William de Haya, who died around 1390, is thought to have built the tower house that still stands today, in the late 14th century.

The Hays held Neidpath until the 17th century, even after Sir William's son Sir Thomas Hay married the heiress of Sir Hugh Gifford of Yester and so acquired Yester Castle, which became the family's principal seat while Neidpath remained in use. The castle received two notable visitors: Mary, Queen of Scots called in 1563, and her son James VI followed in 1587, underlining its standing as a working seat of the Hay lords rather than a forgotten outpost.

In 1645 Neidpath was garrisoned against the Royalist army of James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, though within a year John Hay of Yester had switched to the King's side and was created 1st Earl of Tweeddale by Charles II. Oliver Cromwell's forces attacked the castle during the 1650 invasion of Scotland; accounts differ on whether it surrendered without a fight or endured the longest siege of any stronghold south of the River Forth, and later writers record that artillery brought down the 13th-century tower and damaged the west wing.

During the 1660s the 2nd Earl of Tweeddale remodelled the castle, added outbuildings, and planted an avenue of yew trees along one side, of which part still survives. His improving ambitions as an agricultural reformer outran his finances, however, and bankruptcy forced him to sell Neidpath in 1686 to William Douglas, 1st Duke of Queensberry.

In 1693 Queensberry passed the castle to his second son, William Douglas, later 1st Earl of March, whose own son made further alterations to the building in the 18th century. The 3rd Earl, who inherited the Queensberry dukedom in 1778, let Neidpath to tenants including the philosopher and historian Adam Ferguson, but neglect took its toll and by 1790 the upper storeys of one wing had collapsed.

William Wordsworth and Walter Scott both visited in 1803; Wordsworth, dismayed at the recent felling of the estate's old trees, wrote a sonnet condemning 'Degenerate Douglas!' as an unworthy lord. When the Duke of Queensberry died in 1810, the earldom of March and Neidpath passed to the Earl of Wemyss rather than to the Scotts of Buccleuch, who inherited only the dukedom, and the castle remains with the Wemyss family, whose heir still takes the courtesy title Lord Neidpath from it.