Merchiston Tower

P3

Merchiston Castle

Merchiston Castle Merchiston Tower was probably or by Alexander Napier, the second Laird of Merchiston, built around the year 1454. It serves as the seat of the Clan Napier. It is known as the home of John Napier, the eighth Laird of Merchiston, was born here in 1550.

History

The land surrounding the castle was acquired in 1438 by Alexander Napier, the first Laird of Merchiston, and remained for most of the next five hundred years in Beitz of the Napier family.

Merchiston Castle was probably built as a country house, but its strategic situation and the turbulent political situation required to secure the castle strong - with some twenty feet thick walls - after she was often under siege. During the restoration in the 1960s, a 26 -pound cannon ball was found in the masonry of the tower, probably from the war in 1572 between Mary Stuart and supporters of her son, James VI. Come.

1659 the tower was sold to Ninian Lowis, in whose family it remained until 1729, when he was handed over to the governors of George Watson 's Hospital. The tower was re-acquired by the Napier of Merchiston family by Francis Napier, 6th Lord Napier 1752.

1772, a year before the death of the sixth Lord, the tower was sold to a relative, Charles Hope - Weir, second son of John Hope, 2nd Earl of Hopetoun. Weir sold the tower in 1775 to Robert Turner, a judge who sold it in 1785 to Robert Blair, a professor of astronomy at Edinburgh University.

The Napier family came in 1818 again into the possession of Merchiston Castle, when it was purchased by William Napier, 9th Lord Napier.

1833 was Lord Napier Charles Chalmers the tower, who founded the Merchiston Castle School. Merchiston Castle was sold in 1914 by John Scott Napier, 14th Laird of Merchiston, to the school. The school evacuated the building in 1930, when they moved three miles farther to a place.

The property was first sold to The Merchant Company in 1930, in 1935 the Edinburgh City Council, and remained uninhabited until 1956, when it was proposed as the core of a new technical college. The restoration began in 1958, in the course of which a drawbridge was discovered and receive a plaster ceiling dating from the 17th century.

It now stands in the middle of the Merchiston Campus of Napier University.

Construction

The tower is an interesting and elaborate example of a medieval tower house, built on the basis of the L- plan, with a projecting in the north wing. The ceiling on the second floor and the roof were originally vaulted. Among the notable details include the unusual performance of the main entrance on the second floor of the southern front. The high, shallow depression in which the arch is located, has previously served undoubtedly to receive a drawbridge, which must have been put in the lowered position, on an external drive about 4.3 m above the ground and about 3 m from the tower.

The Napier University has parts of the wall of the north wing removed to accommodate a corridor that runs through the castle to other campus buildings.