Paxton House, Berwickshire

Paxton House is situated in the valley of the Tweed, a Scottish country house in Paxton / Berwickshire, south-west of Berwick -upon- Tweed. It was built by the brothers James and John Adam for Patrick Home of Billie 1757-1766. The interior was her more famous third brother, Robert Adam, commissioned about 1773. Paxton House is one of the best preserved buildings from neopalladianischen the mid-18th century in Scotland.

Paxton Picture Gallery

The specialty of the house is an art gallery, as it is found in this form only in very few properties in the UK. It is the largest private art gallery in Scotland, and overall one of the most ambitious such projects in all British country houses. Typically, no own premises were designed for images but their owners filled so that the walls of the main rooms of their property. The Picture Gallery in Paxton is owed to the fact that Patrick Home first Paxton Hall sold to his nephew Ninian Home and succeeded him as owner, George Home, at his death, 1808 a collection of pictures and books left behind. George Home, brother of Ninian Home, was at that time 74 years old and went up to that of his employment as a lawyer in Edinburgh. However, this age could not deter the architect Robert Reid to entrust the planning of an extension to house the painting, which was completed after about five years him. In its form it is only comparable to that of Capability Brown in 1764 constructed extension of Corsham Court, Wiltshire, and by Robert Adam in 1767 designed gallery in Newby Hall, Yorkshire. The best known example of this type, however, the Dulwich Gallery, which John Soane built from 1812. Currently, the Paxton Picture Gallery is managed by the National Galleries of Scotland, showing her as a collection mainly Scottish paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries.