The house has been very much altered and added to at different times. The original castle stood a little to the eastward. After its destruction in 1596, the present house was built by Sir Francis Wauchope, "Young Niddrie's" son, but it has been very much altered and modernized since. The King's Room, where Charles I. slept, has completely disappeared, the floor having been taken out to heighten the hall below. There used to be a ghost called Jenny Traill, which haunted a room up a little steep stair near the roof. She was supposed to have killed herself there, but I have never heard of her appearance of late years.
In very old days, a large and thriving village clustered on both sides of the stream, round the old keep of Niddrie. At one time it contained three hundred families, three breweries, and fourteen houses that sold liquor. That has long been swept away. A few houses still remain at the north-east corner of the park, where Niddrie Mill formerly stood. My aunt remembered a family named Simon that lived here. They had been from father to son bakers to the Wauchopes for nearly five hundred years; but they died out in the time of Colonel Wauchope's father.
Four important roads meet at this spot,—the one from Edinburgh, the one from Musselburgh, the one by which we have just travelled from Edmonstone, and the one to Portobello, which we now follow. We are fast approaching the sea, but, as to-day's walk is already long enough, we shall leave Portobello to be described to-morrow; and, taking the first turn to the left, we very soon find ourselves facing the gates of Duddingston House. The crowned antelopes that surmount the gate-pillars show that this is Abercorn property. It is a flat, uninteresting park, well-wooded, with a summer-house like a Grecian temple, forming a point-de-vue from the house, which was built in 1768 after designs by Sir William Chambers, and cost £30,000.
The original owners of Duddingston, after the Reformation had dispossessed the monks of Kelso, were a family named Thomson, created later Baronets of Nova Scotia, and now extinct. In 1674 it became the property of the Duke of Lauderdale, and after his death, his duchess continued to live there. It was then that the lawsuit took place between her and Sir James Dick, respecting the swans which she had placed on Duddingston Loch, and which he, as owner of the loch, had shut up. The duchess won her point at last, with the help of the Duke of Hamilton, who, as keeper of the King's Park, interfered on her behalf. Duddingston passed as pin-money to her daughter (by her first marriage), Elizabeth Tollemache, who married the first Duke of Argyle. She lived here constantly, and her son, the famous Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, was brought up here. In 1745 the place was sold to the Abercorns, who still possess it. They have not lived here for many years, and now it is always let. Prior to the purchase of Sandringham, there was some idea of its being bought for the Prince of Wales, but the plan came to nothing.
The road we are following skirts the park, and after crossing the Braid Burn, which runs out of an ornamental piece of water just above us, we come to some substantial and comfortable-looking villas surrounded with shrubberies and gardens. The road in front of us leads to Piershill, but we take the one to the left, and soon reach the other entrance to Duddingston House. Here formerly stood a thorn-tree of great age and immense size. It was called "Queen Mary's Tree," though it was known to have existed as far back as the reign of Alexander I. (1107), when it was one of the landmarks of the property on which it grew. A storm in 1840 tore it up by the roots.
We now see the little village of Duddingston, nestling between the hill and the loch. The church stands on a rocky knowe just above the water, and two narrow roads (for streets we can hardly call them), bordered with houses, gardens, and orchards thrown together in picturesque confusion, make up the rest of the village. The house in which Prince Charles and his staff slept before Prestonpans lies a little back from the main road, while his army was encamped on the sunny slopes behind, which rise without a break to the edge of Dunsappie. As we pass the church, we see the "louping-on stane," so necessary in the days when our forefathers invariably rode everywhere. The "jougs" still hang close by on the wall behind. Though rusty now, they were once the terror and the punishment of wrong-doers, who stood there, as in a pillory, with the iron collar firmly clasped round the offender's neck.
The church, which is of great antiquity, belonged to the Tironensian Monks of Kelso.[40] Twice since the Reformation has its pulpit been filled by very remarkable men, who have each left a memory behind,—the one by his pen, the other by his brush. The first, Robert Monteith (so much better known as Mentet de Salmonet), had a curious and romantic story. He was the son of a poor fisherman on the Forth, above Alloa; but, having shown much quickness and aptitude for learning, he was educated for the ministry, and eventually, in 1630, obtained the living of Duddingston.