Yester History 3

The Building of Yester House 1670 - 1878

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	The project for rebuilding the house was not revived during Lord Tweeddale's lifetime, possibly on account of the financial difficulties in which he had become involved, and which compelled him in 1686 to sell all his Peeblesshire estates. Despite this setback, however, the Marquess (as he became in 1694) continued his activities at Yester. Already in forming his park Lord Tweeddale had outpaced his neighbour Lauderdale, whose park walls at Lethington were not completed until about 1676, and payments for various garden-works, and for the purchase of seeds, trees and shrubs, continue to appear with considerable frequency in the Yester accounts up to the time of his death in 1697. By the early 1720s, when John Macky visited Yester, the fruits of this activity were already evident, and the house stood in... 'the middle of the best planted Park I ever saw. The Park Walls are about eight Miles in Circumference; and I dare venture to say, there is a Million of full grown Trees in it'. One of these garden accounts merits closer scrutiny. It relates to the purchase of four stone pedestals for lead statues from Mr James Smith in 1686 at a cost of £54-16 Scots. In submitting his account Smith took care to point out to Lord Tweeddale's agent that the price he was asking was a very low one... 'I intreat the accompt may be narrowly considered and yee will find by the qualitie of the rates that I desyre to have more of my Lords imployment, though I declaire I would not serve his Lordship or any other with four such other pedestalls at the same rates.' James Smith had succeeded Bruce as overseer of the Royal Works three years previously, and was currently engaged in remodelling Drumlanrig Castle for the 1st Duke of Queensberry, as well as undertaking a good deal of building on his own account in Edinburgh. His efforts to win Lord Tweeddale's favour were evidently successful, for in 1692-3 he was called in to do some further work at the Earl's Edinburgh lodging. When his name re-appears in the Yester papers more than a decade later it is as the principal architect of the new Yester House. Just how Smith obtained this commission remains uncertain, for the documents fail just at the point where their existence would have been most helpful. There are no contracts or drawings, and very few building papers of any description surviving from the period between the 1st Marquess's death in 1697 and the year 1704, by which time the offices of the new house were already in course of erection. It seems fairly clear, however, that the decision to revive the scheme for a new house was taken by the 2nd Marquess shortly after his accession. By then he was already in his 50s, and he may well have felt that there was no time to lose if the building were to be finished in his own lifetime ... an attitude only too well justified by subsequent events.