Qualla: Smailholm Tower https://qualla.com/smailholm-tower en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:24 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Smailholm Tower https://qualla.com/smailholm-tower Smailholm Tower: Introduction https://qualla.com/smailholm-tower/ A small, sickly boy from Edinburgh was sent to Sandyknowe Farm in the 1770s to recover his health in the country air. He spent his days at the foot of a crag called Lady Hill, listening to his grandmother and the farm labourers tell border ballads about reivers and witches and feuds. The crag was crowned by Smailholm Tower, a fifteenth-century stone fortress that had defended the Pringle family against English raids two centuries earlier. The boy was Walter Scott. The tower and its stories were the seed of the historical novel as we know it today.

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/y/h/smailholm-tower-wp/gcyh-smailholm-tower-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Smailholm Tower: A Tower for the Reiver Years https://qualla.com/smailholm-tower/ Smailholm Tower was built by the Pringle family - originally Hoppringle - probably in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. The Pringles held the lands of Smailholm from the early 1400s as followers of the Earl of Douglas, managing part of Ettrick Forest for their feudal...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/y/h/smailholm-tower-wp/gcyh-smailholm-tower-a-tower-for-the-reiver-years.mp3 0:06 2 full Smailholm Tower: The Small Boy at Sandyknowe https://qualla.com/smailholm-tower/ By the eighteenth century the Scotts had moved into nearby Sandyknowe farm and the tower was decaying. In the 1770s, Walter Scott - born 1771, a Edinburgh advocate's son, lame from childhood polio - was sent to live with his paternal grandparents at Sandyknowe for the sake of his...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/y/h/smailholm-tower-wp/gcyh-smailholm-tower-the-small-boy-at-sandyknowe.mp3 0:06 3 full Smailholm Tower: The Eve of St John https://qualla.com/smailholm-tower/ Scott repaid the tower in his work. Smailholm is the explicit setting of his ballad The Eve of St John, in which the wife of the Baron of Smailholm waits for her lover on the night before St John's Eve, only to discover that her husband has murdered him and that the lover's ghost...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/y/h/smailholm-tower-wp/gcyh-smailholm-tower-the-eve-of-st-john.mp3 0:06 4 full Smailholm Tower: The Five-Star Crag https://qualla.com/smailholm-tower/ The last private owner, the Earl of Ellesmere, gave the tower into state care in 1950. Historic Environment Scotland restored it in the 1980s, and a more recent project in 2010-11 reinstated a turf roof over the entire structure - an experimental damp-proofing approach now used a...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/y/h/smailholm-tower-wp/gcyh-smailholm-tower-the-five-star-crag.mp3 0:06 5 full