Traquair House

Traquair House stands a few miles south-east of Peebles, in the Scottish Borders, and is claimed to be the oldest continually inhabited house in Scotland. The site began as a royal hunting seat in the twelfth century — Alexander I was the first Scottish king recorded to have hunted here — though no part of the present building can be dated with certainty before the fifteenth century. In 1491 James III granted the property to James Stuart, first Laird of Traquair, and the Stuart family, later Earls of Traquair, held it as their seat for four centuries before it passed in 1875 to a cousin, Henry Constable Maxwell. Royalty came here across its long life: Mary, Queen of Scots visited in August 1566, and James VI in March 1602, and reminders of both survive in its collections. Its most storied feature is the Bear Gates, raised in 1738 and topped with carved stone bears in 1745; a much-loved legend holds that they were closed after Bonnie Prince Charlie passed through, not to reopen until a Stuart again sat on the throne. A working brewery, revived in 1965 within the grounds, still brews using old oak tuns.