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A Brief History 1 The site for the castle, in East Lothian a few miles South of Edinburgh, was beside that of the old Seton Palace, a vast old courtyard house, the owners of which, the Earls of Wintoun, had had their estates confiscated after the 1715 rebellion. By the 1790's the Palace was a ruin, and the site in the hands of Lt Col Alexander Mackenzie of the 21st Dragoons, eldest son of Alexander MacKenzie of Portmore, Peebleshire. He was a young man, in his early twenties, when he commissioned the design from Adam. He would not live long to enjoy his new house. According to a local tradition he had evicted an old woman who lived in a cottage on the estate near Seton Palace. She laid a curse on him and prophesied, as her house was demolished, that the new Seton Castle would never become his family home. He died five years later in 1796. John Patterson, Robert Adam's Clerk of Works in Scotland, (later to become a competent architect in his own right) reported to Adam in a letter of 26 April 1790 that the old building had been demolished and cleared.
For a client one of the advantages of a building designed in the
Castle Style was the reduced cost of constructing the stone walls
which (as in this case) could be generally of undressed coursed or
"drove" stone (with chisel marks on the surface). Dressed
(smooth faced) and carved stone were only used for sting courses and
the fine detailing, such as the bartizans and machiciolation at the
battlements. Of course the demolition of Seton Palace provided a
ready suppy of stone and extensive use was made of this. ----------------------------------------------------- Notes and References 1. The details of this brief history are taken from Designs for Castles and Country Houses by Ronert and James Adam. Alistair Rowan, Phaidon, Oxford. 1985
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