page_title: Pinkie House
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Pinkie House / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Pinkie House South Face
context_page_description: Pinkie House is a historic house, built around a three-storey tower house located in Musselburgh, East Lothian, Scotland. The house dates from the 16th century, was substantially enlarged in the early 17th century, and has been altered several times since. Its location at grid reference NT348726 is to the east of the town centre, on the south side of the High Street. The building now forms part of Loretto School, an independent boarding school. Pinkie House is not far from the site of the disastrous Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, fought in 1547.
context_section_description: The name Pinkie, first recorded in the 12th century as Pontekyn, may derive from the Welsh words pant (valley) and cyn (wedge), referring to its situation at the end of the valley of the Esk. Pinkie was formerly the country seat of the abbots of Dunfermline, and the tower house was built some time in the 16th century on the site of the Battle of Pinkie. In 1597, following the Reformation, it passed to Alexander Seton. He served as James VI's chancellor, and was created Earl of Dunfermline in 1605.
  The young Prince Charles, later Charles I, lived here as a boy, after his father's move to London at the Union of the Crowns in 1603. He slept in what is still known as "The King's Room". In 1607 Seton married his third wife, Margaret Hay of Yester, and from 1613 set about expanding the house, adding a long wing to the south, and decorating the interior:
  ALEXANDER SETONIUS VILLAM HORTOS ET HÆC SUBURBANA ÆDIFICIA FUNDAVIT EXSTRUXIT ORNAVIT … AMOENITATEM OMNIA AD CORDEM ANIMUMQUE HONESTE OBLECTANDUM COMPOSUIT
  (Alexander Seton has planted, raised and decorated a country house … He has brought together everything that might afford decent pleasures of heart and mind.)
  The Long Gallery is noted for its framed emblems and inscriptions. When Ben Jonson visited the house in 1619, he wrote to William Drummond of Hawthornden to enquire after this emblems.
  Seton also altered his northern property Fyvie Castle before his death in 1622.
  In 1694 the property passed to the Hays, the Marquess of Tweeddale adding a door to the east front. In 1745, following victory at the Battle of Prestonpans, Charles Edward Stuart, the "Young Pretender", stayed here, as well as using the building as a field hospital. In 1778 the Hays sold the building to Sir Archibald Hope, 9th Baronet Hope of Craighall, who made further alterations, and added a stable block. Extensions were carried out in 1825, designed by William Burn.
  In 1951 Pinkie House was bought by Loretto School, and altered again in the 1970s, with the addition of two other buildings in the grounds. An annexe has been built at the north side and the south wing now serves as the headmaster's house. The rest of Pinkie House now has a number of functions including a 6th-form boys' boarding house. Loretto pupils also sit their examinations in the painted gallery.
caption: Pinkie House South Face
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