The Blog
The merry busy month of May
23rd May 2020While Abbotsford is closed our gardening team are still busy at work looking after the Walled Regency Gardens, taking all necessary precautions for their health and wellbeing. Head Gardener Tim ...
Read OnMuseum Week
21st May 2020Last week we participated in Museum Week, sharing something from Abbotsford on social media for each Museum Week theme over 7 days. If you missed it, here’s a round up of the week. Monday #HeroesMW...
Read OnHats off to a rare item
29th Apr 2020When we asked 'what's your favourite thing about Abbotsford?' Bruce, volunteer Guide and Room Steward, pulled an interesting item out of the hat... When I was asked what my favourite thing was about ...
Read OnSir Walter Scott and William Shakespeare
24th Apr 2020On the anniversary of Shakespeare’s baptism, our Collections and Interpretation Manager Kirsty puts a tiny trinket centre stage to explore Sir Walter Scott's literary hero. It’s hardly ...
Read OnEarly Spring in the Abbotsford Gardens
14th Apr 2020Although Abbotsford is closed to the public our gardening staff have been busy tending the Walled Regency Gardens, working alone in shifts and taking all necessary precautions. Head Gardener Tim ...
Read OnAn Abbotsford Easter Egg Hunt
10th Apr 2020Happy Easter from Abbotsford! Although you can't enjoy a visit to Abbotsford this Easter weekend, we're bringing some of our collection's lesser known stories to you with an unusual spin on an Easter ...
Read OnLife in a pandemic: What would Scott have done?
27th Mar 2020As we all get used to looking at the outside world through our windows, our Collections and Interpretation Manager, Kirsty Archer-Thompson considers whether Sir Walter Scott would have been self-...
Read OnMad, Bad and a Pleasure to Know: The Unlikely Friendship of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron
20th Oct 2019Sir Walter Scott was an early admirer of Lord Byron’s poetry, despite finding himself one of several contemporary poets under satirical attack in Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809...
Read OnSir Walter Scott, Parasols and the Empress of Brazil
21st Aug 2019An exquisite collection item, now on public display in our Visitor Centre, gave our curator Kirsty some sleepless nights before she discovered its story... I think it’s only healthy that every ...
Read OnMemories of Abbotsford - Joyful, Optimistic, Dynamic
13th May 2019Historic houses give us an insight into the lives of those who built and lived in them over the centuries. We believe that the stories we tell should not only be informed by what we find inside these ...
Read OnBehind the Scenes with Art UK
9th May 2019Over the past couple of months, the Collections team at Abbotsford has been preparing to take part in Art UK’s Sculpture Project. This is a National project working to photograph and digitise ...
Read OnThe John Muir Trust Discovery Award at Abbotsford
30th Jan 2019In November 2018, we proudly awarded the John Muir Trust Discovery Awards to five young people from Gala Academy Secondary Support Centre! This inspiring group of teenagers with complex needs and ...
Read OnMary, Queen of Scott's Fascination
17th Jan 2019Here at Abbotsford, we like to continue Sir Walter Scott’s tradition of championing stories from Scotland’s rich and chequered past. In the last six months, two of Scotland’s most famous ...
Read OnA Glimpse into Turner's Mind
17th Oct 2018As a legacy of the Turner Bequest in 1856, the Tate became home to a vast collection of sketchbooks that belonged to the artist J. M. W. Turner. These private notebooks offer a unique insight into the...
Read OnMemories of Abbotsford - Unexpected Souvenirs
27th Sep 2018Historic houses give us an insight into the lives of those who built and lived in them over the centuries. We believe that the stories we tell should not only be informed by what we find inside these ...
Read OnIt wouldn’t be a birthday without embarrassing baby pictures...
15th Aug 2018Like many of us, Scott was not terribly enthusiastic about growing old. In his diary, he remarked disapprovingly that ‘the outside of my head is waxing grizzled but I cannot find that the snow has ...
Read OnMemories of Abbotsford - Discovering the Borderlands
31st Jul 2018Historic houses give us an incredible insight into the lives of those who occupied them over the centuries. We believe that the stories we tell should not only be informed by what we find inside these...
Read OnIt's our Birthday! Looking back on 5 Years with 5 Highlights
17th Jul 2018Time flies when you’re working hard and the years have certainly flown by at Abbotsford. It has been 11 years since the founding of The Abbotsford Trust and this July, we celebrate 5 years since ...
Read OnHurray for the Braw Lad and Braw Lass!
28th Jun 2018Excitement is mounting as we look forward to welcoming Braw Lad Greg Kellie, Braw Lass Kimberley O’May and their Attendants Greg, Amy, Mark and Alex to Abbotsford as part of the Galashiels Braw Lads...
Read OnThe Top 3 Works by Scott - As Voted by our Volunteers
14th Jun 2018For the 2018 Borders Book Festival, we asked our volunteers for their opinion: With an oeuvre spanning a variety of genres, topics and styles, it is difficult to pinpoint which are Scott's best works...
Read OnOn Scott's Circle of Friends
23rd Apr 2018Scott’s circle of friends encompassed lords and ladies of the very highest rank, just as much as it did business partners and the men and women working on his estate and in the household. ...
Read OnMemories of Abbotsford
25th Jun 2017History isn’t simply about the four walls of that place you visit on your day out. It’s very much about the feeling you get standing in those four walls, and at Abbotsford, it’s that feeling of ...
Read On44 Scotland Street - A significant spurtle
12th Apr 2017Abbotsford is delighted to be featured in one of the latest chapters of 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith. We are delighted to share the chapter ahead of the publication of the latest book ...
Read OnThe next step
29th Nov 2016The continuing challenge for Abbotsford is to safeguard the long term future of the iconic building that Scott created and that is the physical manifestation of the imagination of a man so important ...
Read OnAnd Time Stood Still...
24th Nov 2016We've reached that time of the year when many take a few moments to reflect on their experiences. We take so many aspects of our time for granted, yet as we reach the final months, it all seems to...
Read OnWrap Yourself in Autumn
4th Oct 2016Scott loved autumn at Abbotsford, and taking a walk around the woodlands of the estate and along the banks of the Tweed, it’s easy to see why. Before the leaves slowly start falling one by one, the ...
Read OnA Tale of Two Harps
16th Jun 2016Our collections tend to be fairly static because of their very nature; we are not a Walter Scott museum and don't buy filler material on a theme or on the man as a general rule. We exist to showcase ...
Read OnRave Reviewer: On the Evolution of an Exhibition
28th Mar 2016My apologies for going completely dark; the closure season seemed to go past in the blink of an eye! We achieved a great deal over the winter, hand-cleaning all of Scott’s books, waxing all of the ...
Read OnWinter is Coming
22nd Nov 2015As we have a good old British grumble about the first chilly spell of the winter, I couldn't resist naming this post after the famous phrase from George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy series A Song of ...
Read OnThings that go Bump in the Night
30th Oct 2015‘The ghost nowhere makes his appearance so well as with you.’ So declared the first Englishman to translate Leonore, Gottfried August Bürger’s blood-curdling tale of a bereaved fiancée ...
Read OnRestoring a Great Unknown
21st Sep 2015This blog post supports the monument campaign of the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club. "We laid her there, the Minstrel's darling child"... On the anniversary of Scott’s death, it feels like...
Read OnA Birthday to Remember
21st Aug 2015There is always a buzz amongst staff and volunteers at Abbotsford on Scott's birthday. It's a particularly beautiful day today, and, having just hosted a wonderful outdoor theatre performance of ...
Read OnThe Ground Beneath Our Feet
15th Jul 2015Well, the 25th national Festival of Archaeology is just getting underway, so it got me thinking about a side of Scott's antiquarian pursuits that perhaps doesn't get as much coverage as it should: his...
Read OnField Marshal Bluecher's Tiny Teapot and Other Adventures
16th Jun 2015Earlier this week, our volunteers were treated to a trip up to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. As with all staff get-togethers, it was long overdue and offered a rare opportunity for ...
Read OnOn This Day in History
25th May 2015Every now and then, it's rather fun to pick up Sir Walter Scott's Journal or peruse a collection of letters and find out what was happening on a particular date during his life. We haven't done this ...
Read OnMy plantations are getting all into green leaf...
14th May 2015"My plantations are getting all into green leaf..." Sir Walter Scott's diary entry on 7/4/1826 The weather this week has warmed up, and is pretty typical of April rather than May, it seems: ...
Read OnScott on Waterloo
29th Apr 2015'Bones of horses , quantities of old hats, rags of clothes, scraps of leather and fragments of books and papers strewed the ground in great profusion...' This was the sight that greeted Sir Walter on...
Read OnBookish Banter
14th Apr 2015On the 23rd April many countries around the world will be celebrating World Book Day (something that the UK has done in recent years a month earlier). This date was originally chosen to coincide with ...
Read OnWelcome to our Blog
2nd Apr 2015Hello and a very warm welcome to our very first blog post on behalf of the Abbotsford Heritage and Engagement team! Here at Sir Walter Scott's 'Conundrum Castle', quite literally stuffed to the ...
Read On
