Set in 110 acres of gardens and woodlands designed by himself, Sir Walter Scott's baronial Abbotsford which he called the Delilah of his Imagination or his Conundrum Castle is one of the most famous literary homes in the world.
The entrance-hall displays the breadth of his interest as an antiquarian and collector, and the study was where he wrote his later novels, while the library is perhaps the world's finest amassed by an author since he was an avid collector and remarkably the contents of 7000 books are unchanged since his death. The drawing-room's wallpaper was hand-painted in China, with a Raeburn portrait showing Scott at Hermitage with his dogs, and the armoury contains Montrose's sword, Claverhouse's pistol and Rob Roy's gun, sword, dirk and sporran. The dining-room was where Sir Walter died in September 1832 on his return from a Mediterranean tour, and was restyled after 1928 by his great great grandson's second wife, an American socialite.
An exhibition commemorates Sir Walter's acquisition of relics from The Bruce's tomb opened by workmen building the new church at Dunfermline in the early nineteenth century. The house was one of the first in Scotland to be lit by gas, and the later Hope-Scott Wing includes a chapel that contains Cardinal Newman's vestments, biretta and missal.