Darnick, a village in Melrose parish, Roxburghshire, near the right bank of the Tweed, 7 furlongs W of Melrose town, under which it has a post office. Darnick Tower, the chief of three peels that once stood clustered here, and the finest specimen extant of its kind, was founded by the Heitons about 1425, but, razed and cast down by the English in 1545, appears to have been repaired or rebuilt in 1569-the date of the crest (a bull's head) above the entrance door. A massive square tower, battlemented and corbie-gabled, with side stair-turret, it still is habitable, and still is held by a descendant of its founder, Andrew Heiton, Esq-, F.S.A. (b. 1827; suc. 1870), whose cousin and predecessor converted it into a kind of Border antiquarian museum. Scott coveted it sorely, to make an armoury of it, and from it was jestingly dubbed, by his familiar friends, the Duke of Darnick. Pop. of village (1841) 280, (1871), 435, (1881) 371. See James Wade's History of -Melrose Abbey (Edinb. 1861).
Note: This text has been made available using a process of scanning and
optical character recognition. Despite manual checking, some typographical
errors may remain. Please remember this description dates from
the 1880s; names may have changed, administrative divisions will certainly be
different and there are known to be occasional errors of fact in the original
text, which we have not corrected because we wish to maintain its integrity.
This information is provided subject to our standard disclaimer
