MUSSELBURGH. 1 23
Pinkie House, too, towards the east of the town and on the south side of
the road, is a place of great historic interest. ‘ It consists of two sides of a
quadrangle, the square formerly completed by a wall now removed, in the
centre of which was a well or fountain of elaborate and beautiful architecture,
coeval with the house, but which is now disused.’ Originally, this mansion
was the country-house of the Abbot of Dunfermline; and after various
changes of fortune and proprietorship, passed into the hands of Alexander
Seton, Earl of Dunfermline, a man of eminent ability and influence, who in
the beginning of the seventeenth century altered it into its present form, and
made it the principal seat of his residence. But other and more noble men
than the Earl seem to have slept under its roof, as a room in it, of great
curiosity, from its elaborate and fanciful dedorations, usually called the King’s
Room, woul’d indicate : at any rate it is certain that Prince Charles, 4 the
PINKIE HOUSE.
night after his victory at Preston, as well as that of the last day of October,
when on his march from Edinburgh into EngIand, found a lodging in it.
Indeed, there are few houses in the county of greater interest than this fine
old mansion of Gothic architecture, with its air-of-eld look, rich, well-wooded
groves through which the Scottish muse has sent its thrilling notes, and
adjacent fields and heights with their hallowed associations of battle, defeat,
and victory, dear to the heart and sacred to the memory of every lea1 son of
‘the land of the bluebell and the heather.’ The Jail also is an interesting
object, arresting the step and fixing the attention of the stranger, as he
saunters on through the streets, by its quaint appearance and antique structure.
In like manner, the Morrison’s-Haven Masonic Lodge, if not calling for any
special remark in itself, is yet worthy of notice from the fact that it is built
upon the site of that odd Flemish-looking house, with its buttressed front and
conical windows, each surmounted by a rose carved in stone, in which the
