THIS WEEK, Ted McKie from the Innerleithen Community Trust looks at the history of Pirn House, which stood on the site of St Ronan’s Primary School, and tells about the people who lived there.

In 1684, Alexander Horsburgh married Margaret Tait, the last of the Taits of Pirn who had owned the estate since medieval times. 

Beneath the brooding rocky face of Pirn Craig, where once had stood a feudal tower, they built Pirn House in 1700. 

Having deserted the draughty and redundant Horsburgh Castle three miles upstream by the River Tweed, Pirn would be the Horsburgh family home.

When the central part of the house was built it was intended to form three sides of a square. 

A carved lintel above the main door showed the date and the initials AHMT. 

Pavilion wings were added after 1733, with more additions in 1748. Final minor alterations were completed between 1752 and 1778.

The walls were very thick, passages low, windows deep-set, and stairs twisting. 

Adam plasterwork was to be seen on friezes and ceilings, as were carved oak panelling and marble fireplaces.

The dining room ceiling had been carved by an Italian workman with great delicacy and taste. 

Both the dining room and the drawing room had Adam style carved marble fireplaces

Pirn House was stocked with fine furniture including a beautiful bow-fronted Sheraton sideboard but these were removed in the late 19th or early 20th century when the house was put out to let.

Twice-married Alexander was succeeded by his son John and it was the latter’s son Alexander Horsburgh who was mentioned by Robert Burns –

“Drank tea yesternight at Pirn with Mr Horsburgh” – in his travel journal when the Bard visited Innerleithen in May 1787.

Photographs show a plain but attractive big house with ivy covered walls set in pleasant wooded surroundings. 

Sir Walter Scott, who had family connections with the Horsburghs, often visited the house and was particularly impressed by the excellent library and the two large yews at the entrance to the garden which were still there in 1927.

The last male in the Horsburgh line was yet another Alexander who died unmarried in 1911, the estate becoming the property of his widowed sister, Lady Agnes Adinston Horsburgh Porter of Donecarny House, Dublin.

From 1900, Pirn House was leased by Rev John Grant Ferguson, who became the first bearer of St Andrew’s Episcopalian Church, Leithen Road, in 1906 but sadly he died the same year. 

Last year his grandson, Luath Grant Ferguson, published a booklet Life at Pirn House Innerleithen, drawing on his father’s childhood memories and family diaries to produce and insightful account of the domestic and social life of the Grant Fergusons between 1900 and 1913 during their temporary stay at Pirn. 

The lease was surrendered in 1913 when the family returned to Edinburgh.

Members of the Horsburgh Porter family were never again in residence at Pirn. 

During the Second World War the house was used to billet troops who used floorboards, oak panelling, the main stair banister and cupboard doors for firewood.

The soldiers were the last occupants. 

Pirn House became the property of Innerleithen Town Council in the late 1940s and was demolished in 1952. 

For the past 60 years St Ronan’s Primary School has stood on the site of the grand old house. 

The pupils now hold an annual Burns Lunch on the very spot where the poet ‘drank tea with Mr Horsburgh’.