Harden

Borders: About 3.5 miles west of Hawick, on minor road north of B711, just north of the Harden Burn.

Private   NT 449149   OS: 79   TD9 7LP

Harden, a rambling house of two-storeys with whitewashed walls, incorporates a rectangular 16th-century tower house of three storeys, which is said to have replaced an earlier tower demolished in 1590. The tower was extended and altered between 1680-90, and again in the 19th century. The walls are harled and whitewashed.
  The basement is not vaulted.
  The site is marked on Blaeu’s map of Teviotdale as ‘Hardenn’.
  Harden was a property of the Homes, but sold to the Scotts in 1501. One of the family was Auld Wat of Harden, a Border reiver, who married Marion or Mary Scott, the ‘Flower of Yarrow’, the bloody events surrounding her recorded in the ballad ‘The Dowie Holms (or Dens) o' Yarrow’ (also see Dryhope). In 1592 James VI ordered that Harden was to be destroyed after the Scotts were accused of dastardly deeds against the king at Falkland Palace.
  The family moved to Mertoun in the 18th century, and the house was used as a farmhouse. In the mid 19th century it was restored and reoccupied, and is now the seat of the Hepburne Scott Lords Polwarth.