Luffness House

Luffness House is a baronial mansion with a long and complex building history, standing on a site of exceptional historical depth in East Lothian. At its heart is a T-plan tower house of 1584, built by Sir Patrick Hepburn and his wife Isobel — a stone panel bearing that date and their initials is reset in the south-west bartizan. The site may incorporate parts of an even earlier castle that was sacked in 1548, and the tower house itself was built on the foundations of an early 16th-century fortification. This earlier fort is believed to have been constructed by General de Thermes to defend Aberlady Bay and the approach to Haddington during the so-called "rough wooing" of the early 1540s, and was ordered to be destroyed in 1551. Evidence of four corner towers — one of which now houses an ice house — and a wet moat remain visible within the grounds. The site is also an early Norse settlement, with graves found within the grounds and foundations, and the barony was associated with the de Lindsay and Bickerton families in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. The remains of a Carmelite Friary, which received a grant in alms from the estate, lie within the policies to the west.

The Hepburn family took possession in the 1580s and built the tower house. Luffness was purchased by the Earl of Hopetoun in 1739 and has since been occupied by the Hope family. The 17th-century sculpted ornamental plaques reused on the east and south-west additions by William Burn are thought to have come from the first Hopetoun House.

The 1584 tower house is oriented east–west, with the stair continued in a square tower to the south. It is constructed of random rubble with ashlar dressings. Two wide-mouthed gun loops remain visible at ground level, with further examples in two bartizans carried on chequered and rope-moulded corbels at the south-west and north-east corners. The stair to the upper levels is contained in a turret set in the south-east re-entrant angle, carried on a squinch arch. The tower house is clearly of more than one period, indicated by a change in the quoins and window mouldings above the second string course of the stair window. It is now largely obscured by 19th-century additions.

The mansion grew through a series of documented extensions by notable architects. In 1802–3, a two-storey wing with a canted bay at the east end was added to the north-east of the main block, featuring large roll-moulded windows at ground and first floor levels. Its original polygonal hipped roof, recorded in drawings by Gilpin, was replaced with gables inset with reused panels of foliate carving by Thomas Brown in 1841.

William Burn extended the house to the north-west in 1822 and filled in the south-west corner between the stair tower and the main block with a three-storey wing, slightly recessed on plan, built in contrasting red squared rubble. The ground and first floor windows are flanked by reused 17th-century decorative panels, with a heraldic panel to the gable. A south-west skewputt, also reused, bears the Hepburn initials SPH and EH. All openings have broad stop-chamfered surrounds and bipartite window openings. There is a balcony with scrolled Jacobean brackets at first floor level, and a dog-leg stair at the north-west gable with a similar balustrade, also probably by Burn.

Thomas Brown added a two-storey kitchen block to the north-east in 1825, built by masons Hunter and Bowman of Aberlady, in a picturesque style. It features a large arched service door with an ornamented surround, a large trefoil window above, and overhanging bracketed cat-slide eaves. An adjoining block at right angles has two tall round-arched windows, and a steeply pitched gabled bellcote dormer corbelled out and breaking the eaves at the centre, with a round-arched opening to the bell. A giant blind arcade with a window above runs along the north return. Brown also added a west extension in 1841.

David Bryce worked on the house between 1846 and 1874, enlarging the main entrance on the east elevation with stone benches flanking the doorway. He added a three-storey round tower corbelled to square at the upper storey, with service access and a tunnel from the north terminating in The Pend to the main road. The Pend consists of a large round-arched gateway with two orders of facetted blocks, possibly incorporating earlier stonework, topped by a blind parapet carried on square corbels. Bryce also added a gunroom and stable courts to the south-east, a service wing to the north-west, and carried out further additions including interior remodelling. Work was continued by D and J Bryce in 1891 with a billiard room addition, and by Barbour and Bowie in 1907.

The east wing and stables, in baronial style, adjoin the house to the south-east and are connected by a screen wall with an archway. The east wing is dated 1891 and is a two-storey range with a turret and arcade at ground floor level. The first floor is corbelled out to the east, with pedimented dormerheads with finials breaking the eaves, and a dormer to the east with a blank circular panel, possibly intended for a clock. Windows are sash and case with a two-pane lower and nine-pane upper sash glazing pattern. The wing has crowstepped gables, bracketed eaves, grey slates, ashlar-coped wallheads, paired diamond stacks, and a piended rooflight. A dated and initialled panel appears on the gable at the rear.

The billiard room, added by Barbour and Bowie in 1907, is a single-storey addition to the garden elevation of the gunroom. It has a canted five-light bay to the left with a crenellated parapet, two windows to the right breaking the eaves in semi-circular pedimented dormerheads with a dated and initialled panel and scrollwork, and a polygonal turret advanced at the right with four windows. A crenellated curtain wall and two canted bays at ground level link it to the main house.

The stable yard is enclosed by a battlemented wall with a blind arcade at ground level and a turret at the north-east corner with a candlesnuffer roof, finial, and weather vane. Entry is through a large round-arched battlemented gateway in the curtain wall, with a further gateway to the east with square gatepiers. The stables themselves form a two-storey, double-pile block with two doorways and windows at ground level, and six windows at first floor level breaking the eaves in pedimented dormerheads. Now converted to housing, there is a forestair to the first floor to the east, and a turret with a weather vane. Part of the court to the west has been glazed over. Windows are sash and case with a 12-pane glazing pattern, predominantly a two-pane glazing pattern with some 12-pane glazing at the rear. The block has crowstepped gables, ornamented stone finials, raised grouped diamond stacks by Burn, grey slates, some decorative gutter fixtures, and a mounting block in the courtyard.

The interior was largely remodelled by David Bryce. The entrance hall was remodelled with glazed doors formed like yetts and a fireplace dated 1849. The library was extended to the south-west by Burn; its interior was completed by Bryce in 1874, with a geometric plasterwork ceiling and cedarwood panelling by Wirth Brothers of Edinburgh, encompassing bookshelves with a block cornice and plant ornament. A double-sided chimneypiece divides the room into two, with Jacobean motifs and pilasters with plant ornament to the cedarwood overmantels. A wide newel stair rising to the first and second floors in the south stair tower is by Bryce, with the top floor and attic served by a turret stair. Some original moulded door surrounds and small wall chambers survive.

To the south of the house lies an Italian garden in the form of a sunken parterre laid out in a wheel of radiating beds enclosed by lawn. Until the First World War this extended into the moat with herbaceous borders. There are two sundials: a wall-mounted sundial featuring a sculpted soldier's head, near a well in the south court, and a second sundial dated 1759 that serves as the centrepiece of the Italian garden.

The walled garden to the west, along with the garden walls, Gardener's House, Water Tower, and Dovecots, are listed separately and form a group with Luffness House.