Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 2.djvu/535

FERNIELEE 519 FOURTH PERIOD FERNIELEE, SELKIRKSHIRE. This old mansion is beautifully situated in the valley of the Tweed, where the river flows through a narrow and mountainous pass, about five miles above the town of Selkirk. The house evidently belongs to the seventeenth century. It is a long parallelogram on plan, with the entrance door in the centre (Fig. 945) surmounted with a shield above the first-floor window, which probably contained the arms of the Ruther- fords, to whom the property long belonged. FIG. 945. Fernielee. View from the South-East. In the south front there is an evident attempt to produce a sym- metrical design. The doorway is the central feature, and the composi- tion is balanced with a turret at each end. There is a slight variety in the corbelling of these turrets, but they are both enriched with the dog-tooth and other revived early ornaments. The exterior walls are in fair preservation, but the interior of the building is entirely in ruins. Some fragments of the vaulting of the ground floor remain, and traces of the kitchen, but the upper floors are completely gutted. No doubt a