Very few writers could afford to build a house like this
but Sir Water Scott could
As a writer I'm just as interested in how other writers live
As much as their work that's a part of the writing life right
Like you know where your desk is what the study's like
Are they messy?
You know did they have all their books around them?
You're also hoping that some of the magic will brush off on you
when you're sort of hovering over their chair or looking at their desk
These days Abbotsford is open to the public
Anyone can visit
Sharing its stories is curator Kirsty Archer-Thompson
So this is Abbotsford
This is Abbotsford
This is the house that Scott built
So it reminds me of lots of places that I've seen over the years
It's that Scots baronial style which started here right?
So this is an architectural style
and you're right there are echoes and allusions
going back to the late medieval
and indeed the sort of renaissance period as well
and all of it comes together in this sort of picnic fashion
Scott said this is the history I love from the Scotland I love
So what he was creating here is a real stage set for history
and you know everything that made his his brain spark
I think one of the things that puts a lot of people off him now
is Abbotsford
because I think they look at it and they think
oh get him in his castle
He wasn't born in a castle
He built this castle through his labours
through his work through his imagination
and I think there's something about that
that if people knew that he was sort of
that he was self-made and he made this
You're quite right
A lot of people don't realise this was an ordinary very sickly boy
from you know a middle-class family
that had to work hard to get by
Yeah
And that it was talent that got him here
Oh my god was he expecting a war?
Like was he a prepper?
Was he...?
This is Scott the frustrated soldier
It's a really weird mix when you walk in here
of stuff that looks like treasure
and then stuff that looks like from a car boot
like from a coach boot sale like in the 19th century
This is everything that interested him
and you know Scott is not somebody who is only interested
in the lives of the kind of key players
or the aristocratic families of the past
he's interested in ordinary people too
and in the kind of things that they used every day
It's just it's a mood board isn't it?
So Damian I think the next room
is probably going to be your favourite
Let's go to the writer's study
Okay I'm so excited
Oh
This is the writer's room
It's like the dream
This is the dream yeah the kind of quintessential...
Probably one of the most famous writer's studies anywhere in the world
So this is where the magic happens?
This is where he sat
Exactly
He sat here and he wrote here
and there's something quite magical about that
And there is absolutely no way on earth
this desk would have been tidy
No
We're surrounded by books
What are the books that are in here
and why are they in here not in the library?
So why did he want these books around him?
These are principally books that you would need most often
as reference materials that aren't specific to historical periods
so there's a lot of encyclopedias and dictionaries
dictionaries of languages
So really it's the things that you might most regularly need
to pluck off a shelf as a writer to refer to
So these are his workbooks
Mm hmm
And this is his Wikipedia?
Yes
I like that analogy
Yeah
So this is our cabinet of curiosities
These are some of Scott's smaller curios and possessions
that he loved to tell stories about
I love to imagine him on an evening
playing a bit of a call my bluff with his house guests
because some of these things have cast iron provenance
others are a little bit woolly flights of fantasy
and that was how Scott operated
You know he was a storyteller
that line between fact and fiction is one that he regularly hops over
Yeah I see a look of Bonnie Prince Charlie's hair here
I mean the amount of hair
that Bonnie Prince Charlie must have had the amount of locks
of hair that were that are going about
And then what...
that's his Culloden musket ball and oat cake crumb
Yeah hands down my favourite thing in the collection
Go on
This was something found in the pocket
of a dead Highlander on the battlefield of Culloden
And you know this is the last pitched battle fought on British soil
Obviously the Highlanders were decimated
Yeah
And you know they'd had difficulties with their supply lines
they hadn't got the food rations they needed
to do what they needed to do in that terrain
And that was a man's last morsel
and he didn't get to eat it
and that's the resonance actually
You know however funny and quirky it is
that this fossilised crumb still exists
Where does it take us in our minds you know
Where would it take you as a writer
Scott only ever left here reluctantly and it's very easy to see why
It's not just beautiful
it's a place that he's created entirely
It's his world it's his kingdom
And when you're in it even just for a day
you feel like you're part of that somehow
You're part of the story