The Family – Paxton House

The Homes of Wedderburn

Patrick Home, the builder of Paxton House, belonged to the family of the Homes of Wedderburn. The family history goes back long before Paxton House was conceived, to a time when the Home family owned large areas of the Borderlands north of the Tweed, acquired through strategic marriages in the 1400s.

The family split into two main branches in the first half of the 15th century – from the senior branch descend from today’s Earl Home of the Hirsel, while by 1550 the junior branch had made its base at Wedderburn Castle just north of Paxton. Family tradition allowed girls to keep their family name, usually annexing it to their husband’s, leading to a confusing genealogy of Home-MacDonalds, Home-Robertsons and Milne-Homes.

Unfortunate Forebears

In the 16th century, wars with England went badly for the Homes of Wedderburn. Of Patrick Home’s ancestors, five were killed in cross-border battles fighting for Scotland. David, 3rd Baron Home of Wedderburn and his heir, George, were killed at Flodden Field in 1513 in a crushing defeat for the Scots against English King Henry VIII’s defending forces. Henry VIII’s son Edward VI was the aggressor in 1547 when David’s grandson, George, 5th Baron was killed at the battle of Pinkie. A century later, in the Third English Civil War, when a Scottish army took on Oliver Cromwell’s forces at Dunbar in 1650, both George’s grandson, David, 8th Baron, and his heir were killed. The lands at Paxton were then nearly lost when George, 10th Baron backed the losing side in the Jacobite Rising of 1715.

The Family

Portraits

Margaret, Lady Billie (left) by David Martin - Patrick Home's mother (a posthumous portrait on loan from a private collection); Patrick Home (centre) by Cosmo Alexander, 1757 (on loan from a private collection); Prussian heiress Sophie De Brandt (right) who was destined never to live at Paxton

Patrick Home’s parents

Patrick Home inherited estates in Berwickshire including Paxton, which were collectively called the ‘Lands of Billie’, from his father, The Reverend Ninian Home of Billie.

The Reverend had managed to save the estates for the family after the 1715 Jacobite Rising in which his cousin, Sir George Home, was implicated. Faced with the forfeiture of the Lands of Billie, The Reverend persuaded the Crown that the estates had been made over to him before 1715. He proposed that his eldest son marry George Home’s daughter Margaret to secure the inheritance but, when his son refused (as he loved her younger sister, Isobel), the Reverend married Margaret himself, despite being 30 years her senior.

The canny Reverend amassed a considerable fortune as a debt broker and when he died in 1744, Patrick’s mother, Margaret, continued to manage the estates until 1751, when she was murdered by the butler while her son Patrick was away on his continental travels.

The butler, Norman Ross, ‘confidential servant’ to Margaret, Lady Billie, broke into her bedroom on the night of 12 August 1751 intending to steal money from her cabinet, his mistress woke and Ross cut her throat before escaping through a window. Margaret survived for a few days; Norman was captured, tried and sentenced to hang in chains, the last man to suffer this shameful punishment.

Patrick Home of Billie (1728-1808)

Patrick Home’s mother sent her son to the University of Leipzig in 1748, from where he found his way to Berlin and joined the glittering court of Frederick the Great of Prussia. There he met and fell in love with 18 year old heiress Sophie de Brandt. King Frederick would only allow them to marry if Patrick transferred his entire fortune to Prussia, a prospect which outraged Patrick’s mother, who threatened to disinherit him and demanded that he continue his Grand Tour to Italy immediately. The Court also forbade Patrick to stay any longer as he could not marry Sophie without bringing his fortune to Germany.

When his mother was murdered, Patrick put aside any plans to return to Berlin and finished his Grand Tour with an extended stay in Paris, coming back to Scotland in 1753.

Patrick embarked upon the grand building project of Paxton House, commissioning designs in 1756, hoping that Sophie would one day become its mistress. Just after the completion of the new house at Paxton, Patrick inherited the Wedderburn title in 1766 from his mother’s brother. The prospect of the more prestigious estate at Wedderburn, combined with heartbreak at the death of his Prussian sweetheart, caused Patrick to sell Paxton and start a new building project at Wedderburn with Robert Adam as architect. In 1771, in his early 40s, Patrick married Jane Graham, the daughter of a Grenadian plantation manager, but their relationship was short-lived as she ended up in a Belgian convent. Patrick served MP for Berwickshire in 1784-95 and died at Wedderburn in 1808.

The Family

Portraits

The only portrait of Ninian Home, Governor of Grenada, is a series of tiny images in a set of 1789 landscapes of Grenada by Adam Callander. Ninian's portrait in oils was made in 1794 at Paraclete along with one of his close friend and fellow plantation owner, Alexander Campbell. These large portraits are untraced, however Paxton has a small painting of Campbell (left) who also visited Paxton House. Campbell was executed with Ninian and others in Fédon's Rebellion of 1795 on Grenada; Adam Callander's View from Paraclete Plantation, Grenada, 1789, (centre); Ninian is likely to be the man seated under the tree with the enslaved people tending to the gardens; (right) George Home of Wedderburn (1734-1820) by Sir Henry Raeburn.

Ninian Home, Governor of Grenada (1732-1795)

The purchaser of Paxton House in 1773 was Ninian Home, Patrick’s cousin, who was on the lookout for a home in Britain. Only being resident at Paxton for short periods, Ninian and his wife Penelope decorated and furnished the unfinished house in the latest style, leaving many of the decisions to their designer-decorators, Robert Adam and Thomas Chippendale.

Ninian was a plantation owner and enslaver in the Caribbean. He owned Waltham plantation on the north-west coast of Grenada and had shared ownership of Paraclete estate (near the centre of the east coast) where he grew sugar, cocoa, and coffee using enslaved Africans. He also used enslaved African people to grow cotton on the island of Mustique for a number of years. By late 1792, Ninian Home had risen to become Governor of Grenada on behalf of the British Crown, but in 1795 he and his friend Alexander Campbell were captured with other British planters and sailors by freedom fighters inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution and 49 of the captives were killed including Ninian and Alexander. Fédon’s Uprising against British rule led to the deaths of 7000 enslaved people.

George Home of Wedderburn (1735-1820)

Paxton House then passed to Ninian’s brother George who, after inheriting Patrick’s fortune and collections following his death in 1808, found time to catalogue the collections of paintings, furniture and books. Patrick had amassed around 150 mainly Old Masters and contemporary paintings in his collection, 4000 books and other items, such as the marble and lava specimen table tops which are now supported by frames made by William Trotter. George and his ward, Nancy Stephens, felt they needed more space to show off this collection and commissioned a new wing including the Picture Gallery and Library. Many of the paintings were sold in 1923 to pay death duties, but the core of the collection is now beautifully enhanced by works loaned from the National Galleries of Scotland which hang in the Picture Gallery.

Today, the rooms at Paxton are arranged according to the inventory of 1820, taken after George’s death.

The Victorian Years to Today

Through the 19^th century, Paxton House passed through various Home cousins who distinguished themselves in various ways, as parliamentarians, in the army, in the navy and as the Founder of the Scottish Meteorological Society. In 1988, the house, most of the contents and grounds were given to a charitable trust by John Home Robertson, MP for Berwickshire until 2001 and MSP for East Lothian until 2007. The establishment of the charity was helped by funds from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. The Paxton Trust cares for the house, collections and grounds in perpetuity for everyone to enjoy.

The Paxton Trust