Craigcrook Castle, a picturesque old mansion in Cramond parish, Edinburghshire, nestling at the foot of the north-eastern slope of Corstorphine Hill, 1 mile W of Craigleith station, and 3¼ miles W of Edinburgh. Built probably in the 16th century by one of the Adamsons, it was sold in 1659 to John Mein, in 1670 to John Hall, in 1682 to Walter Pringle, and in 1698 to John Strachan, who, dying about 1719, bequeathed for charitable uses all his property-334 acres, valued now at £1259 per annum. From early in this century till 1814 it was the residence of the publisher, Archibald Constable (1775-1827), whose son and biographer, Thomas (1812-81), was born here, and who in 1815 was succeeded by the celebrated critic and lawyer, Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850). The latter describes it as 'an old narrow high house, 18 feet wide and 50 long, with irregular projections of all sorts, three little staircases, turrets, a large round tower at one end, and an old garden (or rather two, one within the other), stuck close on one side of the house, and surrounded with massive and aged walls, 15 feet high. ' He straightway set about the task of reformation; and during the thirty-five summers that he passed at Craigcrook, by extending and remodelling the gardens (a prototype of those of ' Tully-Veolan ' in Scott's Waverley), and by additions to the house in 1835 and earlier, he made it at last a lovely and most delightful spot. See Cockburn's Life of Lord Jeffrey (2 vols., Edinb. 1852).

(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)