AN HISTORIC 17th-century barracks used by Government troops during the 1745 Jacobite rebellion has gone on sale – after nearly a century of being owned by one family.

Barracks House, on Links Road, Port Seton, provided living quarters for General Johnnie Cope’s soldiers during the Battle of Prestonpans and is thought to date back to the early 1600s.

Originally used as a lookout station for merchants, it was used to house the militia of the Earl of Swinton to protect his coalfields before General Cope’s men moved in.

It has also been a working dairy and farmhouse.

Owner Isobel Pensom said her family had lived in the property since the early 1900s and she herself had lived in the family home on and off since 1952, when she was a baby and her parents moved into the downstairs house on the property.

Her great grandfather bought the house and land decades earlier and family lived in the upper part of the property from that date.

It has had, at one time or another, tennis courts, a small shop and a holiday cottage operating there over the years.

Isobel said: “My great grandfather seems to have had a dairy and some fields in Tranent and I think he also had an early haulage or cartering business. The property seems to have been destined for his daughter Mary and her husband as a home and business venture.

“Mary’s husband died in the early 1950s and I have happy but vague memories of him. I have no memory of the tennis courts but do remember the shop and the fields around it which later became the bank building and Chinese restaurant.

“Mary lived in the home until her death in 1973. Up until the early 1960s she let rooms to holiday makers and, during the summer, part of the back garden had campers who used what is now our downstairs family room as a wash house. That I do remember.

“I also remember performing horses tethered in the garden one year when the circus was in town.”

When Isobel’s great aunt Mary died, her parents moved upstairs and sold the downstairs house. Isobel, her husband and daughter moved in with Isobel’s mother when her father died in 1990 and the family have lived there ever since.

Now the family have decided to sell the three-bedroom upper flat, which is on the market for £210,000 with Balfour and Manson and advertised through espc.com Caroline Young, spokeswoman for ESPC, said that the property offered a unique opportunity to aquire a home with a rich history.

She said: “As well as a fascinating history, Barracks House is only a short stroll to the harbour, promenade and beach of Port Seton, and would make a fantastic family home.

“This unique property, rarely available, would be ideal for those who enjoy a quieter pace of life and would like to live in a home with such a rich history.”