From being debatable lands between emerging Scotland and Northumberland during the Dark Ages, Malcolm I’s victory at Carham in 1018 secured Lothian as part of Scotland.

Soon afterwards the ex-Northumbrian Gospatric was given the strategic lands around Dunbar (including Stenton and Whittingehame) as Earl and the Earl of Fife those around the terminus of his ferry at North Berwick.

Raised in the English court of Henry I, David I spoke French and learned Norman ways. When he became King of Scotland in 1128 he brought friends: younger sons of Norman families to settle around Edinburgh as security for his reign.

Among these the De Vaux were given lands of Eilbotle, the Gourlays lands around Traprain and Secker de Sey the lands of Seton and Winton. All three built suitable castles; two are the now-ruined castles of Dirleton and Hailes. But the third – Seton Castle – was in poor repair and destroyed when the Earl of Wemyss bought the estates in 1798.

Although ancient, the most recent of the major medieval families to be established in the area were the Red Douglases who, after the Wars of Independence, became Earls of Angus and were awarded the lands once held by the Earls of Fife. It was around that time that the Lauders received Bass Rock and lands around Tyninghame from the Bishopric of St Andrews.

De Vaux gave way to Haliburtons at Dirleton as Gourlay did to Hepburn at Hailes. The latter expanded the lands to include Waughton. But wars around the Reformation changed much for older families. The Lauders fell on hard times – the Bass going first to the Crown and then to the Dalrymples.

The new legal profession not only created new elites but revealed opportunity when noble families fell into difficulties. The Dalrymples bought out Douglas holdings around North Berwick, the new Earl of Haddington the Tyninghame Estate, greatly expanded Tyninghame House and bodily moving the village a mile away to the west.

The Nisbets bought Dirleton, moving themselves rather than the village to Archerfield House, and the Kinlochs built Gilmerton House, again moving the village to the present Athelstaneford. The Earl of Wemyss’ purchase of the Seton estate and the building of Gosford House also came around 1800.

The demise of both the Nisbets and Hepburns in the 20th century and the acquisition of Lennoxlove and Archerfield by the Duke of Hamilton tweaked an otherwise stable pattern on land ownership that has endured down the centuries.