Sir Walter Scott was deeply involved in the design of the dining room at Abbotsford.

Although the ceiling ribs are now painted, it was originally grained to look as though it was carved from solid oak.

The Dining Room was one of Scott’s favourite rooms and he often spent time here looking out on the River Tweed. When he was taken ill in 1832, he asked that his bed be moved into the dining room so that he could continue to enjoy the view and it was in this room that he died on 21^st September. His son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart, recalled:

It was so quiet a day that the sound he best loved, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around his bed.”