£10m target to save Scott's home

The historic home of Sir Walter Scott in the Borders has been set a £10m target in order to survive. Failure to raise the sum could see Abbotsford House - near Melrose - close to visitors within four to five years.

Executors of the estate of Dame Jean Maxwell-Scott, the National Trust and Faculty of Advocates, have drawn up a strategy to raise the funds.

Half the money would be used to improve facilities, with the rest put in an endowment fund to cover trading losses.

Abbotsford administrator Jacquie Wright said the loss of the house - where Scott wrote the Waverley novels - would hit the area hard.