The gateway and walls were built by the Smiths of Darnick, the same builders who built the second porton of the house.

The screen forming the east side is copied born the cloisters at Melrose Abbey. In the south wall are five medallions from the old Cross of Edinburgh. When the Cross was pulled down in 1756 they were built into Deanhaugh House, Edinburgh, later owned by Sir Henry Raeburn, who, in 1822, presented them to Sir Walter.

In the same wall are, alternatively with the medallions, six rectangular stones from the Roman Camp at Old Penrith (Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Apollo and Mars; and a fragment of a legionary inscription of the 22nd Legion).

In Sir Walter's day there was a pergola of roses along this wall, but in the 1860s. Mr. Hope-Scott planted the present yew hedge.

To the right of the Entrance Porch is a louping-on stane or mounting block in the form of a stone effigy of Maida, Sir Walter's deerhound. It was sculptured Tom life by John Smith in 1824 and Maida, who died in the same year, lies buried beneath it. Round the plinth is a Latin inscription which Sir Walter said might be Englished thus:

Beneath the sculptured form which late you wore, Sleep soundly, Maida, at your master's door.

In the centre of the Court stands a fountain, the bowl of which was once part of the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh and in 1660 ran wine for the populace at the Restoration of Charles II.

Set into the upper wall of the house (to the left of the Porch) is the condemned criminals door from the old tolbooth of Edinburgh pulled down in 1817. (This door led out on to a flat roof containing the scaffold - hence the present position of the door.)