Although the basic plan of Amisfield is a simple square with four stories and an attic, its richness in corbelling and turrets gives it a more romantic guise.

These upper features are built in warm, red ashlar in contrast to the rubble walls below.

From first floor to base of the tower there is a projecting stair-tower, round for two stories, corbelling out to the square turret above .

An oak door from the tower, fashioned by a local craftsman, is on display in Edinburgh at the National Museum of Scotland.

It depicts Samson tearing open the jaws of a lion, and with a shield bearing the Arms of Charteris and Herries and dated 1600.

Hubert Fenwick described Amisfield as “simply marvellous”, saying that it “displays almost every Jacobean baronial conceit”.