HISTORIC Darnick Tower has been put on the market with an asking price of offers over £730,000.

The Grade A listed building is being sold by its philanthropic New Zealand-based owner Fionna Heiton who, with her Nepalese-born partner Durga Aran, founded a charity to provide early years care in Nepal six years ago.

During that time, First Steps Himalaya has developed 48 classroom projects in 22 rural villages in a country devastated by an earthquake in April this year.

“Since the earthquake, the need for more work has become even more desperate and selling Darnick to help us achieve that is the right thing to do,” said Fionna who inherited the landmark peel tower when her distant relative Juliet Heiton died in 1979.

The Heiton family’s connection with Darnick can be traced all the way back to 1425 when the original tower was built on land granted by James I.

In 1545 the tower was partly destroyed by a retreating English army and rebuilt in 1566 when a new charter for the lands was granted to Andrew Heiton by Mary Queen of Scots.

Juliet Heiton, who was born in Perth in 1904, opened the sandstone tower to the public in 1927 and, for the past 55 years, it has been visited by the Melrosian and his supporters during the town’s festival week.

Fionna, who was 15 when she inherited the tower, which has been tenanted ever since, studied at the University of California and first visited Nepal in 1989 while working as a fundraiser for a UK charity.

She was teaching English there when she met Durga, who hails from a small village near Kathmandu.

Before the birth of their children – twins Rhona and Jamie – 12 years ago, the couple ran a tour company, but now devote all their energies to the charity they founded in 2009, dividing their time between Nepal and the family home in Nelson, New Zealand.

Darnick Tower is being presented for sale by Melrose-based estate agents Rettie & Co.

Set in an acre of ground which includes a walled garden and a stone-built coach house, the three-bedroomed tower has carved stonework and heraldic features, battlements, a wood paneled hall and an oak door reputedly from the Edinburgh palace of Mary of Guise, second wife of James V.