When Andrew Chalmers entered Gideon Shaw's apprenticeship in 1683, he stepped into more than a bookseller's shop. Shaw's marriage into the prominent Cunninghame merchant family placed his household within an established network of Edinburgh merchants, guild brethren, and professional associates.

Andrew's apprenticeship therefore introduced him to one of the commercial and intellectual circles that helped define late seventeenth-century Edinburgh.

They belonged to a cadet branch of the powerful Johnstones of Annandale, a family whose influence stretched across Dumfriesshire for centuries. Corheid itself lay only a short distance from Breconside and formed part of a network of Johnstone properties that included Lochhouse and neighboring estates.

By the middle of the seventeenth century, James Johnstone the younger of Corheid had married Janet Douglas, linking the Border Johnstones with one of Scotland's most distinguished noble families. Their children inherited far more than land.

They inherited a world shaped by clan loyalty, legal tradition, and generations of service to the Scottish Crown.

Historic Environment Scotland identifies the central structure as the original late sixteenth-century tower, although later owners altered it extensively. During the eighteenth century a semi-octagonal stair tower was added, Victorian owners inserted larger windows and domestic wings, and the roofline was lowered from its original height. Even so, the north and east walls preserve much of the original tower built by the Johnstones over four centuries ago.