Records as early as 1381 reveal that the mansion and lands of Bruntsfield then belonged to Richard Browne. Thereafter they passed to the Lauder family, who retained them for the next two hundred years, except for a brief period when the family was out of royal favour.

In May, 1544 the original house was destroyed in the ravages of ‘The Rough Wooing’ – the English attempt to force a marriage between Mary, Queen of Scots and Prince Edward of England. The house was rebuilt in the latter half of the sixteenth century by the Lauders of Haltoun.

In 1603 the house and lands passed into the hands of John Fairlie and his wife, Elizabeth Westoun, whose initials appear over the windows and who, in 1605, added the east wing of the house.

In 1695 a descendant of John Fairlie sold the house to the first of its Warrender family owners and it was a later member of this family – Sir George Warrender, M.P. – who made the most interesting contribution to the history of the house. Noticing that the number of windows exceeded the number of rooms by one, he deduced the existence of a secret chamber, whose entrance was duly discovered behind an arras. The floor was blood-stained, ashes were in the grate and a skeleton was later found, buried beneath the window. This chamber became known as the Ghost Room and from it arose the legend of the Green Lady who is said to haunt the upper floors of the house to this day.

Further additions were made to the house in the nineteenth century. These have now been removed to reveal the house as it stood for over three hundred years. The school buildings have been grouped round Bruntsfield House and most of the original trees have been preserved, giving the school a distinctive character rarely found in modern schools.