Burghs, Towns and Villages

Extracts from "Walter's Tales of the Borders", Walter Elliot 1996. With thanks to the author.

Naturally Grown Towns and Villages

There are two theories why a community grew up into a village or town. The first was the security of being near a castle and the second was to be near a market where trading could take place. In the Borders either of these theories could be valid. But did people live near a castle for security or for to provide services and thus make money by doing so? Selkirk and Peebles were near the king's castle which was the administrative centre of the shire and so required back-up services. Kelso and Melrose grew beside and abbey. Jedburgh had both an abbey and a castle. Coldstream and Eccles had a priory and a nunnery respectively. These grew from being providers of services whether it be manpower or goods. Then there were the needs of the travelling public - Yethom and Lauder were beside ancient roads; Birgham at the bridge; St Boswells at a crossroads. The coming of the railway made Galashiels and Hawick the biggest towns in the region. And there were the places which capitalised on their natural resources. Galashiels used the fast-running Gala Water to provide water-power from an early date. Often a new town grew beside the old burgh. Greenlaw had an old and new town; Selkirk, had three, a King's Selkirk, an Abbot's Selkirk and an Auld Toun o Selkirk.

The Planned Villages

The end of the eighteenth century was the time of the Clearances in Scotland. These occurred in the Borders as well as the more publicised Highland ones. The difference lay in the Border landlords. Henry, the third Duke of Buccleuch, wanted to clear the small farms, crofts and cottars from his marginal lands, where the people had been scraping a very miserable living. On the cleared land, he wished to establish the large sheep farms which were more profitable but less labour intensive.

Unlike the Highland landowners who dumped their clansmen on the nearest seashore, Duke Henry took positive steps to ensure the survival of his former tenants. In several places on his estates, he had planned villages laid out with a 99 year lease for those who built a house within a village plot and the entitlement of two or four acres nearby. The land was feued or leased out. His reasoning was that it preserved the population of the area, giving them enough ground to cultivate and encouraged them to practice local trades. Yarrowfeus is one such village with small holdings whose tenants were also dykers, smiths and joiners; Ettrickbrigend was another. This preserved the rural economy, with the added benefit to the estate that the ground rental was worth more.

Copshawholm, or Newcastleton to give it its new name, was the most ambitious of the Duke's plans. It was laid out as a weavers' village with some 260 building plots, 311 small fields measuring 775 acres and a further 700 acres of hill grazing for the kye. The right to cast peat in a moss a mile and a half away was given to the villagers. At the time, wool, flax and cotton were woven on handlooms so instead of sending the raw materials to Leeds, Huddersfield or Hawick, the promotion of home industry would give employment to many and save expensive carriage.

The village was founded on the 4th March 1793 and at least two houses were completed in that year; by 1800, 220 of the plots had been taken up. The village became a market town on the Lamb Fair day. This fell on the Friday before the second Wednesday of September and as many as 15000 lambs would be sold there. Ewes and lambs were sold on the Thursday before the second Tuesday in October and cattle and small lambs on the third Friday of November.

In 1825 there were 6 publicans, 4 joiners, 4 tailors, 4 shoemakers, 3 masons, 3 spirit dealers, 2 grocers and 1 each of flesher, clockmaker, surgeon, schoolmaster, blacksmith, cooper, baker and slater. A new lifeline was opened when the first train steamed into the valley on the 1st of July 1862. This Waverley line between Carlisle and Edinburgh was closed by British Rail in January 1969.

"Aye been" Villages

These are communities which for one reason or another have never progressed beyond village status. Most of these in the Borders are based on the Anglian pattern of field system and have their foundations in the period 550 to 750 AD when successive conquests gave the Anglo-Saxon invaders possession of the lower sections and more arable lands of the lower Tweed basin.

Midlem
Midlem is one of these "aye been" villages. There the Anglian field patterns can still be seen. In this pattern of land-holding, the householder owned his house and a large garden behind it. The land round the village was community property with each householder being allowed a number of fields to cultivate, the number depending on his status. The better-off husbandman had an allocation of 26 Scots acres of cultivatable land and an "oxgang" of 13 acres to graze his oxen, of which he had two. The poorer cottar was allowed one to ten acres to cultivate but had no oxgang. The fields were not enclosed or fenced and were cultivated on a two yearly basis, ie cultivated one year, fallow the next. They were not owned land but each strip had to be balloted for every year or three years. This led to a scattered land holding with no two fields together. A good draw could mean the difference between a full stomach or near starvation in the winter.

The Anglians had introduced a new method of tillage into the Borders. A team of oxen was used to drag the heavy oak plough which, like the land, was owned by the community. The oxen were contributed by the husbandmen who each owned two and the plough team was usually eight oxen. The result of this method of ploughing was a series of long narrow strip fields with a slight turn at the end. Until the demands of modern agriculture, this field system could be seen all around Midlem.

Abbey Possession
The first documentary evidence of Midlem village appears in the David I charter of 1119 AD, giving "the town of Middelham and of Bothendeanham (Bowden) and Aldona (Eildon) just as I possess them in lands, waters, woods and cleared ground" to the recently founded Selkirk Abbey. When the Abbot and monks of Selkirk Abbey moved to Kelso seven years later, the lands of Midlem went with them and remained in monastic hands for another 450 years. The Kelso Abbey rental roll of 1567 shows that in Mydlame, 37 men and 7 women were servants of the Abbey.

Somewhere around 1300, the Knights Templar acquired land on the ourskirts of the village. The Knights Templar, who had been banned in every country in Europe except Scotland, were reputed to have helped Robert the Bruce gain victory at the Battle of Bannockburn. There is no record of the lands near Midlem being given to them but the name Temple Hall commemorates their presence and what now appears on maps as Friarshaw is or used to be known to the locals as Jerusalem.

Post Reformation
After the Reformation, the Earl of Roxburghe managed to acquire much of the Kelso Abbey lands including those of Midlem. It took some seventy years before the feuars of Midlem were confirmed in their rights as "native and kindly tenants and proprietors" in the lands valued at £1055 Scots.

When in 1739 the minister of the joint parish of Bowden and Midlem died, the Duke of Roxburghe nominated a new minister for the post. A large number of parishioners objected to his choice claiming that "they were not satisfied with his sermons". The dissenters formed their own Secession Kirk in 1742 and built their own meeting house. They were obviously a lively bunch because in 1754, they were able to send the Rev. Andrew Arnot with a colleague to America to found the first Associate Presbytery there. In 1796 another minister from Midlem was sent to convert America, first in Kentucky and then in Ohio. The meeting house was closed down in 1938.

© 2000 Origins.net and Walter Elliot