Please
double click on the image to bring up a larger version
INNERLEITHEN – A HISTORY
In 1846 the building
of Dobson’s Mill (later Leithen Mills) on the west bank of Leithen
Water about 300 metres north of the River Tweed began the transformation
of Innerleithen from a sedate village to a busy textile manufacturing
town. Also that year George Roberts & Son built St. Ronan’s
Mill a mile upstream, which produced yarn to be spun in Selkirk. This
was fitted out with the latest carding and spinning machinery driven
by an enormous water-wheel 26 feet in diameter and 9 feet across. The
mill was later enlarged by Becket & Robertson who conducted a successful
spinning business there.
Innerleithen had
already been equipped with one of the earliest custom-built woollen
mills in the Borders. In 1788 the philanthropist Alexander Brodie, originally
a blacksmith from Traquair, paid £3000 for the construction of
Caerlee Mill, a well lit T-plan building of four flats still in use
today, to provide employment for local people. Proper industrialisation,
however, did not arrive until 1839 when Robert Gill bought, enlarged
and added steam power to the original works, thus enabling around 100
people to be employed.
Power and water
for washing for all three mills were channelled via the mile and half
long mill lade running from the weir by the present day golf course
and parallel to Leithen Water, flowing into the Tweed a few yards upstream
from the confluence of this river and its tributary. Before the advent
of steam and electrical power two farms, two sawmills, a meal mill,
an engineering works and a printing works also used the swift flowing
water from the lade to drive their water-wheels. Nearly all traces of
these have disappeared but today Robert Smail’s Printing Works,
now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland, remains almost unchanged
from its heyday in the early twentieth century. A replica water-wheel
can be seen on the premises.
Innerleithen
From West - 1950's
|
Following the Turnpike
Acts of the eighteenth century Innerleithen had good road communication
with Peebles and Galashiels since 1775. Charges were levied for the
upkeep of turnpike roads and a former Toll House is still used as a
residence in Innerleithen. It was the coming of the railway in the 1860s,
however, that added greatly to the ease of travel and movement of goods
and materials. In 1871 George, Henry and James Ballantyne, sons of Henry
Ballantyne, who had founded the woollen manufacturing village of Walkerburn
in the 1850s, built Innerleithen’s largest mill, Waverley Mill,
beside the railway sidings, utilising artesian water for washing and
steam for power. The mills processed raw wool – cleaning, carding,
spinning and weaving – to produce woven material for garments,
uniforms and blankets.
During the early
1900s Caerlee Mill in particular began to diversify into the production
of cashmere goods, initially hosiery and underwear, using yarn spun
in Leithen Mills. Innerleithen’s mills survived the vicissitudes
of the markets well into the twentieth century, thriving particularly
on government orders during both world wars. After a series of mergers
in the 1960s and stiff overseas competition in the 1970s woollen manufacture
in Innerleithen suffered a gradual but relentless decline. Today the
town’s industrial base has all but disappeared but, along with
Hawick, Innerleithen continues to be the world leader in the manufacture
of high quality cashmere garments.
It is quite probable
that the Innerleithen area has been a site of human habitation for over
two thousand years. Evidence exists of Iron Age settlements on Pirn
Hill and Caerlee Hill. A temporary Roman military camp on low ground
near the River Tweed, the outline of which can be identified on aerial
photographs, could be contemporaneous with the fort at Lyne and Agricola’s
campaign of 80AD. A fragment of a Celtic cross found in the locality
in the nineteenth century suggests that a Christian community lived
here, possibly from the Roman era onwards, but it was 1189 before the
name of Innerleithen appeared on a written document.
Then, the surrounding
land – Hornehuntersland – was a royal game preserve. In
a hunting accident the son of Malcolm IV was drowned at the confluence
of Leithen Water and the Tweed. In recognition of the kindness of the
local inhabitants in recovering and laying out the body the king decreed
that the church at the Kirklands, gifted to the monks of Kelso, would
thereafter be a sanctuary. “Lythe”, “Innerlythe K”
and “R Lithen” are shown on Timothy Pont’s map of
Tweeddale surveyed in the 1590s, but it was the 1790s before a description
of the village was recorded in the First Statistical Account of Scotland.
At that time the population of 388 subsisted mainly on crofting, weaving
and the rearing of sheep.
From this hamlet
Innerleithen grew to a small industrial town of just over 2000 population
by the onset of the twentieth century, by which time the community was
self sufficient in shops and services. Coal gas was locally produced
from 1848 and twenty years later Innerleithen became a Burgh following
the 1862 Act. Six churches served the pastoral needs of the town, including
the Pilkington designed Parish Church in Leithen Road, built in 1868.
Innerleithen builder and mason Robert Mathison, who discovered the fragment
of Celtic cross (known as the “Runic Cross”) when he demolished
the former Parish Church at the Kirklands, was responsible for the construction
of the Congregational Chapel in Peebles Road and the United Presbyterian
Church in Pirn Road.
St. John’s
Free Church in Horsbrugh Terrace (now completely demolished), St. James’
Roman Catholic Church in the High Street (these also built by Mathison)
and St. Andrews Episcopalian Church in Church Street, the last to be
built in 1904, were the other main centres of worship in the town. The
public water supply came on line in 1877 and in 1919 the present Council
Chambers were gifted to the town. The adjacent Memorial Hall was built
in 1922 to commemorate those who served in the Great War, their names
being etched on brass plates inside the auditorium. The names of those
who fell in the Second World War are recorded on the memorial in the
unique garden modelled on the nearby Leithen Valley.
In May 1787 the
poet Robert Burns stayed overnight in the village, noting in his journal
– “Came to Inverleithen, a famous Spa . . .” The visit
is commemorated on a marble tablet mounted on the wall of 12 High Street.
As a boy in the company of his mother and sister, Sir Walter Scott had
also visited the mineral springs, reputed to cure a variety of minor
ailments. When, in the mid-1820s, Innerleithen was identified as the
location of the Scott novel St. Ronan’s Well (1823), the Earl
of Traquair built a pavilion on the lower slopes of Lee Pen at “St.
Ronan’s Wells”. Boarding houses in the village to cater
for the increasing number of visitors (over 1400 in one year) who came
to Innerleithen for the “season” to relax and “take
the waters” soon followed. St. Ronan’s Wells was gifted
to the Burgh in the 1960s and continues to be a popular visitor attraction
administered by Tweeddale Museums.
Many of the visitors
were active young men and Scott’s friend, writer James Hogg, the
Ettrick Shepherd, was instrumental in founding the St. Ronan’s
Border Club which organised the first St. Ronan’s Border Games
in 1827, the oldest sports meeting in Scotland and still held annually
to this day. Hogg also had the distinction of succeeding Burns as Poet
Laureate of Lodge Canongate Kilwinning at a specially convened gathering
of Masons in Innerleithen. In 1901, George Hope Tait adapted the legend
of the Celtic monk St. Ronan and his victory in combat over the Devil,
as related in Scott’s novel St. Ronan’s Well, as the basis
of the Cleikum Ceremonies, a pageant performed by local schoolchildren.
Together with “The Games”, these ceremonies are now the
highlight of the town’s annual Borders festival week.
A strong community
spirit seems always to have existed in Innerleithen as evidenced by
the many clubs and organisations that have been sustained for over 100
years. The Carnegie Library in Buccleuch Street was opened in 1905,
the Union Club in Peebles Road, originally a political meeting place
and now a social club, was built in 1898 and the Freemasons Lodge St.
Ronan’s No. 856 was founded in 1897. St. Ronan’s Silver
Band started up in 1810 and has played in the New Year through the streets
of the town for over 100 years. The Horticultural Society can trace
its origins to before 1880 and Innerleithen and District Amateur Operatic
Society started life as a Choral Society in 1908. On the sporting front
St. Ronan’s Bowling Club (1904) is of this vintage, as is the
Golf Club (1886) and the Vale of Leithen Football Club (1891).
St
Ronan's Well - c 1910
|
Today fewer than
200 of Innerleithen’s population of 2,800 work in the textile
industry. Some employment is provided by local small businesses but
it is Borders Health Board, Scottish Borders Council, and out-of-town
supermarkets and chain stores who have replaced the mills as the major
employers. Many also commute daily to Edinburgh and the central belt.
The town continues to expand and thrive. Tourism, abetted by interest
in mountain biking, hill walking, golf, fishing, heritage and festivals,
is gradually making an impact on the local economy. Innerleithen enjoyed
a fine reputation as a visitor destination in the early nineteenth century
when St. Ronan’s Wells and the Border Games flourished. Let’s
hope history is in the process of repeating itself.
Ted McKie
Innerleithen
September 2006
