Walkerburn () is a small village in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland, on the A72 about from Peebles and from Galashiels.
It was founded in 1854 to house the workers for the tweed mills owned by the Ballantyne family. It is the home of the Ballantyne Memorial Institute.
The village also unusually houses a small number of science-based industries and many successful small enterprises. It boasts Scotland's first hydro electric scheme.
Walkerburn has a population of around 740.
History Early history There is evidence of settlers around the Walker Burn as far back as the Bronze Age because burnt mounds have been identified at Glenmead and on the Plora Burn to the south of the village. The mounds are evidence that people once heated stones in these areas that were then used to heat water.
The remains of an Iron Age Hill Fort can be seen on Bold Rig and it is easy to see why this spot was picked for a defensive position with its excellent views over the valley to the north. This fort measured approx 220 ft by around 140 ft.
Although the Romans conquered Tweeddale, they do not appear to have settled it and there are no great Roman roads or buildings in the area. Vestiges of Roman camps exist near Lyne Church, west of Peebles, and at Innerleithen. On Tower Knowe there are the remains of what is thought to be the Roman road that led from Newstead to Peebles. This would tie in with the Roman Camp outside Innerleithen and there might be some connection with the terraces on Purvis Hill. Maybe there was a settlement of Romanised Britons around the Walker Burn or at least local people who settled and farmed perhaps to feed the legionaries in the camp at Innerleithen. The terraces themselves are something of a mystery. It is not certain whether they were cultivation terraces or built as a form of theatre seating up the hillside. There has never been an excavation in this area so little is known about the people who built the terraces, whether from Roman times or Anglo Saxons. Towards Galashiels, at Kill Brae, there are more terraces and signs of an old settlement.
During the 9th century, the Britons of Tweeddale, in common with those of Strathclyde, felt severe pressures from the Irish Scots on the west, and the Saxons on the east. After the kingdom of Cambria was overthrown by the Scottish king in 974, many Irish Scots settled in this area followed by settlers from Northumbria as the Saxons gained ascendancy.
To the north of the village, past the steading of the ‘new’ Caberston Farm lies the ruined cottage at Priesthope. Old records suggest that there was a substantial farm in this area but where the name came from is still a mystery. Hollewell, which became Holylee, the estate and house to the east of the village, is another name which suggests a religious connection, perhaps to a holy well. This name appears in records back to 1455 and refers to land reserved for the King's sport. James IV leased the land for £26 per year from the Crichton family and may have had the first house built, probably further up hill than the current house.
The remains of a peel house can still be seen on the hill above the Tweed at Elibank. This tower would have signalled to one at Holylee, which in turn would signal to Scrogbank, to Caberston, to Bold and to Purvis Hill before the signal went on to a similar chain at Innerleithen.
Elibank was the manor of the Murray family, of whom Sir Walter Scott was a descendant. The manor is mentioned in a poem by the Border poet James Hogg called the ‘Fray of Elibank’. Elibank is known for the Elibank forest field archery course which attracts archers from all over the world.
Before the woollen industry expanded in this area during the 1800s the pattern of settlement was that of small farms belonging to large estates, often with absentee landlords. Market gardens supplying the rapidly growing city of Edinburgh abounded and both sheep and cattle farming were profitable.
Middle Ages to Great War All through the Middle Ages the production of cloth was a cottage industry in the Tweed valley. The crofter-weaver ran his own sheep, usually on common land, the whole community helped with shearing, the women carded and span the wool and the weaver himself warped and mounted his web and wove it in his handloom. The cloth was afterwards washed and ‘waulked’ or milled and beaten in a burn. Such dyes as were used came from local plants but for the most part the wool was undyed.
Along the banks of the Tweed, especially where burns ran down the hillsides, small groups of these crofter-weavers would be established and it may be that the name ‘Walker Burn’ simply referred to the burn where weavers ‘waulked’ the wool.
The Ballantyne family first appears as landowners and yeoman farmers of Bellenden Farm on the upper Ale Water with the name spelt Bellendaine, then Ballantin and eventually Ballantyne. Later, in 1666, a small colony of weavers in the village of Galashiels had as a member one William Ballantin and in 1672 the birth of his son Walter is the first entry in the baptism record of Galashiels Parish Church. Eventually, a descendant of William and Walter, Henry Ballantyne (1802-1865) rose to prominence as one of the most skillful developers of Tweed cloth. In 1846/7, looking around for a site for a new mill, Henry saw the possibilities of the site where the Walker Burn ran into the Tweed. He entered into negotiations with Thomas Horsburgh to buy a site around the Walker Burn on which to establish a mill to take advantage of a bend on the nearby River Tweed which would make it easy to build a mill lade taking water into the mill controlled by two sluice gates. The only buildings in the area on that side of the Tweed were Caberston farm and steading and 4 farm cottages. On the south side of the Tweed, West Bold Farm was much older and in other ownership – there was no bridge at this point.
Work began on the mill and Frederick Thomas Pilkington was retained to design and build villas for the Ballantyne family and 115 houses for mill workers who initially came mainly from Galashiels, walking to and from work – and the working day was typically 14 hours. The blocks of flats at Plora Terrace were the first workers’ home to be built. In 1854 the village was christened Walkerburn after the Waulker Burn which runs from the hills above Priesthope into the Tweed.
The first child was born in the new village in 1856 and the first shops opened in 1858.
Gradually, more and more workers’ houses were built and by 1861 there were enough children to support an elementary school. The arrival of the railway and the opening of a Post Office in 1866 put Walkerburn firmly on the Peeblesshire map as an expanding, energetic mill village. The railway closed in 1962 but the Post Office is still in the original building.
The Parish Church, built in 1875, was followed by a Methodist Chapel and then a Congregational Church in 1890, both now private houses. The Church of Scotland was built in 1883 and the Rugby Club founded in 1884, as the 25th member of the Scottish Rugby Union. And in 1877 the Good Templar Movement built the Public Hall which subsequently passed into community ownership in 1908. The Hall is now maintained as a charitable trust. A French style ‘pissoir’ was installed as a public toilet on the A72 beside the bridge over the Walker Burn. It is no longer in use.
By 1878, when the first gas street lamps were installed, the population of the village was 1028, growing to 1500 by the turn of the century, and in 1882 the village got its own police station at the foot of Hall Street, which remained in use until a new police house was built opposite the mill gates. Both it and the original police station remain in use, though not by the police. In December 1883 there was the first meeting of the Walkerburn Co-operative Society, which played an active role in village retailing until it merged with the Innerleithen Society in 1966 and then with the Borders Society in 1969.
There is still a co-operative store in Innerleithen but the Walkerburn store closed in 1987. Until the 1960s, in addition to the Post Office, Walkerburn had a grocery store, a butcher, baker and greengrocer, a chemist, a jeweler, a tailor, a haberdasher, a general clothes shop and a knitwear and dressmaking shop, two fish and chip shops, two hairdressers, a library, a boot repair shop, several sweetie shops, and numerous small shops run in people's front rooms.
The first foot bridge was built across the Tweed, where the bridge is today, in 1867. Until that time, passengers for the new station had to be ferried across for a year. This was replaced by a girder bridge in 1914. This new bridge was something of a revolution in Walkerburn as it carried not only foot passengers but also vehicles. So a journey with a horse and cart or motor vehicle did not have to go via Innerleithen (where there was a bridge) or over the Bold Ford, which was sometimes impassable due to flooding of the Tweed.
In 1904 David Ballantyne built the Henry Ballantyne Memorial Institute in memory of his father. The Institute was built in red Dumfriesshire sandstone, next to the Tweed Bridge, to provide education and entertainment for mill workers and their families. The Institute was endowed with £32,000 and its management handed over to a committee of local men. It remained in the trust of the Ballantyne family until 2000 when it was donated to the village. Known to villagers as the ‘HB Club’, it is still in existence providing a bar and entertainment for the community.
By the outbreak of The Great War, the population of the village had risen to 1279 and two Ballantyne mills were in operation. Scotch Tweed had established itself worldwide.
1914-1918, The Great War, Tartan, Khaki and Flannel The young men joined the Army, the old men and women ran the mill producing 10,000 yards of tartan per week plus khaki flannel for the Army. Walkerburn had the highest casualty rate as a percentage of its population of any settlement in Scotland but the mill owners and the community looked after the many widows and children. Post war, the textile trade boomed and in 1920 a hostel was built on Park Avenue to house female workers recruited from outside the village. This is now single persons’ flats.
In 1920 the War Memorial was built by public subscription. A full sized figure was planned but lack of funds led to a cut down figure being sculpted. In August 1998 the statue was stolen, perhaps to order, and another fund raising effort was made to replace it. Enough money was raised for a full size figure, produced by Beltane Studios in Peebles, which was installed in at a service on 20 September 1999, held in heavy rain in the presence of the Princess Royal. In 2000 two policemen spotted the old statue beside a cut in the perimeter fence at Edinburgh Airport. After much discussion, the old statue was placed alongside the Mill bell in a small garden opposite the site of the main mill buildings on the A72.
1920-1921, The Hydro Electric Scheme
Initially the mill lade produced enough power for the mills but as production expanded more cheap energy was needed. In 1920 Messrs Boving & Co of London were asked to examine the possibility of setting up a better system of using water power from the Tweed to supply the mills.
The first step was to make the lade more effective, and this was done by creating a greater and deeper fall, but this wasn't enough. Also, at night, the lade system produced power which was wasted. The revolutionary solution was to build a huge reservoir in the hills and to use the surplus power to pump water from the Tweed up to the reservoir. The next stage was to bring the water back down to drive a Pelton turbine to produce more power.