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WORKING THE LAND AND Sixty members of the Old Gala Club gathered in the Upper Volunteer Hall to hear Mr Walter Elliot talk on "Working the Land and Harvesting the Forest". Walter said that he was the last of seven generations of Elliots who had worked the land at the top of the Ettrick valley. Before that they had been cattle importers from England! He himself worked for 33 years as a wood cutter and fencer until he cracked his skull after which he spent four years with the Museum Service, 14 years as Chairman of the Trimontium Trust, and engaged in many other activities like writing, lecturing and broadcasting. Field Walking is Walter’s speciality. Many people have accompanied him on his expeditions. They would come back with a small piece of Roman clay pipe and Walter would return with a whole pocketful of finds. Walter’s motto is "Look at the marks on the ground. If the scientific books don’t agree believe the ground". The first habitation in the Borders was by the Hunter-Gatherers of the Mesolithic Age about 10,000 years ago. They were flint users or in the Borders chert users due to a lack of local flint. They used microliths to tip their arrows, skin their animals and make holes in skins to sew them together for clothing. There was a big settlement at the Rink site in the fields round the "new" bridge over the Tweed between Galashiels and Selkirk where many of these have been found. Next came the Neolithic followed by the Bronze Age (2000-500 BC) when bronze axes were used and there were 300+ round houses on the top of Eildon Hill North. Walter is confident that this 800BC site was not a permanent settlement since there is no water supply on the hill but was used by local tribes as gathering place for religious festivals such as Midsummer. Being on top of a hill it had the advantage that everyone could see where it was when all the valleys were thickly forested and boggy and there were no roads or signposts. One could say that it was the first conference centre in Scotland. About 500 BC people came from the south into hostile country so they built many hill forts which were used for 200 hundred years when there must have evolved a strong chief who stopped the fighting and the hill forts fell into disuse. This was a time of only wooden palisades just to keep the livestock in. When the Romans came in 79 AD the Borders was fairly well populated and the land well used. They did not just build forts and kill a few natives but settled the whole area. A camp of 705 cavalry and 1000 horses at would require 30 tonnes of supplies a day. The Roman roads such as Dere Street were for marching quickly from place to place (A Rapid Response Force is not a new idea!) not for commerce and supplies. These were brought by sea to Berwick and in very shallow draft punts up the Tweed. From 500 to 750 AD the Angles emigrated from Germany pushing their way up the Yarrow and Ettrick valleys. They spoke early German, which became Scots displacing the folk who were already there who spoke Welsh. The Angles brought the heavy "Scots" plough with them to be drawn by oxen and requiring three men, one to lead the oxen, one to prod them with a stick and one to guide the plough which was made of oak reinforced with chert stones to stop the edge wearing away too quickly. This really only dug furrows in the ground. The plough had to be followed by boys and women to turn the earth over and make a tilth. Long furrows can still be picked out from the air at Midlam, Lauder and Selkirk all of which were Anglo settlements. From 12th to 16th century the very large numbers of
sheep belonging to the abbeys ruined the forest by eating all the shoots of the
saplings so that the landscape became only mature trees. This was good for a
while as the livestock could graze between the trees but as the old trees died
off no woodland was left. In 1750 James Small invented the iron plough that
actually turned the soil over. It was much lighter and could be drawn by one
horse and guided by one man. As farming became more efficient labour was
attracted to the towns to find employment. This trend was given a huge boost
after WW2 with the tractor replacing the horse as it gave much more power and
did not need feeding at the weekend so even fewer people work the land these
days having swapped the peace and fulfilment of the countryside for the stress
and nervous breakdowns of the city. |
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