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Yetholm Common

24/6/2015

2 Comments

 
In a much earlier blog post I discussed the apparent change in the line of the England-Scotland Border in the region of Yetholm Common. Here I will add some detail about the 'common land' lost from Scotland with the straightening out of the Border Line between Humbleton Swire and Whitelaw Nick, due east of the Stob Stones.
The Rev. John Baird of Yetholm recorded in 1841:
There are nearly 6000 acres in the parish: of which more than 2600 are arable, and more than 3000 remain in permanent pasture. In addition there is a common of 200 acres, called Yetholm Common, on which the inhabitants of Kirk Yetholm have the privilege of cutting turf and grazing their cattle: it is a wild moorish piece of ground, upon the borders, claimed I believe, by both kingdoms.
Picture
Border ridge north of Whitelaw Nick. Photo A Curtis (2012).
Rev. John Baird (1799-1861) was the minister at Kirk Yetholm. He was responsible for the new bridge, rebuilding the church and school. He also educated the Gypsies and brought them into the community. He was a founder member of the Berwickshire Naturalists Club.
A. Fullarton's The Topographical, Statistical, and Historical Gazetteer of Scotland: Vol. 2 (1848) says of Kirk Yetholm:
Yetholm common, a wild moor of considerable extent, on debateable land between Scotland and England, is claimed by villagers, and yielded to their possession for the cutting of their turf and the grazing of their cattle.
Elsewhere he states it rather doubtfully belongs to Scotland.
Probably from the same sources, John Marius Wilson (1859) in The land of Scott; or, Abbotsford, The Country of the Tweed and its Tributaries, and St. Mary's Loch describes:
A wild moor, called Yetholm Common, lying to the east, and comprising an area of several hundred acres, is claimed by the town's-people as an ultranational tract, neither in Scotland nor England, and used by them for the cutting turf and grazing cattle.
The Scottish Commons Directory records:
Yethom Common is situated just south west of Kirk Yetholm and was originally associated with the Gypsy encampment with which the village is associated. The common is well up in the hills and the position is marked by two large stones, known locally as the Stob-Stanes. Both villages in Yetholm (Town & Kirk) also feature large Greens.
The Stob Stones are said to be known locally as the Gypsy Stobs from the tradition that the kings of the Yetholm Gypsies were crowned there. In the photo below, the location of the Stob Stones, left of the straight wall that now marks the Border, is well inside Scotland.
Picture
The Border Line on Stob Rig. Photo A Curtis (2012).
Logan Mack (1924) in The Border Line suggested that the eastern part of the Border, from Berwick to where the Redden Burn joins the River Tweed just west of Carham was the earliest settled part. It had been claimed by the Scottish King, Malcolm II after the Battle of Carham in 1018.

Although 24 English knights considered the frontier fixed west from Berwick as far as White Law in 1246, its line was not agreed by the Scottish contingent. Some of the place names along the English Line such as 'Tres Karras' and 'Hoperiglawe' cannot be identified today.

It appears that the early surveyors used the hilltops and watershed (as the water falleth) to define its course through the Cheviot Hills. One such survey took place in 1522 and is described by Logan Mack in some detail. Again many of the placenames are different from those used today.

It was clear that in several places:
.... the towns of Scotland bounding upon England have eared, ploughed and sown much of all the ground that was wont to be their pastures, and pasture all their sheep and cattle in great numbers within the realm of England.
A map of The County of Nothumberland by Charles Smith published in 1801 (below) shows several areas of disputed territory along the Border Line including one east of Yetholm, stretching from the west side of Coldsmouth Hill south to Five Stones, whereever that may be.
Picture
Map of The County of Northumberland by Charles Smith (1801).
Logan Mack tells us that these disputed areas were still being shown on maps as late as 1837 although information was often copied from earlier authors. He says, that if it can be assumed that the dispute ended in 1838, the course of the Border Line between the two countries as it is now defined took only 820 years to settle!

UPDATE 17th December 2017
W Ford Robertson in his book Walks from Wooler (1926)  provides the following information (p.143-144) about the line of the England-Scotland Border in this location said to be from a cutting in the Westminster Gazette.

... a story of how borders are made. I heard it told by an old Scottish shepherd and afterwards found the original version by Mr George Bolam. He was inspecting boundary fences in the Cheviots and found a grave discrepency between one of them and the ordnance map. The shepherd explained:-

"Oh, aye, sir, yon's the lie o' the auld stones, nae doot, but it didna suit for the tae set o' yowes to hae a' the meat [good grass], an' the tither a' the bield [shelter]; sae Edam o' Helter Burn [Adam Calder of Halter Burn] an' me made a pack an' shiftit a wee; we gie a bit here an' tak a bit there, ye see, sae naebody's the waur on't, an' the sheep's muckle the better; forby ye'll obsairve the grand grip yon stretching-posts hae gotton."

UPDATE 12th June 2020
The following information was provided by Ned Pegler who got in touch with me recently having found more information about Yetholm Common in his local library. His comment appears below the blog article on the Stob Stanes. We believe that the author of the unpublished work, Yetholm: Materials for a History (2007) died a few years ago.  His Chapter 2 provides relevant information on the interesting history of Yetholm Common.

I remember looking for historical material of this sort at the time of writing this blog but failed to find anything. I would like to thank both Ned and Mr P. D. Wood whose interests in this area clearly follow my own but whose historical research abilities are definitely more advanced. I am pleased to be able to reproduce the historical research of P. D. Wood for a larger audience here.
2 Comments

The Stob Stanes, Yetholm Common and the Anglo-Scottish Border

14/10/2012

2 Comments

 
This year, I've spent a lot of time walking in the Cheviot Hills, exploring places I don't know or not been to for a long time. A recent walk on the England-Scotland Border east of  Kirk Yetholm led me to another mystery.

What started it was a visit to see the Stob Stones (or Stanes to the Scots).  Two large boulders, one standing, the other recumbent, east of the hillfort at Green Humbleton, and a stones throw (pun intended) from both the Pennine Way (high level route) and St Cuthbert's Way long distance footpaths. They are now firmly in Roxburghshire in Scotland, the Border boundary wall is to their east, but for a time were actually on the Border line.
Picture
The Stob Stones. Photo by A Curtis (2012).
Picture
The Stob Stones. Photo by A Curtis (2012).
They are often referred to as standing stones, which has a prehistoric connotation. What do the archaeologist think?

The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. An inventory of the ancient and historical monuments of Roxburghshire  (1956)  records their visit to the stones in 1938. The record can be read on the excellent on-line resource known as Canmore.

However, they were not committing themselves to any opinion regarding their origin..
The "Stob Stones", two standing stones, are situated 230 yds W of the Border and over 1000ft OD. One still erect, measures 4 1/2ft wide at the base, narrowing to 3ft, by 1 1/2ft and 5 1/2ft high; there is evidence of stone packing at the base. The other now lies across its original bed 18ft to the S; it is 5ft long, 3ft wide and 2ft thick.

Both stones are of native porphyry and are locally called the "Gypsy Stobs" from the tradition that the kings of the Yetholm gypsies were crowned here.

Mack (J L Mack 1924) suggests that they are boundary marks, set up on the line of the Border; if this is correct they may be of early medieval date as this point is on the section of the Border that the English commissioners of 1222 regarded as fixed.
A later visit by the RCAHMS in 1978 revealed no further information. As well as the gypsy lore, the stones are still used as the destination for the annual ride out from Kirk Yetholm. They have always had importance locally. There is some information on the Yetholm gypsies here.
Picture
Standing stones west of White Hill. Photo by A Curtis (2012).
As I had walked that day from Hethpool in the Northumberland's College Valley, I was aware of the similarity between the Stob Stones and this site on White Hill. These stones are nowhere near the Border and the site has been interpreted as a likely Bronze Age burial mound.
If the large stones had originally been covered in a stone mound or cairn, then the stones must have been robbed for use elsewhere. The small stones packing the base are very similar to those around that of the erect Stob Stone.

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