Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 6

SELKIRK
400 to 619 feet above sea-level, is eminently favourable
for sanitary arrangements ; and its environs comprise the
beautiful pleasure-grounds of Haining and picturesque
reaches of Ettrick and Yarrow Waters to Oakwood Tower
and Newark Castle. At the beginning of the present
century the town presented the appearance of an ill-
built, irregular, and decaying place, fast hastening to
extinction ; but since then it has suddenly revived, has
undergone both renovation and extension, and is now a
pleasant, prosperous, and comparatively ornate place,
including various lines of new thoroughfares, elegant
private residences, several good public buildings, and a
number of busy factories. The plan of Selkirk is far
from being regular. A spacious triangular market-
place occupies the centre of the town ; and thence the
chief streets branch off in different directions. On the
shortest side of the market-place is the town-hall, a
neat modern edifice surmounted by a spire 110 feet high.
The county buildings, occupying a site on the side of
the road leading to Galashiels, were erected in 1870,
and contain a handsome courtroom with an open
timber roof, and well-planned apartments for various
official purposes. Two portraits of George III. and
his Queen were presented by a Duke of Buccleuch.
A tunnel under the intervening street communicates
with the sunk floor of the county prison, which stands
opposite, and which was altered and enlarged in 1865-66
at a cost of £2000. In the open area of the market-place
stands Handyside Ritchie's monument to Sir Walter
Scott, erected by the gentlemen of the county in 1839.
The statue, 7J feet high, represents the great author
in his robes as sheriff of Selkirkshire, and is raised on a
pedestal 20 feet high. Another monument, by Andrew
Currie, was erected in 1859 to Mungo Park, the cele-
brated African traveller. The ancient market-cross and
the tolbooth, as well as the stalls of the old flesh market,
also stood in the market-place ; but all these have now
disappeared. In 1884 a marble tablet was erected in
the West Port to mark the site of the old Forest Inn,
where, on 13 May 1787, Burns is believed to have
written his 'Epistle to Willie Creech.' The railway
station stands in the haugh at the foot of the rising
ground occupied by the town ; and the ascent from it,
though short, is steep and fatiguing. A bridge,
carrying the line across the Tweed immediately below
the influx of Ettrick Water, was originally a wooden
structure ; but after the winter of 1877 it was recon-
structed in a more substantial form, with six piers and
with iron girders.
The present parochial church was built in 1862, and
contains 1100 sittings. The living is worth £461. A
chapel of ease was opened at Heatherlie in Feb. 1877, and
cost £3856. Early Decorated in style, it is a cruciform
and apsidal structure, containing 600 sittings. In Jan.
1885 it was raised to quoadsacra parish status. The Free
church was built soon after the Disruption, and contains
700 sittings. There are two U.P. churches in the town.
The first U. P. congregation occupy a new church, opened
in September 1880, with 850 sittings, and a hall behind.
It is in the Early Gothic style, with a spire 130 feet
high, and cost about £5000. The West U.P. church
has 490 sittings. The E.TJ. chapel contains 130 sittings.
St John's Episcopal church, with 150 sittings, is an
Early English edifice of 1869 ; and the Roman Catholic
church of Our Lady and St Joseph contains 250 sittings,
and was erected in 1866. Four schools — Grammar,
Knowe Park, Burgh, and Roman Catholic — with re-
spective accommodation for 378, 485, 250, and 124
children, had (1884) an average attendance of 282, 158,
297, and 57, and government grants of £215, 17s., £129,
19s., £215, 9s., and £31, 18s. 6d. Since these returns
were made the Grammar School staff has been trans-
ferred to Knowe Park school, which cost £3763, and
was opened on 4 Jan. 1882 ; whilst the Grammar and
Burgh schools, now designated Burgh school, have been
placed under one head-master.
Selkirk has a post office, with money order, savings'
bank, and telegraph departments, branches of the
British Linen (1825), the National (1864), and the
330
SELKIRK
National Security Savings' Banks (1838-39), offices or
agencies of 21 insurance companies, and 5 hotels.
Among the miscellaneous institutions and associations
of the burgh are a subscription library, founded in 1772 ;
a mechanics' institute, library, and reading-room, estab-
lished in 1853 ; a Young Men's Mutual Improvement
Society (1861), a choral society (1872), a cottagers' horti-
cultural society (1852), a farmers' club (1806), an associa-
tion for the improvement of domestic poultry (1863), a
pastoral society for the improvement of live stock (1819),
the Ettrick Forest Club (1788), a dispensary (1851),
a clothing society (1854), two friendly societies, a
weavers' provident society (1864), a provident building
society (1859), a Freemasons' lodge, reorganised in 1864 ;
curling, cricket, two bowling, and golfing clubs (re-
spectively founded in 1850, 1852, 1855, 1875, and 1882) ;
a total abstinence society, and various religious and
philanthropic associations. A Liberal newspaper, the
Southern Reporter (1855), is published in the town every
Thursday. The Selkirk Advertiser, containing chiefly
advertisements, is published every Saturday, and dis-
tributed gratis in the town and neighbourhood. The
weekly market day is Wednesday. The anniversary
festival known as the Common Riding is on the
Friday following that of Hawick. Annual fairs are
held as follows : — Herds and hinds hiring on the first
Wednesday of March, servants on 5 April and 31 Oct.,
shearers on 15 July, and Yule on 19 Dec. There is a
general holiday on the first Saturday in August.
Industries. — The present staple manufacture of Selkirk
is woollen goods — tweeds, tartans, shawls, and such
articles — similar to those produced at Galashiels. This
manufacture was introduced about 1836, has since
steadily increased in importance, and is now carried on
in large factories employing very many hands. Less
than twenty years ago, according to a careful estimate,
the number of power-looms in Selkirk was 181; hand-
looms, 97 ; carding-machines, 32 sets : spindles in self-
acting mules, 15,612; do. in hand-mules, 12,260 ; do. in
throstles for twisting, 1726 ; persons employed, 1032.
Between 860,000 and 870,000 lbs. of wool were supposed
to be then annually consumed ; between £28,000 and
£29,000 paid in wages ; while the annual turn -over was
about £220,000. There can be no doubt that these
averages have very largely increased ; but the manufac-
turers, like those of Galashiels, are somewhat averse to
taking the public into their confidence on the subject of
their business operations. There are now 3 mills engaged
in spinning woollen yarns, 1 in spinning Cheviot and
Saxony yarns, and 6 in the manufacture of tweeds and
tartans, etc. The other industrial establishments are
of less importance ; they include one engineering and
millwright work, a saw-mill, a corn-mill, and the
usual commercial institutions of a country town. In
former times a principal employment of the inhabit-
ants was the making of single-soled shoon, ' a sort of
brogues with a single thin sole, the purchaser himself
performing the further operation of sewing on another
of thick leather. ' So prominent was this craft as to
give the name of ' souters' (shoemakers) to the whole
body of burgesses ; while, in conferring the freedom of
the burgh, one of the indispensable ceremonies con-
sisted in the new-made burgess dipping in his wine and
then passing through his mouth in token of respect to
the souters four or five bristles, such as shoemakers use,
which were attached to the seal of the burgess ticket,
and which had previously passed between the lips of the
burgesses present. ' The ceremony,' however, writes
Mr T. Craig Brown, ' is comparatively modern, and I
am much inclined to blame Sir Walter Scott for its in-
stitution.' He himself was made a ' Souter o' Selkirk'
in this sort, but in the case of Prince Leopold of Saxe-
Coburg (1819) the custom was omitted. Even in the
middle of last century the shoemakers of Selkirk were
so numerous as to furnish more than one-half of the
6000 pairs of shoes demanded from the magistrates of
Edinburgh by the Highland army in 1745. But since
then the glory of the craft has departed, and the souters
are not more conspicuous in Selkirk than in any other