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Galashiels

Galashiels (known locally as “Gala”) sits beside the Gala Water, and is a manufacturing town at one time noted for its tweed and woollen mills. As a reflection of this, the town’s textile manufacturers adopted the motto  “We dye to live and live to die”. The Scottish College of Textiles was established here in 1909 and today the Lochcarron of Scotland Cashmere and Wool Centre, located within Waverley Mill in Huddersfield Street, offers tours which explain the processes involved in the manufacture of woollens and tweeds.

On the coat of arms of the old burgh appears the words “soor plooms” (sour plums), which refers to an incident in 1337 when some English troops were killed after crossing the border and found stealing plums in the town. In 1503, the betrothal of James IV to Margaret Tudor, Henry VII’s daughter, took place at the town’s old Mercat Cross. Its successor dates from 1695. 

 Old Gala House dates from the 15th century with later additions and at one time was the town house of the Pringles, Lairds of Gala. It is now a museum and art gallery. Its gardens have recently been re-established, with a pond, spring bulbs and rhododendrons. Exhibitions of local art are sometimes held in the house.

In Bank Street are the Bank Street Gardens, laid out shortly after World War II. In front of the town’s war memorial (described by H.V. Morton as “the most perfect town memorial in the British Isles”) is a reminder of the area’s bloody past - a bronze statue of a border reiver, armed and on horseback.

Not to be missed by any devotee of Sir Walter Scott is a visit to his home for the last 20 years of his life, Abbotsford, a mile or so south of the town. It is a masterpiece of the Scottish Baronial style of architecture, surrounded by trim gardens and looking out over the River Tweed. Inside, visitors pass through a grand barrel-ceilinged Entrance Hall to the galleried and book-lined study where each morning at 6am Scott would seat himself at the small writing desk made of salvage from the wrecked ships of the Spanish Armada. His chair, his spectacles, the portrait of Rob Roy hanging on the wall - all remain just as he left them. In the superb Library next door, with a richly moulded ceiling copied from Rosslyn Chapel, are housed the 9000 books he collected during his lifetime along with a fascinating assortment of Scottish memorabilia, including Rob Roy’s purse and skene dhu (knife), and a lock of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s hair. Elsewhere, there’s a carriage clock once owned by Marie Antoinette and still keeping good time.

Perhaps the most poignant room in the house is the dining room. In September 1832, his health destroyed by overwork, Sir Walter’s bed was placed here so that he could gaze out on his beloved River Tweed. On the 21st, his family was at his bedside, amongst them his son-in-law and biographer, John Lockhart: “It was a beautiful day - so warm that every window was open - and so perfectly still that the sound of all others the most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around his bed, and his eldest son kissed him and closed his eyes”.

The house is still lived in by Sir Walter’s descendants.

The Southern Upland Way passes through Galashiels, and you can also join the 89-mile-long Tweed Cycle Way, which passes close by. It starts at Biggar in Lanarkshire and ends up in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Every year, in July, the Braw Lads Gathering celebrates Galashiel’s long history with the main event being a spectacular mounted procession. It is claimed that the event has its origins in a celebration the town mounted in 1503 to mark the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII.