Hawkshaw
Encyclopedia
Hawkshaw is a pair of semi-detached houses on the River Tweed
River Tweed
The River Tweed, or Tweed Water, is long and flows primarily through the Borders region of Great Britain. It rises on Tweedsmuir at Tweed's Well near where the Clyde, draining northwest, and the Annan draining south also rise. "Annan, Tweed and Clyde rise oot the ae hillside" as the Border saying...

, two miles southwest of Tweedsmuir
Tweedsmuir
The village of Tweedsmuir is a village and civil parish situated from the source of the River Tweed, in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland....

 in the Scottish Borders
Scottish Borders
The Scottish Borders is one of 32 local government council areas of Scotland. It is bordered by Dumfries and Galloway in the west, South Lanarkshire and West Lothian in the north west, City of Edinburgh, East Lothian, Midlothian to the north; and the non-metropolitan counties of Northumberland...

. Historically part of Peeblesshire
Peeblesshire
Peeblesshire , the County of Peebles or Tweeddale was a county of Scotland. Its main town was Peebles, and it bordered Midlothian to the north, Selkirkshire to the east, Dumfriesshire to the south, and Lanarkshire to the west.After the local government reorganisation of 1975 the use of the name...

, the original village of Hawkshaw was destroyed when the Fruid Reservoir
Fruid Water
Fruid Water is a small reservoir in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland, UK, near Menzion.-See also:*Baddinsgill Reservoir*Megget Reservoir*Talla Reservoir*West Water Reservoir*List of reservoirs and dams in the United Kingdom-External links:*...

 was constructed in 1963, and is remembered as the ancestral family home of the Porteous family
Porteous family
-History:The earliest records for members of the Porteous family in Peeblesshire date back to the early part of the fifteenth century.The earliest possible reference, according to Lord Lyon King of Arms in Edinburgh, is to a Guillaume Porteuse , who arrived from Normandy c 1400 under the patronship...

, dating from at least 1439.

A fortified tower stood on a hill overlooking the village for hundreds of years, although little remains of it now, its site being marked with a cairn
Cairn
Cairn is a term used mainly in the English-speaking world for a man-made pile of stones. It comes from the or . Cairns are found all over the world in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops, near waterways and on sea cliffs, and also in barren desert and tundra areas...

 built from stones from the original tower; this was probably one of a series of so-called Peel tower
Peel tower
Peel towers are small fortified keeps or tower houses, built along the English and Scottish borders in the Scottish Marches and North of England, intended as watch towers where signal fires could be lit by the garrison to warn of approaching danger...

s, small fortified keeps built along the Scottish Borders
Scottish Borders
The Scottish Borders is one of 32 local government council areas of Scotland. It is bordered by Dumfries and Galloway in the west, South Lanarkshire and West Lothian in the north west, City of Edinburgh, East Lothian, Midlothian to the north; and the non-metropolitan counties of Northumberland...

, intended as watch towers where signal fires could be lit to warn of approaching danger. A line of these towers was built in the 1430s across the Tweed valley from Berwick
Berwick-upon-Tweed
Berwick-upon-Tweed or simply Berwick is a town in the county of Northumberland and is the northernmost town in England, on the east coast at the mouth of the River Tweed. It is situated 2.5 miles south of the Scottish border....

 to its source (a few miles from Hawkshaw) as a response to the dangers of invasion from the English Borders
Border Country
Border Country is a novel by Raymond Williams. The book was re-published in December 2005 as one of the first group of titles in the Library of Wales series, having been out of print for several years. Written in English, the novel was first published in 1960.It is set in rural South Wales, close...

. Hawkshaw was one of over two dozen of these in Peeblesshire alone.

Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 artefacts have also been found in the vicinity, pre-dating the tower and indicating continuity of habitation in the area for some hundreds of years.

The cairn plays host to a gathering of Porteous family members from all over the world every five years. The September 2005 gathering attracted seventy family members from five continents, and a short religious service was followed by the laying of a wreath
Wreath
A wreath is an assortment of flowers, leaves, fruits, twigs and/or various materials that is constructed to resemble a ring. They are used typically as Christmas decorations to symbolize the coming of Christ, also known as the Advent season in Christianity. They are also used as festive headdresses...

 at the cairn, in memory of all fallen Porteous servicemen
Soldier
A soldier is a member of the land component of national armed forces; whereas a soldier hired for service in a foreign army would be termed a mercenary...

 and women.

See also


External links



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