• Skip to main content

Explore The Borders

Your gateway to the brilliant borderlands

Places

Hawick the perfect choice to revive Borders whisky tradition

March 5, 2022 by David Pike Leave a Comment

In a town built on solid and stirring traditions, the Hawick community jumped at the chance to stick a new feather in its Scottish Borders bonnet.

Internationally renowned for the manufacture of high quality textiles, Hawick is now at the heart of restoring a Borders tradition that turns the clock back over 180 years.

It was in 1837 – ​the same year that Victoria was crowned queen and young Oliver Twist made his literary debut -​ that the region’s only distillery at Kelso closed down.

Now, we are delighted to say, whisky manufacturing is back – courtesy of The Three Stills Company – and the Borders Distillery is proving to be a class act.

Locals and visitors alike were able to follow the old Turnbull and Scott factory in Commercial Road into a superb distillery and visitor centre that quickly received the highest 5* accreditation from VisitScotland.

The building’s modern open plan aspects and all the trappings of a modern distillery have been sympathetically incorporated with original industrial features – a blend that has been very well received and matches anticipation of the distillery’s single malt whisky.

And the work caught the attention of judges in the Scottish Borders in the Borders Building Design Awards for 2018, where it was listed among the best.

The distillery building’s eye catching restoration, led by architects Gray Macpherson of Edinburgh, won the award in the Existing Buildings Commercial category.

Special importance was placed on incorporating original industrial features all the trappings of a modern distillery.

Celebrating success: John Fordyce and Annie Macpherson from Gray Macpherson with the Hawick distillery’s building design commendation

The firm worked closely with the team at The Three Stills Company to develop a modern open plan building.

Distilling started in March 2018, five years after the original idea first started to take shape with John Fordyce, George Tait, Tim Carton and Tony Roberts – a quartet with plenty of experience in the drinks, spirits, and manufacturing sectors.

They all shared a vision to bring distilling back to the Scottish Borders. At Hawick, they agreed, the chemistry was just right.

The Borders Distillery has access to water from the River Teviot for cooling purposes and from an on-site borehole that goes into the spirit. There’s also a ready supply of local barley, essential ingredients for future success.

Distillery tours have become very popular and they take place Monday to Saturday, every hour, on the hour from 10am to 4pm. They are organised for groups of up to 12 people and bespoke tours are available for whisky enthusiasts

The Borders Distillery set up with a core team with huge experience in producing whisky and they are now passing those skills down to a local workforce. The present one-shift operation will eventually graduate to 24-hour production with a workforce of around 18 people.

William Kerr’s Borders Gin is also available from the distillery shop. It is produced from scratch onsite using a small amount of the same new make spirit which is distilled for single malt whisky, making it stand out in an increasingly crowded gin market.

The malty, fruity new make spirit goes through further distillation in a specially commissioned Carter Head still where eleven botanicals combine with the redistilled new make to create a gin of remarkable flavour and quality.

For now, the stills are quietly and efficiently getting on with the main job in hand, working towards the next manufacturing milestone of May 2021 when the Borders Distillery will be able to call its maturing spirit Scotch Whisky for the first time.

The first casks were laid down on May 10, 2018 and the distillery is building six warehouses in Hawick where wood and spirit can slowly interact over time.

To celebrate the return of whisky distilling to the Borders for the first time since 1837, The Borders Distillery is making 1,837 casks containing 200 litres of spirit – potentially 300 bottles of whisky – available to the public for purchase.

And plenty have been taking up the offer, stamping their names on specially imported oak casks that will deliver an exclusive single cask whisky. The cost comes in at £1995.00 and includes storage and insurance for up to ten years. Duty and VAT will have to be paid upon bottling.

The Borders Distillery is a standout award winning visitor attraction and not to be missed. To find out more and book tours … ​www.thebordersdistillery.com

Filed Under: Border Towns, Hawick, Places Tagged With: Scottish Borders

Rough justice for the reivers

March 3, 2022 by David Pike Leave a Comment

On a fine day it’s a pleasure to sit and watch the river Teviot and Slitrig Water come together at Hawick as they start the next stage of a journey seawards.

Having drawn a zest for life from the high hills of the Borders they join forces a few yards upstream from the town’s Millenium Bridge.

But this is a meeting place with a distinctly murky past.

Here, where nature has cut a little deeper into the natural landscape, you will find the town’s infamous drowning pool or murder pool, depending which side of the law you were on.

This part of the river was used to dispense a particularly rough kind of justice to the Border Reivers.

For over 300 years, from around 1300 to 1600, the Reivers’ bloody legacy held sway

in the badlands or debatable lands either side of the border between Scotland and England. To ‘reive’ means to rob or plunder but it wasn’t the only contribution these men gave to the English language.

They also bequeathed us blackmail and bereavement, which provides a fair indication of the type of pastimes they got up to.

Hawick’s history, criss-crossed by the nefarious activities of the Reivers, records one of the most savage cases of retribution. In July of 1562 some 22 Border Reivers met a watery end in the ‘pool.’

The Reivers were in the habit of bringing their ill-gotten gains to Hawick market but on this occasion Walter Kerr, warden of Scotland’s Middle March was one step ahead. Acting on the authority of the recently crowned Mary Queen of Scots he sealed off the town and captured dozens of Reivers.

Those on the lower rungs of the social pecking order had their hands bound and were executed at the pool, their bodies held underwater by lances. Their leaders were afforded the courtesy of a trip to Edinburgh and a ‘gentleman’s’ death by hanging.

We are pleased to report that times have moved on and every March Hawick now plays host to a colourful spring  that takes place from March 25 to 27 this year. More information at hawickreivers.com

Filed Under: Border Towns, Hawick, Langholm, Places, Reivers, Romans and Reivers Tagged With: Border Reivers

Copyright © 2025 · Explore The Borders ·