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An American tale and a Selkirk connection

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It is estimated that upwards of 25m people around the world can trace their roots back to Scotland.

From the early 1700’s on, thousands looked to new horizons and a better life overseas, sailing for destinations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other parts of the British Empire.

Many booked a one-way passage to the brave new world that was the USA and some, like James Murray from Selkirkshire, would set in train a fate line that would leave an indelible mark on history.

James embarked for Charleston in 1735, when America was a burgeoning British colony, and became a successful businessman. He made one trip home to the Borders – to marry his cousin Barbara Bennett.

The couple’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, later married Edward Hutchinson Robbins in 1785 and they raised a family of three girls. 

By this time living in the New York area, the eldest, Anne Jean Robbins married Joseph Lyman, a lawyer who went on to become a judge.

Their daughter, Catherine Robbins Lyman, married a wealthy New Yorker, Warren Delano, which gives a clue as to where this family tree is going. 

Another daughter, Sara Delano wed James Roosevelt and their son Franklin Delano Roosevelt was to grow up to become one of America’s best loved and respected presidents.

FDR served a record four terms, from 1933 to 1945, and was the architect of the New Deal to provide relief for the unemployed. He also brought America into the Second World War in 1941.

He is rumoured to have visited the graves of his maternal forebears, buried in the Kirk of the Forest, Kirk Wynd in Selkirk, while in Britain during the war.

Today a notice board makes proud reference to the Murray – Roosevelt connection, underneath another historic link for the Kirk of the Forest – the place where William Wallace was proclaimed Guardian of Scotland in 1298…but that’s another story.

Where William Wallace was made Guardian of Scotland

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A geophysics study of Selkirk’s Auld Kirk in the Scottish Borders has uncovered what appears to be the underground remains of a medieval church where William Wallace was likely to have been made Guardian of Scotland in 1297.

Dr Chris Bowles, Scottish Borders Council’s archaeologist, commissioned the survey by the University of Durham in conjunction with the Selkirk Conservation Area Regeneration Scheme (CARS).

Chris said: “Ruins of the Auld Kirk date from the 18th century, but we knew this had replaced earlier churches on site from the 12th and 16th centuries.

It has been widely acknowledged that this was the site of the Kirk of the Forest where Wallace was made Guardian of Scotland following his and Andrew Moray’s defeat of the English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297.

“We had been expecting the geophysics survey to uncover a 16th century church that we know to have existed and which was a replacement to the medieval church, but the only evidence in the survey is in relation to the medieval church.”

The association between Wallace and the local area is quite well documented, with Wallace using guerilla tactics to fight the English from the Ettrick Forest, and the Scottish nobles made Wallace Guardian of Scotland in recognition of his military successes.

Wallace went on to become the legendary figure he remains today and the basis of the film Braveheart starring Mel Gibson.

Chris added: “The history of Selkirk is known to an extent, but there has been little archaeological work carried out to date. While these geophysics results suggest a medieval, possibly Norman, chapel beneath the later church, we are very restricted by the burials in the area to allow any excavation. It may be possible to conduct limited investigations in areas where there is no evidence of burial.”

Colin Gilmour, Selkirk CARS project manager, said: “There is nothing in the town currently signposting people to the Auld Kirk site, but with this latest discovery it could become a major attraction and assist with the regeneration of the town centre. We hope to work with the community to make the most of this fascinating discovery and the tourism potential it has.”

Selkirk – a town in touch with its historic traditions

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Scratch the surface of any Border town and you will find a community of independent minded people who are fiercely proud of their traditions.

In Selkirk, perched on a terrace of hills overlooking the Ettrick Water, where locals are known as ‘souters’ (shoemakers), there’s a generous welcome waiting for anyone who wants to know more.

Here we have a small town that achieved Royal Burgh status in the 12th century and has consistently boxed above its weight ever since in terms of the contribution it has made to Borders’ history.

The lives and times of King David I, William Wallace (appointed Guardian of Scotland at the Kirk o’ the Forest, Kirk Wynd in 1298), James V, the Dukes of Buccleuch, the Marquis of Montrose (Battle of Philiphaugh 1645), Mungo Park and Sir Walter Scott are all closely intertwined with Selkirk.

As is Fletcher, whose imposing statue stands outside Victoria Hall and around whom the spectacular Common Riding revolves each year.

He was part of the Selkirk contingent who marched away to fight under James IV at the ill-fated battle of Flodden (1513) – and reputedly the only one to return. Fletcher is said to have staggered into the market place to bring news of a terrible defeat, casting down a captured English flag before dropping down dead.

His final flourish is commemorated each year by the Casting of the Colours ceremony that closes the Common Riding.

After Flodden the town was ransacked and burnt by the English, punitive action that won Selkirk 1000 acres of forest and a Royal Charter from James V in appreciation of the valour of local people and in order that they might have timber for rebuilding.

Selkirk is a great place for statues. A short stroll west from Victoria Hall, standing at the end of High Street, is a monument to explorer Mungo Park, who died trying to discover the source of the Niger in Africa.

The casts of Fletcher and native cameos that adorn the four corners of the Mungo Park statue are the work of Border sculptor Thomas Clapperton who achieved international fame after studying in Glasgow, London and Paris. Many of his best pieces can be found in the Borders.

In Selkirk market place is a memorial to Sir Walter Scott, the Borders most famous son, standing in front of the courthouse he presided over as Sheriff of Selkirkshire from 1803-1832.  Of all the famous footprints that have made their mark in the Borders, Sir Walter’s have left by far the biggest impression.

A short walk from the market place is the award-winning Halliwells museum recreating the building’s former use as a home and ironmonger’s shop.  It also tells the story of the historic burgh of Selkirk and the Robson Gallery hosts regularly changing contemporary art, craft and local history exhibitions.

Selkirk’s shoemaking industry, still going strong in the mid-1700’s when 2,000 pairs were provided for Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army on its march south, was eclipsed by textile production from the 1800’s onwards.

A forest of tall chimneys once dominated the skyline along Ettrick Water, testament to the importance of textile manufacture in the Borders. The mills were internationally famous and today Locharron of Scotland carries on that tradition as the world’s leading tartan manufacturer.

The company stocks over 700 tartans and has kilted numerous celebrities from Sean Connery to Shrek.

Jedburgh Abbey

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The Scottish Borders was a magnet for monks in medieval times – truly men on a mission. In a region with ancient Christian traditions and lured by the promise of royal patronage they set up four mighty monastic institutions at Jedburgh, Melrose, Drybrough and Kelso.

In the years before he was crowned king of Scotland, David 1 masterminded a plan to set up monastic centres throughout the Borders and was responsible for populating them with colonies of monks from England and the Continent.

Jedburgh Abbey was built from designs inspired by Europe’s finest churches and its roots trace back to 1118 when a group of Augustans from the Abbey of St-Quentin, at Beauvais north of Paris, set out for a new life in the Borders – a sort of early twinning arrangement – and served a royal castle located in the town.

The priory they established was given large bequests of lands and fisheries by David l and duly prospered. The men of the monastic orders were every bit as good at business as they were in upholding the faith.  It was raised to abbey status around 1154.

David’s successor, Malcolm died at Jedburgh Abbey in 1165 and Alexander lll was married there to Yolande of Dreux, another notable French connection.

There is nothing quite like a great ruin for visitor appeal and Jedburgh’s 12th century Abbey ranks alongside the best of them, providing a breathtaking welcome for those arriving in the town from the south.  

Down the centuries, not all visitors were welcome.

As a gateway town to the Borders and Scotland, Jedburgh bore the brunt of many unwelcome visits from invading English armies.

During incursions made in the 1540’s Jedburgh was reduced to ruins by Henry the Eighth’s armies. It was a time that became known as the ‘rough wooing’ resulting from the Scots refusal to ratify the betrothal of the infant Mary Queen of Scots to his son Edward, then at the tender age of seven.  

It was fatally destroyed after a series of major raids from south of the Border in 1523 and 1544. The Protestant Reformation of 1560 led to Jedburgh’s final demise as a monastic institution.

Jedburgh Abbey, however, is still an imposing building. The great abbey church of St Mary the Virgin stands almost entire and the eastern end has Romanesque architecture of the highest quality.

Still used on special occasions it is home to a museum housing historic artifacts from the area and run by Historic Environment Scotland.

Ample free parking is located close to Jedburgh Abbey and free audio tours available to use on-site in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

More at www.historicenvironment.scot

Jedburgh’s Enigma code hero

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On a wall in the British Legion Club in Jedburgh, neatly positioned between two Victoria Cross memorials, sits a third commemorative display, this one containing a George Cross.

It is no exaggeration to say that the remarkable story attached to this George Cross, awarded posthumously to First Lieutenant Tony Fasson RN, changed the course of the Second World War.

As a young boy he lived in Lanton Tower, near Jedburgh, growing up in the beautiful Borders countryside and a world away from the horrors of trench warfare ravaging Europe at the time.
 
In the early 1920’s, at the age of seven or eight, Tony went off to boarding school
and from there joined other young hopefuls at Dartmouth Naval College to prepare for a career in the Royal Navy.
 
Along the way this natural athlete became an expert and strong swimmer – a combination that would have fateful and historic consequences.
 
In 1941, and now First Lieutenant Tony Fasson, he was assigned to join the crew of HMS Petard, a 1,540 ton destroyer newly off the slipway at Vickers Armstrong yard on Tyneside.
 
As part of the Mediterranean fleet, HMS Petard and its crew, captained by Lt Commander Mark Thorton, would distinguish itself on many occasions, but none more memorably than on October 30 1942.
 
On that day Petard, in company with three other Royal Navy ships, was steaming to waters off Port Said on the Egyptian coast to investigate reports of radar contact with a German submarine.  A sustained depth charge attack was laid down, eventually forcing the U-boat to the surface, and after Petard’s 4” guns caused serious damage the crew started to abandon ship.
 
Searchlights stabbed through the pitch black to reveal its identity as U-559 with its distinctive white donkey emblem on the conning tower.

Quick action was needed if the submarine was to give up any secrets. Tony Fasson together with Able Seaman Colin Grazier dived into the sea and swam across to the stricken vessel, followed in one of Petard’s boats by 16-year-old canteen assistant Tommy Brown.

Clambering down into U-559 the men made their way to the captain’s cabin where they found two code books printed in water-soluble ink. Passing them out to Brown they went back into the submarine to continue the search. U-559 made her final dive taking Tony Fasson and Colin Glazier with her. 
They would never know the importance of their actions and nor, thanks to the cloak of secrecy that was thrown around the incident, would anyone else for a very long time.

In fact the documents they rescued, a Short Weather Cipher (Wetterkurzschussel) and Short Signal Book (Kurzsignalsheft), would turn out to be absolutely priceless.

Just over 2,500 miles away at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, Britain’s top code breakers had hit a brick wall after the Germans introduced a fourth rotor into their brilliant Enigma machine code systems.

For months the upgraded M4 Enigma TRITON, named after the son of the Greek sea god Poseidon, had Bletchley’s best brains stumped.  Closeted in Hut 8, cryptanalysts had given their task the code name SHARK but they had yet to sink their teeth into TRITON.
 

These were desperate times for convoys braving U-boat packs in the Atlantic. Had Germany managed to prevent merchant ships from carrying food, raw materials, troops and their equipment from North America to Britain, as well as vital supplies to North Africa, the outcome of the Second World War could have been very different.

The ultimate sacrifice made by Tony Fasson and Colin Grazier has to be set against this potentially cataclysmic backdrop. Their courage allowed a glimmer of light to penetrate the darkest days of the war and enabled the Bletchley boffins to get back on track.

It took 24 days to get the code books from U-559 to Bletchley and the breakthrough came on December 13. The short weather cipher was precisely what the cryptanalysts
needed. 
 
Solutions to the hitherto impenetrable four-rotor Enigma messages between U-boat command and vessels on active duty soon began to flow. Only an hour after the first decrypts were made intercepts of U-boat signals were sent to the Admiralty’s submarine tracking room – revealing the positions of 15 submarines.
 
U-boat movements were exposed and the use of long range bombers and aggressive anti-submarine tactics gradually turned the tide in Britain’s favour. The scale of the breakthrough can be gauged by the fact that an estimated 1,250,000 tons of shipping and the lives of many seaman, were saved in December 1942 and January 1943 alone.
 
Both Tony and Colin Grazier were posthumously awarded the George Cross and Tommy Brown, the George Medal.  Tragically the young Tynesider was to die trying to rescue his sister from a house fire in 1945.
 
For the Fasson family, Tony’s death was to be followed by more devastating news when brother Jim, a Colonel in the Lanarkshire Yeomanry, was taken prisoner by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore. Incarcerated in the notorious Changi POW camp he was later shipped with is men to Manchuria until the end of hostilities.
 
The two brothers met, for what turned out to be the final time, completely by chance in Simonstown in South Africa. Jim was on his way to the Far East and, soon after, Tony sailed for active service in the Mediterranean.
 
The incredible secrecy surrounding Bletchley Park and all things Enigma meant that the U-559 incident never really received the recognition it deserved. This story started when I read about Tony Fasson on a set of beer mats produced a few years ago to celebrate 12 ‘Unsung heroes of the Borders’.

The U-559 heroes are, however, commemorated with pride by their local communities.
 
Tony Fasson’s bravery is recorded on plaques at churches in Bedrule and Jedburgh – as well as in the Legion Club. His original George Cross now resides in the Scottish United Services Museum at Edinburgh Castle.
 
In Tamworth, home town of Colin Grazier, a town centre memorial and part of a small estate with streets named Fasson Close, Grazier Avenue, Brown Avenue, Bletchley Drive and Petard Close offer a permanent reminder.
 
And, more recently, a stained glass window has been installed in the Saville Exchange Building in North Shields to commemorate Tommy Brown’s part in the episode.
 
Everyone of us have reason to remember with gratitude the actions of all three.


 

 

Jedburgh Castle Jail and Museum

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On a warm sunny day Jedburgh’s Castle Jail is one of the most pleasant looking buildings you could come across….from the outside.

Step across the threshold and you may find that it’s a different story. Here you will find tales of the gallows and and of ghosts – a grisly past and a very spooky present indeed. 

It is reputedly one of the most haunted places in the Borders, where apparitions are seen regularly, including a ghostly piper who walks the parapets, and strange lights appear at night.

The jail’s ghostly goings on have hit the headlines more than once and featured on TV when a team investigating the paranormal paid a visit. Their verdict – a spine chilling experience.

All of which is hardly surprising when you find that the prison was built on Gallows Hill and the site of the original castle, burnt down in 1409 to deny its use to the invading English. Despite its reputation Jedburgh Castle Jail continues to be a popular booking for ghost hunting groups from all over the country.

The castle was built in the 12th century by King David I and King Malcolm IV died there in 1165.

The present day building, a John Howard Reform Jail, went up in 1820 and was a model establishment in its day, though there’s no doubt that you wouldn’t have wanted to do time there.

The interpretation centre that is open to the public today reveals a prison regime that was as harsh as it was bleak.

You can walk through the original cell blocks, meet the inmates, examine the conditions they lived in and follow their stories. Step into one of the cells and just imagine the door being slammed shut and you’ll know what I mean.

The prison was mainly used as a debtors jail but, following longstanding tradition, executions continued to take place and criminals were hung on the gallows.

One such involved Thomas Wilson who was found guilty for the murder of a young shepherd at St Boswells Fair. It later transpired that Thomas was innocent (not the first and certainly not the last) and it may be that his spirit is one of those that roams the building seeking justice.  

Today it’s home to a museum that charts the town’s history and the achievements of its most famous citizens together and plays host to displays and travelling exhibitions.

Admission: Free.

More at… www.liveborders.org.uk/culture/museums/our-museums/jedburgh-castle-jail-and-museum/