Family history unfolds at the Eildon Hills

Sunday Sept. 18, 2016 

We had breakfast with several serious hikers, the kind who don't wear their boots in the dining room but have only their heavy socks on their feet. Our host nodded to the out-of-doors and pronounced it "a dry day." In Scotland this means it was not actively raining. I wore my rain pants for the first time during the trip, as I thought we might encounter wet grass and muddy paths on our hike to find Eildon Hall.

I had been curious about this house for many years. My maternal grandmother's family came to Canada in the 1830s, and our ancient matriarch Susan Sibbald lived in a house by Lake Simcoe, which she called Eildon Hall after her father's home in Scotland.

My fourth great-grandfather had work begun on Eildon Hall in the spring of 1802. According to his daughter Susan, he located it "on a spot where as a schoolboy he said he should like to build a house on account of the magnificent view, which was open to the Cheviot Hills 6 miles off (Memoirs of Susan Sibbald, p. 210).

This is what the house looked like in 1804, apparently, according to the list of illustrations in the Memoirs. 

It has undergone changes in ownership and renovations over the years since and has been owned by the Dukes of Buccleuch since about 1860. This is what it looks like now, although not on the day we went, which was very overcast. Also we approached it from the north side, through the fir trees behind it to the right in the photo:

Eildon Hall as it is today looking north
Source: http://newtowneildon.weebly.com/eildon-village.html

After walking out of Melrose and following a footpath south off Dingleton Road and across the Malthouse Burn, we found the main hiking trail to the easternmost peak of the three Eildon Hills. My journal continues: 

We climbed straight up 140 steps, resting every 10 steps, and being passed by other fitter walkers and hikers...spectacular views of the Tweed Valley, hills and Melrose Abbey.

You can see Melrose Abbey in the mist in the left corner of the picture.

Rather muddy at times, but very fresh air, just what I like: a hike in the outdoors. 

The village of Melrose is in the Tweed Valley.

We didn't go to the top of Eildon Hill as that would have taken much more time and over 1300 feet of climbing: too much for our elderly out-of-shape selves. Still the view from about halfway up was impressive. 

We took something of a wrong turn at a critical juncture and found ourselves on a paved road, near what turned out to be the monument to the Eildon Tree, immortalized by Thomas the Rhymer.

He was a 13th century poet and prophet whose poems were popularized by Sir Walter Scott in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border published in 1802, the same year as work began on the Hall.

"At Eildon tree if yon shall be
a brig ower Tweed, yon there may see"
Thomas the Rhymer

Sir Walter Scott identified this location near the foot of the Eildon Hills as the site of the ancient tree because three bridges over the Tweed  were visible from this vantage point. (Source: wikipedia.)

Susan Sibbald was familiar with the legendary poet and perhaps Sir Walter Scott's pronouncements about the famous tree. In any event, in her memoirs, she says to her son, "you must remember, Hugh, to have read another of Thomas  the Rhymer's predictions ... 'betide befa' whate'er betide, Haig sal be Haig of Bemersyde'."  

This one concerned a local ancestral home and predicted dire consequences if the last laird died without issue. The last (20th) direct descendant of the first lord died childless in 1854. Just as his coffin was being lowered into the grave, a tremendous thunder storm broke out, accompanied by vivid flashes of lightning and loud roars of thunder, to the distress of the mourners (Memoirs, p.185). 

It is exciting to read (albeit after the fact) that Susan Sibbald was familiar with Thomas the Rhymer; I also wonder if the actual paths we walked on she had also trod upon. 

We came upon a man walking his dog. "Do you know where you are?" I asked him, thinking he might also be a tourist. But he was a local person (which explained the odd look he gave me). He gave us excellent directions to Eildon Hall: go up and down two dips in the road, then see a nice entrance on the right.

He also gave us information on the house and told us, "There is no one living there now." He added it was owned by the Duke of Buccleuch and was intended as the home for the duke-in-waiting i.e., the eldest son of the existing duke.

The 9th duke of Buccleuch, who died in 2007, was the last to live at Eildon Hall. Incidentally, his funeral was held at Melrose Abbey and he is buried there; the Buccleuch family received some of the monastery lands after the Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries.

No one seems to like these (or other) dukes. Perhaps it also stems from the on-going effects of the Enclosure Movement, which peaked about two hundred years ago, but whose effects still ripple down the generations.  

Someone told us that one of the Buccleuchs used to ride his horse to the post office in Melrose and would order some bystander to hold the animal for him while he went in for his mail. One of the locals objected and ended up punching the duke. Surprisingly when the matter came before the local magistrate, he was let off. 

Anyhow, we walked and walked and finally found the gate: curved sandstone walls with white gates, which were wide open:

I took a picture of them and of the gatehouse, a charming stone cottage:

Then we walked up the incline 

until we came to Eildon Hall:

There was a black utility vehicle parked by the door, but while I peered through the glass of the front door, I didn't knock. It was a bit spooky. 

The vehicle is barely visible behind the over hanging branches.

It looked very run-down and dusty inside. There was an old wooden chair leaning against the wall and what might have been a dog-toy on the floor of the vestibule. It looked  like a stuffed sock —  a dirty yellow knit thing knotted at the top.

The whole place looked neglected:

Dr. Thomas Mein died 1815, not long after the completion of the house in about 1806. Later it was owned by a William Henderson and was lived in by the "Misses Henderson" in 1845. Architect William Burn redesigned and remodeled it (from 1861 to 1867) for the 5th Duke of Buccleuch. 

Why it did not remain in the Mein family is something of a mystery. Susan Sibbald continues her account of her father's desire to build Eildon Hall:
...he had the expectation of the property coming to him after his father's death [in 1794] and no doubt it would have been the case had matters been properly arranged as to his brothers' and sisters' portions, but he was abroad some years and did not hear of his Father's death till his return to England. My Grandmother was never satisfied about the sale of the property and always alluded to something being wrong in the agent's  management (p. 211).

A picture says a thousand words.

I considered trespassing onto the front lawn, but loud barking from an indeterminate direction gave me pause. This is all I managed to see. The Cheviot Hills, beloved of my great-great-great-great grandfather, are in the distance perhaps:

Although it was disappointing to see the house in such a state of decline, I was not as troubled as I might have been if it had been the original house, begun 215 years ago this spring. Somehow the mid-century renovations made it a different house to me, at least on the outside. 

Also something I discovered while re-reading Susan Sibbald's memoirs for this blog took my attention away from the house itself. She reminisces that her father had planted fir trees at the foot of the "east hill" (p.166), which I take to be the area through which we were walking back in September. 

Could these be the descendants of the original trees planted over 200 years ago?

How quickly do fir trees grow? Might this one be close to 200 years? 

They lend a special resonance to the term 'family tree'! How many hundreds of people now planted all over the world are part of this original family. 

Then we retraced our steps down the lane  to the disused road

and eventually back to the warmth of our BnB, where I slept for most of the rest of the afternoon. It had been a long walk in more ways than one.