Written by Elizabeth Heale, 2017. Yetholm Hall, hidden behind its big wall, on the outskirts of the village, turns out to have had many fascinating if slightly mysterious occupants. They were never in full public view as the High Street houses and families were, many of whose stories are still remembered and retold as part of Yetholm’s living past. The occupants of Yetholm Hall bring with them an air of the exotic, of international lives, important affairs, and distant places. It is pleasing and appropriate that its present incumbents continue this glamorous tradition. These notes represent mere fragments pieced together from various sources and far from complete. The bare recorded facts, alas, give us only tantalizing glimpses of the fascinating human stories. One of the most intriguing mysteries is the possibility that a version of the house existed in the late eighteenth century – more research needs to be done. The Building Historic Scotland’s Listed Buildings index describes Yetholm Hall as an ‘early 19th century, 2-storey, 3-bay symmetrical T-plan villa’. It is made of ‘whinstone rubble with ashlar sandstone dressings and S elevation’ with ‘giant pilasters flanking central bay and pilastered’. The Pevsner Architectural Guide to the Borders (2006) largely repeats this description. While there is agreement as to the early-nineteenth century date of the present building, a fragment of evidence exists that an earlier house may have occupied the same site, or at least bore the same name. In 1785-6, the old minister of Yetholm Kirk, the Reverend Joseph Leck, who had been Yetholm’s pastor for 54 years, retired. His old manse was considered unfit for the new incumbent, the Reverend William Blackie, and while a new manse was being built, the new minister is said to have stayed at Yetholm Hall. William Beckwith The next clue to the history of Yetholm Hall that we have been able to find is in 1837. In that year Pigot & Co.’s National Commercial Directory for the Whole of Scotland lists William Beckwith of Thurcroft as one of the gentlemen resident in Yetholm. We know that he was almost certainly living in Yetholm Hall because the 1841 census places him there with his daughter Mary and four servants. William Beckwith of Trimdon, Thurcroft and Easington in the County of Durham came from a long established family of county squires. He had been born in Easington, his mother’s estate, in 1772. The family’s main seat was at Thurcroft where their hall still survives. However, by the 1820s Beckwith had clearly got into financial difficulties. Thurcroft was mortgaged and Beckwith had retired to live modestly, first in Durham and, at some point in the 1830s to Yetholm Hall. It was here, in January 1841, that he was finally forced to cede Thurcroft to his creditors: 22 Jan 1841 - William Fretwell Hoyle of Rotherham, gentleman, steward of the manor of Laughton on-le-Morthen, appoints Abraham Story, John Ward, and Graville Leveson Gower Ward, all of Durham, gentlemen, to be his deputies to take surrender from William Beckwith of Yetholm Hall (in the county of Roxburgh), esquire, and from William Beckwith the younger, late of Trimdon House but now of Silksworth (in the county of Durham) a lieutenant colonel of infantry. William Beckwith the younger of Silksworth , mentioned here, was the eldest son of Yetholm Hall’s William Beckwith. William Jr. was a distinguished soldier. He fought at Waterloo, at the heroic battle for Quatre Bras, and in later life rose to be a General. Less sympathetically, he was responsible for the quelling of reform riots in Bristol in 1831. It is interesting to reflect that while one soldier with Border connections was supressing the reform riots in Bristol, another, Alexander Somerville who was brought up at Odhamstocks near Cockburnspath, was receiving 100 lashes of the cat-o’-nine tails in Birmingham for famously refusing to fire on reformist crowds. If the soldier Beckwith Jr. visited his father while he resided at Yetholm Hall, then the house has accommodated more than its fair share of military heroes. Since there is general agreement among architectural historians that Yetholm Hall in its present state was built in the early nineteenth century, it is at least possible that William Beckwith was responsible for the design and building of the present house. He may thus have provided himself with a suitably gentlemanly retreat, less costly and ostentatious than Thurcroft Hall, when he came to live here sometime in the 1830s. While in residence at Yetholm Hall, there is some evidence that William Beckwith took an active interest in gentlemanly social activity in the area. A report in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History 1841 records that Beckwith of Yetholm Hall submitted specimens to the Tweedside Physical and Antiquarian Society which met in the apartments of the Duke of Roxburgh. No clue is given as to what these specimens were. His interest in Natural Hisotry was shared by the Reverend John Baird at the manse in Kirk Yetholm, a founder member of Berwickshire Naturalists Club in 1831. One hopes they have many convivial evenings at Yetholm Hall or the Baird’s refurbished manse. Beckwith died at Yetholm Hall on December 31st 1848, aged 75. One of his daughters, Mary, also lived at Yetholm Hall. She seems to have been allocated the task of looking after her ageing father and running his household – a respectable but perhaps dreary fate. She was 42 at the time of his death. She died, no longer at Yetholm Hall but still unmarried, in 1865. From 1848 to 1893 For much of the second half of the nineteenth century Yetholm Hall seems to have had a series of owners and occupants. According to the Ordinance Survey ‘Namebook’, written before 1859, the owner of the Hall by that time was Adam Brack Boyd Esq. who also owned Thirlestane as well as Cherrytrees, where he actually lived. His tenant at Yetholm Hall was J. Oliver Esq. The house was described as ‘a plain but neat dwelling House of freestone at the northern extremity of Town Yetholm enclosed in a small shrubbery and vegetable garden.’ The authorities for this information are John Baird, A. Brack Boyd and J. Oliver. The 1861 census, taken in April of that year, records only a household of servants, a groom, a cook and a domestic servant, Jane Cranston who is 18 years old and unmarried. There is also a ‘daughter’, Grace C. Waitte, 2 years old and born, very exotically, in Chile, South America. This Grace turns out to be the illegitimate daughter of the servant, Jane Cranston - the initial C. in the child’s name stands for Cranston. Her rather pathetic life can be traced, far from home and family, in English censuses. In 1871, at the age of 12, she is a boarder with a family in Croydon – perhaps at school, possibly paid for by the mysterious father? She is next found as a 22 year old teacher at a boarding school in Derbyshire (shades of Jane Eyre!). All trace of her ends there. Who was the Waitte whose surname she bears? What was Jane, the unmarried servant, who was born in Kelso, doing in Chile at the age of 16 when her daughter was born? And who is the missing tenant of Yetholm Hall, the head of this household of servants? It is all a rather intriguing mystery. By July 1861, this exotic household had moved on and Yetholm Hall was advertised in the Kelso Chronicle (5th July) as available for let, furnished. Applications to be directed to Mr Swan, Kelso. This was Robert Swan Esq., a Writer in Kelso, and an agent for the Wauchopes. In 1866, the Southern Counties Register (a local directory), records that the Hall was the property of Andrew Wauchope Esq. (father of the Major-General), and that it was occupied by the Reverend John Coventry. John Coventry was called to be minister of Yetholm Free Church (later St James) in 1862. Soon after his arrival the Free Church manse, Shirrafield, was considered ‘incommodious and antiquated’ and funds were raised to build a beautiful new manse designed, according to Historic Scotland, ‘in the style of the Scottish architect James Campbell Walker.’ This was Copsewood at the other, Townfoot, end of Town Yetholm. Building began in 1863 and, presumably, until it was finished, Yetholm Hall was rented as a suitable temporary manse. As we have seen, Yetholm Hall may have already served as a manse once before, since the Reverend William Blackie is said to have stayed there while the manse in Kirk Yetholm was being built in 1785-6. If the Reverend John Coventry did not move in to Copsewood till 1866 as the Southern Counties Register states, he did not enjoy his new house for long, because he left in 1869 to take up a charge at Gibralter. In 1874-5, the Yetholm Valuation Rolls tell us that the tenant of Yetholm Hall was now a James Dods, a medical doctor. In September 1878 an advertisement in The Scotsman described Yetholm Hall as available to be let furnished, with or without attendant. Those interested were to apply to Miss Young (presumably the housekeeper) at the house. By 1881, the occupant according to census returns and the Valuation Rolls was James Wilson, sometimes described as a carrier and sometimes as a ‘farmer of 8 acres’, with his family, a wife, an aged father, two children and a nephew. James Wilson, now a widower, is still recorded on the Valuation Rolls for 1894-5, but this presents a puzzle, because by then it seems likely that the Wauchopes were using the house when they stayed at Yetholm. The Wauchopes and Yetholm Hall. The land on which Yetholm Hall was built would certainly have been part of the Town Yetholm estate that the Wauchopes bought in 1643. They may have feued the land, or more likely, directly leased it to various tenants. As we saw, Adam Brack Boyd is described by the writer of the Ordinance Survey ‘Namebook’, on good local authority, as the ‘owner’ in the late 1850s. It is possible that this means he was the holder of a lease from the Wauchopes and was sub-letting to J. Oliver. On the other hand, the land and house may have been sold to Brack Boyd or his predecessor Beckwith and then bought back by the Wauchopes later in the nineteenth century. We know that the Wauchope lairds in the early nineteenth century did not use the Hall when they stayed at Yetholm, because a letter survives from Mr Swan, the Wauchope agent in Kelso, to James Dodds of Town Yetholm. In the letter, dated 25 Feb 1848, Mr Swan makes clear that the current Wauchope laird, Andrew Wauchope, the Major-General’s father, has been in the habit of keeping a room reserved for his use at the Dodds’s farmhouse in the High Street. This arrangement is now to be halted. As Mr Wauchope ‘has not only the Inn at Yetholm to go to when visiting his estates in Roxburghshire but also a large house for his Gamekeeper into which he can stow away his fishing rods and other traps, he desires me to intimate to you. . . that he would not require your room any longer, and the first time I am at Yetholm he authorized me to get the door opened and the room cleared of all his property, and handed over to George Walker his Gamekeeper.’ The ‘large house for his Gamekeeper’ could not be Yetholm Hall as at this time the Hall was still occupied by William Beckwith. The Wauchopes are certainly named as the landowners for Yetholm Hall from 1866 onwards. Although William Baird in his Life of General Wauchope (1901) says that, as a child, he spent short summer visits in Yetholm, there is no evidence of the Wauchopes staying at Yetholm Hall until 1893. In that year, Colonel Andrew Gilbert Wauchope, having recently inherited the family estates, married his second wife, Jean Muir, daughter of Sir William Muir, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Edinburgh University. The papers announced that the newly-wedded couple were to spend their honeymoon at Yetholm. During their stay, Colonel Wauchope addressed a dinner put on by the Shepherds’ Show committee, and was presented with a diamond brooch and watch chain by the feuers of Yetholm. It seems probable that they stayed at Yetholm Hall, although, as we have seen, the Valuation Rolls for 1894-5 name James Wilson, retired carter, as the occupant. Perhaps James Wilson vacated it during the honeymoon holiday. In the following years it is clear that Colonel Wauchope took a far greater interest in Yetholm than his immediate predecessors and a number of visits are recorded. In 1896 a dinner and address were given in his honour by Yetholm’s great and good to thank him for donating £300 to improving Yetholm’s rudimentary water and drainage system. In October 1898 Colonel Wauchope came to stay at Yetholm on his return from the victory at Omdurman in which he had played a part and for which he was promoted to the rank of Major-General. On this occasion Lord Wolsely, Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, drove over from Ford Castle to visit Wauchope at Yetholm Hall and to see the gypsies in Kirk Yetholm. Returning to Yetholm Hall in November of the same year, the Major-General was dined by the locals in the Town Hall (now the Youth Hall) and presented with an expensive pair of field glasses. Wauchope returned the favour by inveighing against the foolish notion of old age pensions at a packed meeting in the Town Hall, arguing that ‘those who were of thrifty habits would have to pay for those who were of the opposite persuasion.’ It was during his November stay at Yetholm Hall that he was visited by no less a figure than Lord Kitchener himself. In 1900, after the death of the Major-General at the Battle of Magersfontein on the 11th December 1899, his widow, Jean Wauchope, came to live at Yetholm Hall. She played the role of benefactor and grande dame in the village and was a figure of considerable importance, driving around the village in her pony and trap. She purchased the Wauchope Hall when it ceased to be used by the Border View United Free church in 1919, and handed it over as a free gift to the villagers. For a number of years she also provided a Good Templars’ Hall (Temperance) Hall for the villagers. Another benefaction was the regular treats for the children of the School. These usually consisted of tea and cakes, followed by a programme of songs and recitations, occasionally with the addition of ‘Father Christmas with his toys.’ Such events took place at the School throughout the early twentieth century up to the 1930s. The last such occasion seems to have been in September 1934 when the children were invited to tea at ‘The Hall’ – was this the Wauchope Hall, or perhaps, Yetholm Hall? Jean Wauchope died at Niddrie in August 1942. Recent History The Valuation Rolls seem to indicate that it remained in the hands of the Wauchope estate but unoccupied until about 1960. In the 1960s the Valuation Rolls name a couple of tenants, a Clifford Cross and a Derek Cameron, but in 1970 it finally left Wauchope ownership and became the property of George Beveridge, former landlord of the Plough Hotel, becoming, by 1974, the ‘Hall Guest House’ under the proprietorship of Mrs Jane Beveridge. Finally, by 1985 Yetholm Hall had passed to the Rustads and the rest, as they say, is history. Alterations to Yetholm Hall
These two nineteenth/early-twentieth century postcards show Yetholm Hall on the right. In the colourised image there is no back extension (staircase) extending northwards to the boundary wall from the main house, and the stables appear very much smaller. Do the two views record changes made to the Hall in the 1890s when the Wauchopes took up residence? [Click on images to expand]
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The photograph at the top of the page shows Grafton House in Town Yetholm - a recent photograph of the same building can be seen above left. The photographer then seems to have turned round and taken two images of the now-demolished Ivy Cottage: The two images can be crudely joined to given an impression of the wider scene (below - click on the image to see a larger version). The buildings on the right stood behind Tibbie Herbert's cottage. Robert Herbert, Tibbies father, was a mason and ran his own business. He died in 1941 and his business was taken over by Garnet Tice, who at that date lived in Ivy Cottage. The buildings on the right may have been used by Robert as a workshop. The photographer also took an image from much the same spot, looking towards the Morebattle Road. Rose Cottage, on the right, is at this date 'Rose Cafe' and can been seen sporting a traditional style of thatch, rather than the Olde Englishe variety which adorns the house today. Tibbie Herbert's thatched cottage can just be glimpsed on the left. The photographer also went across to Kirk Yetholm, although the only image taken there can be seen below. It is rather over-exposed, but it shows the cottage which once stood immediately outside the Kirk gates. All the other cottages in this row were in a derelict state at this date, largely being utilised as garage space, but this one is relatively spruce, with new windows in the roof: ![]() Unfortunatley, probably soon after the photograph above was taken, this cottage too, like Tibbie Herbert's, was burned to the ground and then demolished. The site (left) is now a rough car park for church goers and others to use. Most of the rest of the row of cottages still stand, but are as derelict as they were in the 1950s. Our blog-post in August 2022 looked at some of the bric-a-brac produced to sell to visitors to Yetholm in the late 19th and early 20th century - click HERE. We have recently been given, by the family of Tom Tokeley, a couple of similar items, shown above. Each of them is tiny, approximately an inch high and features a mock coat-of-arms, with motto. In Yetholm's case the motto reads 'Un Pour To Us Tous Pour Un[?]' - Latin? Old Scots? Romany? We have put these precious relics on display in the cabinet in the Heritage Centre, which has now re-opened for the 2024 Summer Season. Many thanks to the Tokely family for these gifts.
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