Sawyers and the Sawmill

YHS recently had an enquiry concerning George Leslie, who was born in Yetholm in 1837. George’s father John was from Coldingham and he must have arrived in Yetholm after 1833, the year his daughter Elizabeth was born (in England). In the 1841 census John is living in Town Yetholm, possibly in the lane leading to Dairy Wood, with his wife and five children. He is still there in 1851, but left before 1861 – in the census of that year he is living in Ancrum.

What brought John Leslie to Yetholm? In both 1841 and 1851 he gives his occupation as ‘sawyer’, while after the move to Ancrum he is listed simply as a farm servant. Further rummaging around in the records revealed that in 1841 there are eight men in Town Yetholm who are sawyers, in 1851 there are six and in 1861 only one. By contrast there are no sawyers listed in the neighbouring parish of Morebattle in any of these three censuses and in Linton there is only one – in 1841 – and that individual is living at Hoselaw, which arguably puts him in the orbit of Yetholm too. Why were there so many sawyers in Yetholm at this date???

One can’t be certain, but it seems likely that George Leslie and the other sawyers were working at the sawmill, the ruins of which are still visible on the Kirk Yetholm haugh. When YHS published the booklet Watermills on the Bowmont in in 2002 the old sawmill received cursory attention – only a single page. We are told that it is described in the Southern Counties Register (1866) as The Cooperative Sawmill and that in the 1869-70 Valuation Roll the tenant was George Hogg, joiner, “and others”.

The sawmill is shown on the Ordnance Survey map, surveyed in 1858 (click on image, left). It was powered by the lade which also served Kirk Yetholm corn mill and Blunty’s (blanket) Mill. When it was built is unknown. The fact that George Leslie moved to the village in the 1830s suggests that it was in operation at that date. The proprietor of the property was the Wauchope family. It would seem the Wauchope's were keen to utilize the power source provided by the mill lade which ran across their land. It looks like the sawmill's heyday was in the first half of the nineteenth century – but why then was there an apparent sudden disappearance of sawyers in the village in the 1860s?

The phrasing of the Southern Counties Register suggests that it was available for use by individual entrepreneurs, rather than being operated by a single tenant. Although sawyers seems to have migrated away from the village in the 1860s, for whatever reason, the building continued to be maintained and used on a more ad hoc basis into the 1930s. Kit Stenhouse of Kirk Yetholm was interviewed for Yetholm Past and Presentand and he explained that his father was, in the 1930s, the last person to work the circular saw which it contained. The building, outbuildings and yards are clearly visible in postcards of the 1930s (see photo at the top of the page - click on the image to expand). Unfortunately the mill lade cauld was swept away at some point and, although the buildings survived Word War Two, they were dismantled at some point thereafter.

Kit said that the saw could only be powered when the river was in spate. The Bowmont is a very changeable river – at times the entire haugh can be flooded, while for much of the year the flow is reduced to a trickle. The problem of maintaining an adequate water supply must have been an issue for all of three mills that depended on the mill lade, even if the cauld was well maintained and working efficiently. Might this have been the reason for the apparent dwindling away of Yetholm’s nascent timber industry circa 1855? Could other locations have offered a more reliable source of power? Might the operation of the saw mill interfered with working of the other two, more significant, mills further along the lade (one of which, the corn mill, belonged to another proprietor, the Marquesses of Tweedale)? Who was responsible for maintaing the lade - and how were disputes between the different proprietors negotiated? The operation of these mills raises more questions than answers!

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In 1894 the Jedburgh Parish Church Sabbath Morning Fellowship came on an excursion to Yetholm - and during their visit found shelter from a rainstorm in the sawmill shed. Kit stenhouse remembered that there were seats beside the sawmill yard where people could sit and catch the sun.

Kit Stenhouse said the the mill lade was often teeming with whitling (small sea trout), as this newspaper report from the Jedburgh Gazette 1907 confirms.

This newspaper report from the Berwick Advertiser of 1935 suggests that the cauld was failing, or had failed, by this date, resulting in the lade water turning foul. It is not known what action the minister took to remedy the situation!