White Swan Inn, 1800-1982

Yetholm Angling Club, 1908, outside the White Swan Inn.

   We recently had a query about when the White Swan Hotel closed as a public house - ? Rummaging around in the records it looks like the answer is 1982. The  Property For Sale notice shown immediately below (right) appeared in the Southern Reporter in November 1982 - at that date the old inn was 'now unlicensed'. The photo on the left shows the 'White Swan Hotel' in around 1978, shortly before the business closed down - it does look rather drab.

   Another question, at first sight more difficult to answer, is when exactly did the venerable hostelry begin business - ? The first Ordnance Map of Yetholm, which was surveyed in 1859, clearly marks the building although, as was usual at that earlier date, it is simply the 'Swan Inn' - see HERE.
   In 1874 the business came up for sale and the advert for it which appeared in the Berwick Advertiser for 12th June gives us some interesting information. According to this notice the lease for the property is dated 1799 and the current building was erected in 1800. At that date there may have been no buildings on the land and the village green was more extensive:

   If this is correct then the White Swan had been operating for almost 200 years when it closed in 1982. During that period it played a prominent part in village life - along, of course, with its neighbour and rival the Plough Hotel. Right up to the date of closure it was, for example, often the venue for the Annual Meeting of the Border Shepherds Show committee.
   Another local group which met there for festive occassions was the Yetholm Angling Club. The newspaper notice below (left - Southern Reporter, 26th May 1904) gives the competition results and notes that "After the weighing of the trout the members dined in the Swan Hotel, when Office-Bearers were appointed, and a pleasant evening was passed with song and sentiment." The photograph at the head of this blog shows the club outside the Swan in 1908. It would be wonderful to know the names of these mustached gentlemen. The newspaper notice of their competition in that year (below right, Jedburgh Gazette, 12th June 1908) is briefer than in 1904, but presumably some of the prize winners listed here are to be seen in the photograph. The landlord in 1908, standing at the centre of the photograph, was Andrew Robson.

   Newspaper reports throughout the 19th-century show that drunken behaviour was much more common in the Yetholm than it is today. The village bobby was forever frog-marching culprits off to the village lock-up - or, if not that, catching landlords out for selling alcohol after hours or on a Sunday to individuals who were not 'bona fide' travellers.
    The cases were often given in great detail of newspapers of the time. One example occured in the White Swan in 1893 when a labourer called George Cairns lost £3 while drinking in the Inn. The accused were two men called Milroy and Brown who were resident in the same lodging house as Cairns. Cairns started drinking early in the morning and, soon worse for wear, ended up dropping money on the floor, which Brown seems to have helped himself to. Brown gives us a glimpse of the scene:

Jedburgh Gazette, 16th September 1893.

   The songs which were heard on this occassion were probably quite different from the sentimental ones which were enjoyed when the Angling Club met in the same place! The magistrate, however, seems not to have believed that Brown's sovereign, which he had hidden in his hat, was his own property and sentenced the amateur singer (actually a 'travelling plumber') to six weeks imprisonment.
   How many other similar scenes occurred in the White Swan over the years?
   Finally, to close on a somewhat sombre note, here is another report, in this case from 1875. Who now knows what caused this elderly man to hang himself 'from a beam in the stable' of the White Swan all those years ago -?

Teviotdale Record, 2nd January 1875

The White Swan Hotel - 1950s???