Netherurd House is a handsome Scottish Country mansion typical of more spacious days, stone built and solid yet showing in its lines the influence of the Adams brothers.

Through the generosity of its former owners, the late Major E G Thomson, M.C., Scottish Guiding has been privileged to have the use of Netherurd House as The National Training and Outdoor Centre from 1945 when it was leased for 7 years by Major Thomson to the Guide Association.  In 1952 the estate, as we know it today, was kindly gifted to the Guide Association.

 

At the start the house provided adequate accommodation, simply furnished, for those attending courses, adequate accommodation for the staff required to run a Training Centre and beautiful drawing rooms which were ideal for training sessions.

In the course of time there have been changes and improvement to meet the modern demands on Guiding but, from the start, Netherurd has provided exceptional opportunities for training and for the Girls the setting and atmosphere so essential for residential courses and outdoor camps.

 

Bygone Times

In early days, Kirkurd, which now gives its name to this small Peeblesshire parish, was one of the four principle lands of “Ord” or “Urd” the other three being Ladyurd, Lochurd and Netherurd.  This division gave weight to the theory that “urd” came from the Celtic word meaning one-quarter part; but a better and more probable derivation is the Gaelic orde, urd or aird – a height, which the hilly nature of the country bears out.  Netherurd, as its name tells, was the “nether” or lower part of it.

 

Kirkurd Parish is just north of the apex of that triangle of Scotland called the Border Country, of which the base lies along the boundary with England, and the sides follow lines drawn roughly north-west from Berwick-on-Tweed and north from Annan on the Solway, to meet about Broughton.

 

Netherurd, in the most southernly end of the parish, is on the verge of that storied valley where Tweed, best known and best loved of Scottish rivers, winds to the North Sea.  Not very far are Yarrow and St Mary’s Loch, the setting for so many Border ballads.

 

The lands of “Orde” were all owned at one time by branches of the great Border families whose exploits against the “auld enemy”, England and whose fierce blood feuds among themselves are so integral a part of Scottish history.  Netherurd at one period belonged to or was held by a member of the Tweedies, most lawless of the Upper Tweeddale lairds; for in 1621, the Privy Council record of the feud between Murrays of Halmyre and Tweedies of Dreva shows the name of Thomas Tweedie, “portioner of Netherurd” as one of those involved.

 

Netherurd is first heard of in 1398, when Archibald Bothwell, Earl of Galloway, gave its lands and mill to the collegiate church, which he founded at Bothwell, near Glasgow.  The eight prebendaries of the church seem each to have an equal share of the lands, with one eighth of the mill, and from charters it can be seen how they conveyed their shares to various tenants at work.  The land was divided into “oxgates”, an oxgate being as much land as could be filled by an ox, and averaging fifteen acres; each share of the property was three and a half oxgates, so that the total extent can be found by a simple sum of multiplication.

 

No doubt it was because Netherurd was church land and had no single hot-blooded owner to go raiding English cattle from across the Border, or lead his fighting men into battle when his King summoned him, that the stirring events of those troubled times passed the place by.  Had it belonged to the Knights Templar, as other parts of Kirkurd did, the story might have been very different.

 

In 1625 the prebendaries must have taken Netherurd into their own lands again, for they granted a charter of the whole property to Mark Hamilton, one of the macers of the Court of Session, which charter was confirmed by King Charles 1 in February, 1630.  From 1636 the house and lands were no longer held of the Crown, but of the Dukes of Hamilton as superiors.  When Mark Hamilton died, about 1646, he left his widow life-rented in his property, and a young daughter Alison as his heir.  The widow married James Law, by whom she had a son, John.  In 1672, widowed again she made over her life-rent rights in all eight parts of Netherurd to Alison, who seems to have sold or given it to her half-brother John Law in the same year.  By 1700 John Law had let Netherurd go to the Lawsons of Cairnmuir in West Linton parish to pay off debts he had incurred.  It is a complicated story of inheritance and sale, and mainly interesting because William Lawson built the present house of Netherurd in 1790.

 

There had been a dwelling of some sort there before, for it is marked on a map of “Tweedail with the Sherifdome of Ettric Forest called also Selkirk” in Blaeu’s Great Atlas in 1654; but there is no trace left to tell whether it was one of the usual small peeltowers, or a meaner building.