Bemersyde House

Bemersyde House is a historic house in Roxburghshire, Scotland.

The nearest towns are Newtown St. Boswells, Melrose, and Dryburgh. The William Wallace Statue, Bemersyde is on the Bemersyde Estate.

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Bemersyde

Bemersyde is a hamlet in the Mertoun parish of Berwickshire, in the Scottish Borders. It sits on the left bank of the River Tweed, about three miles east of Melrose. Bemersyde House, the ancestral home of the Haig family, is the most notable landmark with parts dating to the 16th century.

Landmark Neighbourhood

Statue of William Wallace, Bemersyde

The William Wallace Statue near the grounds of the Bemersyde estate, near Melrose in the Scottish Borders is a statue commemorating William Wallace. It was commissioned by David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan, and it protected as a category B listed building. The statue was made of red sandstone by John Smith of Darnick and was erected in 1814. It stands 31 feet (9.4 m) high and depicts Wallace looking over the River Tweed. In 1991, the William Wallace Trust ,which owns the statue and surrounding land and car park raised funds for a renovation which was carried out by Bob Heath and Graciella Glenn Ainsworth. At Wallace's feet reads the inscription: Below the statue of Wallace, as part of the same construction by John Smith is a smaller statue of a funeral style urn inscribed as follows: Close by are Brotherstone Hill, Dryburgh Abbey, the Leaderfoot Viaduct, Newtown St. Boswells, Scott's View, and the Smailholm Tower.

Historic Site Landmark

Scott's View

Scott's View is a viewpoint in the Scottish Borders, overlooking the valley of the River Tweed, which is reputed to be one of the favourite views of Sir Walter Scott. The viewpoint can be located directly from a minor road leading south from Earlston just off the A68 and by travelling north from the village of St. Boswells up the slope of Bemersyde Hill. The view is around 3 miles east of Melrose. The view is to the west, and is dominated by the three peaks of the Eildon Hills. To the south west the view is extensive and open, taking in rolling farmland beyond the village of Newtown St Boswells. Immediately below the viewer is a meander of the Tweed itself, enclosing a peninsula of land on which stood the ancient monastery of Old Melrose, referred to in Bede, where St Boisil welcomed the young St Cuthbert to train following his vision of St Aidan of Lindisfarne in 651ad. Often a fly fisherman can be seen fishing the river. To the north west the viewer looks along the Tweed valley to Melrose. Towards the north-west the viewer can see the Black Hill, a Marilyn near Earlston. Immediately below the view point, on the cliffs above the River Tweed, is one of the few remaining fragments of semi-natural woodland in the area. The oak trees that remain are the descendants of trees used to supply wood for the manufacture of coffins in the area. According to a popular story, Sir Walter Scott stopped at this point so often on the way to his home at Abbotsford, that his horses would halt without command. After his death in 1832, his funeral cortège passed this way en route to his burial at Dryburgh Abbey, and his horses stopped at his favourite view to allow their master a last look at the Borders landscape. In fact, although the funeral procession did pass this way, the halt was due to 'some accident'. The William Wallace Statue in the grounds of Bemersyde House is a larger than life statue of Scotland's hero, Sir William Wallace.

Hiking Landmark

Dryburgh Abbey Bridge

Dryburgh Abbey Bridge was a cable-stayed footbridge of significant historical interest near Dryburgh Abbey, in the Borders of Scotland. It connected the villages of Dryburgh and St. Boswells (part of a ribbon of settlements, including Newtown St. Boswells) across the River Tweed. A crossing had existed here for centuries, originally with a ferry service. The bridge had been commissioned by David Stewart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan, an eccentric Scottish aristocrat who died in Dryburgh. It was 79 metres (259 ft) long. At the time, the cable-stayed type of bridge was rapidly becoming more popular. The Earl opened the completed bridge on 1 August 1817, but in January 1818 it collapsed. One of the designers, Thomas Smith, said of the collapse that due to "high wind increasing to [a] perfect hurricane, it carried off [the] chain bridge, leaving only the fastenings and supports, the work of half a year, demolished in an hour...." After a redesign, a replacement was built, but this too collapsed in 1838, by which time the Earl had been dead for several years. The 1818 collapse, together with that of a slightly shorter bridge across the Saale River in Germany in 1824, caused the reputation of cable-stayed bridges to decline rapidly, and despite a history dating back to the 17th century, the design fell from favour for several decades, with combination cable-stayed and suspended-deck suspension bridges (such as the 1883 Brooklyn Bridge) gaining favour. Later research in the 1930s, and experience with reconstruction after the Second World War, demonstrated that with sound design, pure cable-stayed bridges are viable, and the first modern design, the Strömsund Bridge in Sweden, was completed in 1955. Very shortly after the 1818 collapse (between 1819 and 1820) another bridge, the Union Bridge, was built some 40 kilometres (25 mi) downstream. It was an iron suspended-deck suspension bridge, the longest in the world upon its completion. A third Dryburgh Suspension Bridge was built in 1872 to replace the 1838 loss.

Bridge Historic Site