Tweedsmuir

Oliver Castle was a medieval tower house, located in upper Tweedsdale in the Scottish Borders. The site of the hillfort known as Oliver Castle is to the north of the village of Tweedsmuir, although the site of the tower house is less certain. Mentioned in a document of c.1200, it was originally part of the line of peel towers along the Tweed Valley. It was replaced in the seventeenth century by a house, which was itself replaced in the late 18th century by the present Oliver House. For most of its existence the property has been owned by members of the Tweedie family.

Menzion, sometimes Minzion is a small settlement in southern Scotland near Tweedsmuir in the Scottish Borders, in the valley of the River Tweed.

Victoria Lodge railway station served the village of Tweedsmuir, Scottish Borders, Scotland from 1897 to 1905 on the Symington, Biggar and Broughton Railway and the Talla Railway.

The Crook Inn is an inn in the Scottish Borders, near the village of Tweedsmuir on the A701 road between Broughton and Moffat. It is one of many claimants to be the oldest inn in Scotland. It was licensed in 1604. Robert Burns wrote "Willie Wastle's Wife" there. It has served as a coaching inn, a Post Office and source of employment. In the early 20th century a halt was built on the Talla Railway to serve it. The inn attracted much passing trade from the labourers who were building the Talla Reservoir, which the railway was built to serve. The hotel was refurbished in 1936 in the then-current Art Deco style, and retains many of the features installed at that time. It has also, over the years, become a place of pilgrimage for members of the Porteous family, visiting the site of nearby Hawkshaw, their former ancestral home on the hills above Tweeddale and the Fruid Reservoir. A reunion of Porteous family members was traditionally held at the inn every five years, attracting visitors from all over the world. The proposals to convert the historic inn into apartments met with much local opposition and the plans were rejected by the councillors of Tweeddale West in March 2008. Following refusal the present owner lodged an appeal with the Department for Planning and Environmental Appeals (DPEA), a department of the Scottish Government. On 2 February 2009, following an appeal hearing on 18 November 2008, a decision notice was issued by the DPEA which finally dismissed the appeal. This meant that planning permission was not granted for the change of use of the historic Crook Inn to residential accommodation, giving scope for the inn to reopen once again if it could be purchased. In January 2013, after a lengthy campaign by the Tweedsmuir community to secure ownership of the Crook Inn in order to reinvigorate it, the Tweedsmuir Community Company raised the asking price of £160,000 and bought the property. The Tweedsmuir Community Company obtained a Development Grant from Big Lottery in 2014 to redesign and renovate the historic Crook Inn, with designs undertaken by WTArchitecture, Edinburgh. The plans obtained planning permission in 2015. The rest of the land at the site was purchased in 2015 with grants from the Scottish Land Fund, SSE Clyde Border and the Infinis Glenkerie Community Funds. Grants are being sought to create a multi-faceted Crook Inn Community Hub to serve the Upper Tweed community and tourism. Since then nothing has happened and the building continues to deteriorate. It is listed on the Buildings at Risk Register for Scotland.

Fruid Water is a river in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland. The valley it occupies has been dammed to form the Fruid Reservoir. The river is a tributary of the Tweed, with a confluence about 2 km upstream of Tweedsmuir. The river has a catchment area of 23.7 km2, and a mean flow rate of 0.66 cubic metres per second leaving the reservoir.

The A701 is a major road in Scotland that runs from Dumfries to Edinburgh.

Hawkshaw is a pair of semi-detached houses on the River Tweed, two miles southwest of Tweedsmuir in the Scottish Borders. Historically part of Peeblesshire, the original village of Hawkshaw was destroyed when the Fruid Reservoir was constructed in 1963, and is remembered as the ancestral family home of the Porteous family, dating from at least 1439. A fortified tower stood on a hill overlooking the village for hundreds of years, although little remains of it now, its site being marked with a cairn built from stones from the original tower; this was probably one of a series of so-called Peel towers, small fortified keeps built along the Scottish Borders, intended as watch towers where signal fires could be lit to warn of approaching danger. A line of these towers was built in the 1430s across the Tweed valley from Berwick to its source (a few miles from Hawkshaw) as a response to the dangers of invasion from the English Borders. Hawkshaw was one of over two dozen of these in Peeblesshire alone. Roman artefacts have also been found in the vicinity, pre-dating the tower and indicating continuity of habitation in the area for some hundreds of years. The cairn plays host to a gathering of Porteous family members from all over the world every five years. The September 2005 gathering attracted seventy family members from five continents, and a short religious service was followed by the laying of a wreath at the cairn, in memory of all fallen Porteous servicemen and women.

Talla Reservoir, located a mile from Tweedsmuir, Scottish Borders, Scotland, is an earth-work dam fed by Talla Water. The reservoir is supplemented by water from the nearby Fruid Reservoir. It was opened in 1905. To assist in bringing the materials for its construction, the Talla Railway was built.

Polmood is a small settlement in southern Scotland near Tweedsmuir in the Scottish Borders, in the valley of the River Tweed. Polmood was for many centuries the centre of the Hunter family in the lowlands and the earliest record was a charter dated 1057 to Norman Hunter of Polmood. It was once a Peel tower, part of a chain of beacons running down the Tweed Valley. At the end of the nineteenth century the temporary Talla Railway was built close to Polmont to deliver building materials during the construction of the Talla Reservoir.The estate was acquired by Mitchell Mitchell-Thomson, an Edinburgh businessman and politician who took his baronetcy title from the Peeblesshire estate of Polmood which he had acquired before 1916. Polmood is commemorated in "The Piper of Polmood" a piece based on old Scottish folk-tunes by Victor Babin.

Fruid is a small reservoir in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland, UK, near Menzion. It is formed by damming the Fruid Water, and supplements the contents of Talla Reservoir, forming part of the water supply for Edinburgh. The construction of the reservoir flooded the valley, inundating several farmhouses including Hawkshaw. Playwright Peter Moffat had ancestors that previously lived in the area now covered by water and cites the location as inspiration for The Village.

Stanhope is a small settlement in the Scottish Borders region. It is situated in the parish of Drumelzier in Peeblesshire, in the valley of the River Tweed. The Murray family acquired and established a Barony at Stanhope in 1634 as part of an estate that extended into Tweedsmuir. The settlement consists of a cluster of buildings by Stanhope Burn. It was the property of Sir David Murray, nephew of John Murray of Broughton who was active in the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. As a result of his participation the Murray estates at Broughton, Stobo and Stanhope were confiscated (as were those other Jacobite sympathisers) and in 1761 it was still in the hands of creditors. Stanhope and Stobo were sold by order of the Court of Session by deed in 1767 to a James Montgomery. Many properties on the Stanhope estate were tenanted by members of the Tweedie family with whom the Murrays had at various times fought or intermarried.