Scott is all around us….

‘O great and gallant Scott’

You cannot move in the Borders without bumping into Sir Walter Scott one way or another and around Galashiels in particular. One only has to look along Channel Street to find a sandstone relief in the building of the old Co-op bearing his profile and his motto ‘watch Weel’ and a profusion of streets are named after him and his novels. See how many Abbotsford, Waverley, Ivanhoe and Scott streets, avenues, places and crescents you can find across the Border towns!

What is fascinating looking at the proliferation of Scott memorials in the Borders, is that they span over 250 years, with the latest memorial, a giant mural off Bank Street in Galashiels, only unveiled in 2022.

It began when shortly after Scott’s death in 1832, the ‘Gentlemen of the County ‘ clubbed together and erected a large statue of Scott right outside the courthouse in Selkirk where he presided as sheriff for 30 years. The ‘Shirra’ as he was affectionately known, had made his mark on the local area.

Fast forward a few decades, and on the occasion of the centenary of Scott’s death in 1932, John Buchan, fellow writer and a biographer of Scott’s, unveiled a memorial to Scott in Cornmill Square at the foot of St John Street.

It was commissioned by the Abbotsford Scott Fellowship and designed by Thomas Clapperton, a prolific sculptor from Galashiels. Patricia Maxwell-Scott, who with her sister Jean were the last direct descendants of Scott who lived at Abbotsford, remembered being at the unveiling ceremony aged only 11 years old. “… and I was quite young at the time and luckily John Buchan made the speech, but I had to unveil the bust of Scott in Galashiels and I remember very well wearing a black and white shepherd plaid cloak and skirt, very large, because my stepmother’s idea was that we should have all our clothes much bigger than we needed because we would grow into them. “

The black and white shepherd’s plaid pattern, popularised and worn by Scott, is still echoed in the town colours of Galashiels today.

Scott is etched into the local landscape like no one else, from Scott’s View to Marmion’s Brasserie.

For those living locally, he cut through to the essence of what it meant to be a Borderer. Maybe because he was, as the lettering around the 1932 memorial remembers,

“The last of all the bards (was he), who sung of border chivalry”