Mary Johnstone and Peggy Ferguson share their memories of Peebles in the 1920s and 30s which were recorded in the early 2000s and are reproduced here by kind permission of The Tweeddale Society from their 2005 publication ‘Peebles Remembered’. Whitie’s Books and Crafts in Peebles have copies.
Mary,
We swam in the Tweed. It was deeper then. You know where the Red Rock is. That was Minnie’s pool. We called it the Minister’s pool because the Minister stayed in Lee Lodge. We had a diving board on the rock, but when after the floods the Tweed changed, they took it away because there wasn’t any depth.
Peggy
They thought that the Minnie’s pool was dangerous because there’s a terrible amount of rocks. That was the reason they took the swimming board away, because at that time there was that lad that was swept under. It was the current. It was this side of the castle at the bend of the river. There was a big swimming pool always there. You used to stand on Tweed Bridge and you saw the salmon going up the cauld [weir].
And there were a lot of poachers. Oh, the poachers. It was hereditary. The Earl of Wemyss the castle belongs to him. There was a bailiff, but they were well sussed. There was somebody watching. When the whistle went, they were away. Scott, you mind him. He said the bailiff never caught him because he took a bit of pipe with him and if he heard the bailiffs he just submerged with the pipe in his mouth. He was a human submarine. Put himself out of the danger zone.
Mary.
They climbed trees. Oh, you have no idea of the tricks. A lot of campers used to come from Edinburgh and camp at Whitebridge and when it was time for the salmon, they said, you catch them and we’ll come through on a Sunday for them. We had a lot in our wash house. You had to hide them because the bailiffs could come after them.
