Extracts from conversations recorded at Dovecot Court, Peebles, April 2026. Jessie, Maureen, Sheila, Margaret, Elizabeth, Fiona, Sonia and Geoffrey. As part of the Tweed Stories project, oral historian, Harry Henderson, conducted interviews with residents, relatives and staff, capturing memories of being caught in a flood when the banks burst.
I worked there when I was in my twenties, the Peebles Nursing Home. It was just down at the Tweed Green. It had been raining a lot. I remember the banks burst and it flooded and we had to get all these people out of the home and up a hill up to the Green Tree Hotel. We had to try and get everybody up to safety. It was about the afternoon, the waters just started flooding and it was coming up in the green so fast and we had to evacuate them and put them upstairs as well on the second floor. It was just a carry on. I think it was. You know, just getting everyone to safety. It was flooded everywhere. It was quite a job.
I’ve been on a bus coming through flooded water in the Tweed. A School bus. I’m a ‘gutterbluid,’ [someone] born in Peebles, but I didn’t grow up in Peebles. I was brought up in a wee village called Skirling, same place as ma auntie. And my mum’s family stayed in Peebles. We used to travel on the school bus to come to the high school. I remember it was flooded at Dawyck. But then that’s quite a normal place for flood water when Tweed did overflow, it was really bad. But when I got up over Dreva it was flooded at Broughton I mean it did happen a few times. So I just got through. Maybe less water in it now than there used to be.
Photo: Jim Barton.
