Gattonside is a small village in the

Scottish Borders The Scottish Borders is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It is bordered by West Lothian, Edinburgh, Midlothian, and East Lothian to the north, the North Sea to the east, Dumfries and Galloway to the south-west, South Lanarkshire to the we ...

. It is located north of Melrose, on the north side of the

River Tweed The River Tweed, or Tweed Water, is a river long that flows east across the Border region in Scotland and northern England. Tweed cloth derives its name from its association with the River Tweed. The Tweed is one of the great salmon rivers ...

. In 1143, the lands of Gattonside were granted to the monks of

Melrose Abbey St Mary's Abbey, Melrose is a partly ruined monastery of the Cistercian order in Melrose, Roxburghshire, in the Scottish Borders. It was founded in 1136 by Cistercian monks at the request of King David I of Scotland and was the chief house of t ...

by King David I. Gattonside was the home of modernist architect Peter Womersley (1923–1993), whose self-designed house, The Rig (1956), is now a Category B

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

. The village is linked to Melrose, on the opposite side of the river, by the 19th-century Gattonside Suspension Bridge. Built in 1826, the bridge was repaired in 1992, and is protected as a Category B

. The plantation owner, Robert Waugh of Harmony Hall was a shareholder who on his death in 1832 left his shares to the poor of Melrose.

Gattonside House

Gattonside House was originally built c.1810. James Brown (died 1816), a coffee planter in Jamaica who also owned the Bryan's Hill estate at the end of his life, lived there for some years to his death. It was then sold by his sons, James Mellor Brown and Abner William Brown. Between 1821 and 1824 Gattonside House was the home of Sir Adam Ferguson, Deputy Keeper of the Scottish Regalia and close friend of Sir Walter Scott. The Gattonside estate was bought around 1825 by George Bainbridge (died 1844), a Liverpool merchant in the West Indies trade, and the house occupied by his son George Cole Bainbridge (1788–1839). George Cole Bainbridge had married in 1808 Jane Hobson (died 1822), daughter of Richard Hobson of Shipscarr Lodge, Leeds, and had with her a large family. The house had alterations made, around the same time, by John Smith of Darnick. Sarah Graham Bainbridge (1810–1837), absentee owner of the Lindale estate in Jamaica, died at Gattonside House. She was a first cousin to George Cole Bainbridge, the daughter of John Bainbridge of Lindale; George Bainbridge the elder was a younger brother of John, as sons of Thomas Bainbridge (1717–1799). Around 1850 the house was bought by General Alexander Duncan HEICS. The house was remodelled by Sir

Robert Lorimer Sir Robert Stodart Lorimer, Order of the British Empire, KBE (4 November 1864 – 13 September 1929) was a prolific Scotland, Scottish architect and furniture designer noted for his sensitive restorations of historic houses and castles, f ...

in 1914 and listed in 1971.

References

{{authority control Villages in the Scottish Borders