Old Redhead: Saving an abandoned village that vanished from the landscape

The spot where the abandoned settlement of Old Redhead, near Galashiels, once stood. PIC: Historic Environment Scotland.

There is not much that remains of the deserted settlement near Galashiels, where at least five houses once stood and between 10 and 20 adults are believed to have lived and worked on the slopes high above the Caddon Water.

It is known that people lived here from at least the mid-15th Century with it left behind by its residents in 1840.

Today, what is left are the rough outlines of their homes as well as what was possibly a large enclosure for animals. Banks of earth mark out what were probably the land boundaries of the tenants, who likely rented their smallholdings from the powerful Pringle family.

Now, these remnants of the past are being protected by the future after they were designated as a scheduled monument by Historic Environment Scotland.

Rory McDonald, senior designations officer at the organisation, said Old Redhead was a very rare example of a deserted medieval farm settlement in the lowlands and deserved to be protected given the potential information it held about the past.

He said: “Its a fascinating place. It’s a snapshot of life on one of these rural settlements. At one point, there would have been more of these places but they will now be under existing farms or cleared away.

Six abadoned communities of Scotland

"It is very unusual to find one of these and you are looking at hundreds of years of history abandoned.

"When you are there, you realise you are in a place where people lived, worked, cried, loved – all the range of human emotions that we have.”

Homes at Old Redhead would have been made from timber frames and packed with a mix of clay, dung and straw.

Exchequer Rolls showed that sheep were kept at Old Redhead from the mid 15th Century with barley and oats probably also grown, along with vegetables, Mr McDonald said:

"If you couldn’t grow it or raise it, you went hungry,” he added.

Mr McDonald said it was “highly likely” that the settlement was abandoned when tenants were cleared from land as agricultural practices changed.

He added: "It seems to have gone out of use when farms were consolidated. A lot of these rural settlements disappeared as they were moved to bigger farms or it could be the case that they moved into Galashiels to take up work in the mills.”

Mr McDonald said the remains of Old Redhead could unlock valuable information about the life and times of those who lived there.

He added: “If someone came along with a sensible worked out plan to have a scientific excavation done on the site, I suspect you would have a lot of information about how these peope lived, such as what they were farming and what their diet was. I would imagine a lot of information would be buried here.

"It really is a fantastic little site and it does have the potential to tell us so much about this rural settlement and the people who lived there.”

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