Hawkshaw, Peeblesshire
Hawkshaw was once a village beside the River Tweed two miles south-west of Tweedsmuir in Peeblesshire. Today all that remains is a pair of semi-detached houses. The site of the original village lies beneath the waters of the Fruid Reservoir, which was constructed in 1963, flooding the valley. Hawkshaw is remembered as the ancestral family home of the Porteous family, dating from at least 1439.
A fortified tower stood on a hill overlooking the village for hundreds of years, although little remains of it now, its site being marked with a cairn built from stones from the original tower; this was probably one of a series of mediæval peel towers, small fortified keeps built in the trouble Border country, as defensive houses or towers for signal fires. A line of these towers was built in the 1430s across the Tweed valley from Berwick to its source (a few miles from Hawkshaw) as a response to the dangers of invasion: that at Hawkshaw was one of over two dozen in Peeblesshire alone.
Roman artefacts have also been found in the vicinity, indicating continuity of habitation in the area for some hundreds of years.
Members of the Porteous family gatjer at the cairn from all over the world every five years: the September 2005 gathering attracted seventy family members from five continents, and a short religious service was followed by the laying of a wreath at the cairn, in memory of all fallen soldiers of the family.
