Talla
Reading this in Edinburgh with a cuppa? If so, there’s a good chance the water you are drinking came from one of the three reservoirs which sit in the upper reaches of The Tweed and Yarrow rivers. These are Talla, Fruid and Megget. Of the three it is the oldest, Talla, which is of most historical interest and will form the main subject of todays blog. That isn’t to say there isn’t anything worth saying about Fruid and Megget - I’ve always got something to say!
Fruid
Fruid reservoir was built in the late 1960’s, the dam flooding the lonely Fruid water valley. Fruid is one of the first tributaries of the Tweed and access to this quiet area of sheep farms is via Tweedsmuir and Menzion. The 3.3km long reservoir was created to supplement its larger and older neighbour Talla and of the three it is the least visited. Still, should you decide to take a trip up there you may be rewarded with spotting an Osprey or Golden Eagle and there are great hikes which can take you to Hart Fell or Gameshope. Excavations in the flooded valley during times of drought have revealed that people have called this place home since prehistoric times. The remains of these early settlers dwellings as well as the 20th century farmhouses drowned by the dam are hidden away when the reservoir is full, however Fruid is worth a visit during a long hot summer if only to see how surprisingly shallow much of it is.
Megget
Megget is the new kid on the block and like your author is a child of the 1980’s - it turns 40 next year. Indeed, one of my favourite childhood memories is being driven here with classmates from St. Ronan’s School, all under the watchful eye of our Headmaster Alastair Campbell, who later became a friend and is much missed after his death in 2013. We were given a tour of this incredible structure which, at the time, felt a bit like being given access to Zorin’s underground lair in ‘A View to a Kill’ - again, we were kids and this was the 1980’s… Given this was at least 30 years ago my memories are hazy - what I’d give to have that sort of access now! The reservoir is again for Edinburgh’s drouthy neebors and pipes take the water through the hillside to Manor and north to be stored in Gladhouse and Glencorse reservoirs nearer the Capital. Anything I can say about Megget will be more adequately and entertainingly told in this wonderful short film which I highly recommend you give a watch.
Talla
On to Talla then, the oldest of the three reservoirs which sit attractively between the Tweedsmuir and Moffat hills. Construction began in 1897 with the lodge house (Victoria Lodge) being built first. This was to serve as an HQ for the Edinburgh Water Company during the construction. No doubt the bosses liked to live in some comfort - the house is beautiful, and stands in some contrast to the living conditions of the men who built the reservoir, of whom more later. Named after the Queen at the time, by the time the reservoir was completed in 1905 Victoria was brown bread but it’s a nice local reminder of her, like the parks in Peebles and Innerleithen as well as Selkirk’s town hall. Down the years the lodge has served as a country house B&B as well as private residence, the role it currently has.
Talla Reservoir spillway, Victoria Lodge on the right
To help transport materials to this relatively remote spot a railway line was built and operated for almost a decade. The North British Railway built an 8 mile long spur from the Symington, Biggar and Broughton line to serve the needs of this vast Victorian construction in terms of workers and materials. To this day you can trace the remains of the old line in Upper Tweeddale. There were two stops, Crook Halt and Victoria Lodge. Crook Halt was it would seem primarily to take workers to The Crook Inn for beer after a brutally hard days labour. The Talla line closed when the reservoir opened in 1905, and the full line lasted until the 1950’s. The main feature of the closed line today is Neidpath viaduct and tunnel, well worth a visit.
In the late 1800’s Health and Safety at work was not a concept familiar to many. Conditions (and pay) for manual workers were shocking, and this is reflected in the number of workers who died in the great Victorian building projects. 73 were killed building the Forth Bridge and it’s believed 500 workers were killed each year during the 1880’s and 90’s as railways and huge infrastructure spread over the UK and Ireland.
As we can see from this memorial stone in Tweedsmuir Kirkyard, a couple of miles from Talla, more than 30 unnamed workmen were buried there. While over 30 seems unbelievably high, I believe that not all of these deaths were caused by accidents but there was also a number died of natural causes, no doubt attributable to the horrendous pay and conditions they received. It’s worth shining a light on the Irish Navvies who helped build Britain’s industrial landscape including these vast (and dangerous) Victorian engineering projects. The navvies started to come across in the mid 19th century, a cheap workforce for the great engineers of the day such as Brunel or Bazalgette. Many of them were driven out of Ireland by the terrible poverty and famine suffered on the island. Britain at this time was industrialising on a massive scale and these often highly skilled men started to build canals (or ‘navigations’ - this is where Navvy comes from) before the railway took over in a huge way. So, the Waverley line from Edinburgh to Carlisle and the defunct line that runs through the Tweed Valley would all have had Irish hands on them. It’s fair to say that our ancestral Scots didn’t give this massive new labour force the best welcome. They were often seen as an unwelcome presence, riots and fighting are recorded throughout The Borders. Working as they did in dangerous and filthy environment they were often portrayed as dirty and as they, with some justification, enjoyed a drink on the small time they got away from work they were often crudely stereotyped as drunks. Throw into the mix the strong Roman Catholic faith which was very unusual in an almost universally Protestant Borders and you have the ingredients for some very unappealing anti Irish sentiment in Scotland. Thankfully in the 21st century this has in my experience gone but some stereotypes sadly remain and we shouldn’t forget this period in history, or the men who came here, often with their families, to help build industrial Scotland and Great Britain. The anger felt at the conditions experienced by migrant workers building stadia in Qatar for the FIFA World Cup shows that our attitudes to workers welfare have thankfully moved on.
A trip to Talla today is a peaceful and picturesque one. The road from Tweedsmuir to Cappercleuch is a fantastic wee tour on single track roads and forms the centre piece of many cycling events with the stiff climb from Talla Linfoots to Megget Stane proving a stern examination of skill and fitness. This whole area feels like the Highlands of the South, and I love it. The best way I can explain this is to cast my mind back to the pretty grim days of May 2020, when I hadn’t left Innerleithen for two months, and all I wanted was to do was sit at the top Of Talla Linn and enjoy my favourite view. It was the first place I went when we finally were allowed out again.
