Tweedbank Railway Station

About Tweedbank Railway Station

Positioned between Galashiels and Melrose, Tweedbank is gradually growing into its own skin. It is a new village first built in the 1970's with a patchwork of housing added on over the years. The original concept of a planned settlement carefully landscaped into its surroundings has held true. And what a landscape! Tweedbank is encircled by the River Tweed, a stone's throw from Abbotsford, at the foot of the Eildons and in the heart of the country beloved by Sir Walter Scott. The historic town of Melrose is two miles to the east and is well practised in pleasing visitors. Tweedbank is your starting point for romantic adventures into the Borders - watch out for minstrels, heroes, reivers and wild bezonians!
The Tweed is about 97 miles long and at Tweedbank the river is still winding its way through the hills before it reaches St Boswells and the wider glaciated landscape of the drumlin fields. Here it begins a more sedate progress down to the coast at Berwick-upon-Tweed some thirty miles away from Tweedbank.

The Tweed is one of the most famous salmon rivers in the world. Thousands of salmon make the journey up the Tweed every year as they return to breed in the river in which they were born. The best time to see this sight is in the autumn when the river is high and the best place to see it is at the Philiphaugh Salmon Viewing Centre just outside Selkirk. You will need to take the no 95 bus from Galashiels. (See the information on Galashiels for more information).

When walking along the river, it is easy to spot all kinds of river birds including, dippers and herons. The wild flowers in spring and summer are a delight as the banks are not heavily grazed by sheep or cows.

Most visitors arriving by train at Tweedbank will have their sights on places further afield, a visit to Abbotsford or to the historic town of Melrose, or perhaps a long distance walk to the Border Abbeys or to Lindisfarne. These are all established destinations with many excellent guides but this is a guide to the station areas and Tweedbank is the terminus of the Borders Railway and deserves our attention here.

This village grew out of difficult times in the late 60s and early 70s when the combination of an economic recession, the decline in textile manufacturing and the closure of the railway led to a need to regenerate the central Borders. A government white paper put forward a plan to create a new settlement of about 1000 houses on farmland between Galashiels and Melrose as a "trigger development".

The plan took nearly ten years to come to fruition because of land issues and because the choice of site was controversial to many who wanted to preserve the rural beauty of a place so closely linked to Sir Walter Scott and so near to the River Tweed and Melrose. However, economic imperatives won and the Scottish Special Housing Association were contracted to build 240 houses and work started in 1974. Luckily for Tweedbank, the Chief Technical Officer of SSHA at the time was Harold Ernest Buteux who believed in housing being integrated into the landscape and contrary to architectural trends of the time did not advocate high density and high rise developments. The result is a pleasant development around curving streets and cul de sacs with plenty of trees, green spaces and pathways.

After this first phase, expansion continued slowly but steadily. A marshy area called Gun Knowe was dug out to create Gun Knowe Loch and this now forms the nucleus of the village. Some of the buildings of the original Tweedbank farm were retained and renovated to become the community centre. Tweedbank has continued to expand even into the twenty-first century and it is now in a position to attract people, services, light industry and amenities in its own right. It is now even attracting "attractions" with the plan that the Great Tapestry of Scotland is to be permanently housed here.

As with all towns and villages in the Borders, Tweedbank has an annual community gathering led by appointed principals. For a young village, it is fitting that the Tweedbank Fair celebrations in May are led by primary school children as the Tweedbank Lad and Lass with their two attendants each. The village cannot expand much further as the landscape around it is protected but the development is now no longer concerned with bricks and mortar but with the people living there; Tweedbank knows that it is now a community and not just a collection of houses.