Victoria Halls

About Victoria Halls

It was completed two years later in Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee year. The nearby impressive fountain, an example of Victorian flamboyance, was transported from the old Philiphaugh House when it was being demolished and has recently been renovated.
The statue in front of the building is one of the most famous and evocative in the Borders: The Flodden Memorial. The renowned Borders sculptor Thomas J Clapperton was commissioned in 1913 (the 400th anniversary of the Battle of Flodden) to design the bronze Fletcher Memorial, dedicated to the Selkirk men who fell in the conflict.
According to local legend, Fletcher was the only man out of eighty to return to his hometown after the battle. He arrived carrying a captured English flag and, unable to speak the terrible news of the defeat, he raised the flag high above his head before sweeping it low, like a scythe, to show that all were slain. This poignant act is remembered every year at the Selkirk Common Riding in the final ceremony of the Casting of the Colours, when the Standard Bearers in turn take their flags and cast them in a prescribed pattern to the old tune of “Up wi’ the Souters o’ Selkirk”. After the last flag is cast, the lament “The Liltin” is played, known throughout the world as “The Flowers of the Forest.”
From the statue, take a right and immediately on your right at the road junction is another memorial by Clapperton from 1931. It commemorates the local poet James Brown and the quotation is from his best-known work “Selkirk after Flodden.” In the widow’s lament, she says, “Then I turn to my sister Jean, and my arms about her twine.”