Hawkshaw, Scottish Borders

Hawkshaw is the ancestral family home of the Porteous family on the River Tweed just two miles southwest of Tweedsmuir in the Scottish Borders and dating from at least 1439. Historically part of Peeblesshire, the original village of Hawkshaw was destroyed when the Fruid Reservoir was constructed in 1963.

A fortified tower stood on a hill overlooking the village for hundreds of years, although nothing remains of it now, its site being marked with a cairn, built from stones from the original tower, which plays host to a gathering of Porteous family members 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 Porteous servicemen and women.

The tower was probably one of a series of so-called Peel towers, small fortified keeps built along the Scottish Borders, intended as watch towers where signal fires could be lit to warn of approaching danger.

A line of these towers was built in the 1430s across the Tweed valley from Berwick to its source, as a response to the dangers of invasion from the English Borders. Hawkshaw was one of over two dozen of these in Peeblesshire alone.