No debate about it: How 50 square miles of mayhem shaped Scotland
Writer details history of most-contested land
As he looks down his garden, Graham Robb could not imagine a more tranquil scene.
The river at the bottom, bubbling gently, marks the border, the dividing line between England and Scotland and, in the cold, bright calm of a spring day there is no hint of the tumult that has gone before.
But when acclaimed author Graham made the move north to be closer to his Scots family, he had no idea of the blood- soaked history of the land where he settled.
His Cumbrian farmhouse is right in the heart of a territory that was, at the height of its notoriety, the most dangerous in Britain.
But it’s a past, and indeed an area, that few know much about. Now Graham hopes to put that right with a new book called The Debatable Land.
That’s the name given to the 50- square- mile area in the little bulge north-east of Gretna.
“I was moving back from Oxford and my wife Margaret and I found this place by chance,” said Graham, 59.
“It was previously owned by Nicholas Ridley, an MP in Margaret Thatcher’s government, and it still has a red panic button downstairs. The property is virtually surrounded by the Liddel Water and we own a part of the border.
“It’s a very isolated, scattered community with the closest main place in Sco t land Langholm, about 10 miles a w a y, and L o n g t ow n in England.”
G r a h a m’s first startling insight into the land of which he only really knew the name came via a c h a n c e encounter with a farmer.
“I ’d h e a rd m e n t i o n of the Debatable Land but I really knew little of it,” he said.
“The moment I knew I’d have to write a book was when I met this man who said they’d found something in front of the house, which went back centuries. When I asked what, he said it was a row of bodies.”
The bodies belonged to Reivers, the infamous horse and cattle rustlers, who launched raids on both sides of the border until the late 17 Century.
Graham said: “The Reivers didn’t go to church and they didn’t have graveyards so they buried the dead on their doorstep.
“I asked if he’d reported it and he looked around as if a policeman might be hiding somewhere and said he’d harrowed them under. He basically destroyed the evidence as he didn’t want any trouble.
“I knew then there was so much of a story untold.”
When he started his research, Graham learned that the Debatable Land had, for centuries, been a country in itself that was neither Scotland nor England, and was a very precise area.
For centuries no one was allowed to live on it and it was only to be used
The Debatable Land