Qualla: Hawick

Hawick: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Postdlf, CC BY-SA 3.0. James Murray, the man who would eventually edit the Oxford English Dictionary, grew up here. In the 1860s, while still working as a local schoolteacher in Hawick, he was already chasing down the origin of his town's name, a question that would set the methodological pattern for his life's work on the OED. He concluded that Hawick came from Old English, first recorded in 1167, meaning 'enclosed farm' or 'enclosed hamlet.' That a town in the Scottish Borders should bear an English name speaks to the layered, contested history of this country, where the line between Scotland and England has shifted over centuries and where the people on either side have always shared more with each other than either kingdom liked to admit.

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Image: Postdlf | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hawick: Furthest from the Sea

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Hawick sits in the east Southern Uplands, ten miles south-west of Jedburgh and just under nine miles south-south-east of Selkirk, at the confluence of the Slitrig Water with the River Teviot. It is one of the furthest towns from the sea in all of Scotland, marooned in the heart o...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Hawick: Knit Town

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Dawes, CC BY-SA 2.0. By the late seventeenth century Hawick was already growing. The Industrial Revolution and the Victorian era turned it into a textile town. The Scottish Borders specialised in knitting and weaving, working with tweed and cashmere, and Hawick became internationally known for fine k...

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Image: Martin Dawes | CC BY-SA 2.0

Hawick: Knights and Sheriffs

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steelecf - Please Credit Danielle Steele for Photo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The history is older than the wool. The west end of town contains the Motte, the remains of a likely twelfth-century Scoto-Norman motte-and-bailey castle, the earthwork foundation on which a wooden keep would once have stood. On 20 June 1342, Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie was hol...

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Image: Steelecf - Please Credit Danielle Steele for Photo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hawick: Common Riding

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coldupnorth, CC BY-SA 4.0. The defining civic event of Hawick is the Common Riding, held every June, the oldest of the Border Common Ridings. The tradition commemorates a single morning in 1514. The Battle of Flodden the previous year had killed most of the able-bodied men of Hawick along with King James I...

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Image: Coldupnorth | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hawick: A Bowl of Hawick Balls

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathan Thacker, CC BY-SA 2.0. Hawick has its own confectionery, its own dialect, its own rugby tradition. Hawick Balls are hard-boiled mint sweets with a peppermint and brown sugar flavour, sold in the town's shops in twists of paper. The local accent and dialect, sometimes called Teri or Hawick Scots, is dis...

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Image: Jonathan Thacker | CC BY-SA 2.0