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Welcome to the Walkerburn Community website   

Walkerburn is a small Scottish Borders community on the A72 between Peebles and Galashiels.  The village has about 450 homes and a population of over 650 permanent residents.  It is set amidst the beautiful Tweed Valley, has a village shop/Post Office, a coffee shop, a primary school and a number of local businesses in the old mill buildings.

Henry BallantyneHenry Ballantyne bought land to build a tweed mill here in 1846. The village was custom built, designed by 'Eccentric' Pilkington with houses for the workers and for the Ballantyne family set on the north side of the Tweed valley. The new village came into being in 1854, taking its name from the Walker Burn. Shops opened, a school was built and the railway arrived in 1866.Walkerburn Public Hall

 

The Good Templar Movement built a village hall in 1877 and this is still in use. The Church of Scotland was built in 1883 and the Rugby Club founded in 1884, as the 25th member of the Scottish Rugby Union.  The church building closed in 2009, it contains stained glass windows which are ‘listed’ but it is currently not in use.  A French style ‘pissoir’ was installed as a public toilet on the A72 beside the bridge over the Walker Burn. It also is no longer in use!

Following the decline of the textile industry in the area, Walkerburn had a period as a European Transitional Regeneration Area from 2002. The Walkerburn Community Development Trust was set up in 2005 during the final year the 3-year period as a regeneration area. The aim of the Trust is to develop the regeneration work started over the previous two years through various projects. It is likely that these projects will  centre around the tourism industry to take advantage of Walkerburn’s position on the banks of the Tweed and in the middle of the Tweed Valley Forest Park. The overall aim of the Trust is to serve the community by helping to make Walkerburn a great place to work, rest and play.  The Trust took part in a Community Powerdown project from 2009 to March 2011.

The project was part of a wider cross-community project involving 27 communities across Scotland with Community Energy Scotland (CES) and the Development Trust Association Scotland (DTAS). It was funded by the Climate Challenge Fund.

Powerdown logo It is commonly accepted that a more sustainable approach is required if we are to continue to develop and enjoy a good quality of life. The Powerdown project seeks to help by assisting communities in finding a lower energy, lower carbon future that will help them to develop sustainably.

It would be easy to see the process as a negative one where we all stop or reduce what we are doing. While it’s true that we should each seek to reduce our carbon footprint, for the good of the environment and our future, it is much more about doing things just a little bit differently.  One of the successes of the project was the establishment of allotments in the village on a site owned by Scottish Borders Housing Association and leased to the Development Trust.

In 2010, the village took part in a project funded by 'The Bridge' to find out what the community wanted to change and to draw up a community  plan.  This was published in June 2010.

 

This page was last updated on 22 May 2013