Elliot Newsletter Spring
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Redheugh, Newcastleton, ELLIOT CLAN SOCIETY Roxburghshire TD9 0SB www.elliotclan.com www.elliotclanusa.com New slett er www.elliotclanaustralia.org www.visitnewcastleton.com No. 80 – Spring 2018 Chief: Margaret Eliott of Redheugh “Here’s to all Elliots and Elliot’ bairns And them that lie in Elliots arms.” “Wha daur meddle wi’ me?” Dear Kinsmen, NOTICES AND Last October, my nephew Benjie Ward and I travelled across the NEWS ITEMS world to be at the inaugural Collie Games, founded and run by James Elliott, our President in Australia. We landed at Perth and Nobel Prize Winner 2017 were entertained and looked after beautifully by Myfanwy and Richard Henderson, was born in 1945. James who whisked us off to Collie. It is incredibly difficult to A Molecular Biologist, who has received initiate an event and I was so impressed by the hard work that the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, went to James had put into it. I do not think that Collie had ever seen primary school in Newcastleton and then anything like the heavy lifting and perfect Scottish dancing and Hawick High School. “I was brought up in the bagpipes. Beautiful weather and a great fun day. I was the borders in Tweedmouth and then honoured to be a part of it and wish the Collie Games every Newcastleton. I’m a Scottish country lad success in the future (See Collie Games photo, below right) . who benefited from the post-war academic selective system, Rab Butler’s Benjie and I then went on to have a marvellous few weeks 1944 Education Act. Many of my starting in Margaret River, Western Australia, then to Ayers Rock (intelligent) friends left school at 15 to and Alice Springs and finally a week in the beautiful city of work. My parents received a £50 grant Sydney where I was entertained to lunch by the NSW Minister of from the government to encourage them Counter-terrorism, David Elliott and his wife, Nicole, and shown to encourage me to stay on in the round the Houses of Parliament. It was a terrific visit and many education system after age 15, which I thanks to James and Myfanwy for the inspiration. did.” This summer I am looking forward to a visit to Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina. The inaugural Collie Games In this issue, the obituary of a remarkable man and good friend. Sir Gerald Elliot of Binks was a great supporter of the Elliot Clan Society and came to quite a few Gatherings. We are so lucky that his son Jo became a Trustee when his father retired and important that we are still closely connected to the remarkable line of Elliots of Binks. Although they are now based in Edinburgh, the farm of ‘Binks’ is still in their hands and not far from Redheugh. Yours sincerely, Margaret Eliott of Redheugh VISITING THE CLAN ROOM : To avoid disappointment, please warn us if you intend to visit Redheugh. Email or telephone us on the follwing UK number: 013873-75213 or [email protected] Margaret Eliott at The Collie Games in Australia 2017. 1 Sir Gerald Elliot of Binks Sir Gerald Elliot, who has died aged In 1948 he joined Salvesen and 94, was a much respected leader of became a partner in 1955. one of the oldest private companies He spent four seasons whaling in in Scotland. He was chairman and the forbidding seas of the Antarctic chief executive of the mighty but in 1963 the firm ceased whaling Christian Salvesen, the shipping, and Sir Gerald was appointed trawling and whaling business in managing director from 1973-81 Leith which was founded in 1872. and chairman from 1981 until his Sir Gerald and his wife Margaret retirement in 1988. were also enthusiastic supporters Sir Gerald was also involved in the of the arts throughout Scotland. highly successful and fast expanding Their generosity ranged from Forth Ports Authority of which he Sir Gerald Elliot of Binks, national companies to Sistema was chairman (1973-79). 1923-2018. Former chairman Scotland, which develops children’s Retirement proved active. He set up of Christian Salvesen and orchestras and the Royal Botanic Archangels with Barry Sealey which great patron of the arts Gardens in Edinburgh. advises emerging technological in Scotland. Trustee of Elliot companies in Scotland. With Clan Society. In 2012 Sir Gerald and Lady Elliot were presented with the Prince of Sir Alan Peacock he founded the Wales Medal for Arts Philanthropy think-tank David Hume Institute. by Prince Charles. The citation Jane-Frances Kelly, its director concluded, “What stands out about comments, “It is no exaggeration the Elliots is not just the gratitude to say that the Institute would likely not exist without his continued they’ve generated, but the affection.” encouragement. Sir Gerald was a The principal of the Royal champion of allowing the evidence Conservatoire of Scotland, John to speak for itself.” Wallace added, “We hold the Elliots dear, as both donors and long- He was also an active member of standing friends.” the Royal Society of Edinburgh and served as its vice president. Gerald Henry Elliot was the son of "He and Lady Elliot supported both Surgeon Captain J.S. Elliot RN and established and emerging artists Magda Salvesen who was the through The Binks Trust and daughter of Theodore Salvesen the generously opened up their home chairman of the company. Sir Gerald to welcome visitors to the Festival. attended Cargilfield Prep School and Sir Gerald was chairman of Scottish Marlborough College. In 1942 he Opera (1987-1992), whose general joined the Indian Army and trained director Alex Reedijk recalls, “Sir Indian soldiers at the Regimental Gerald was a cultured and musically Centre in Abbottabad. In 1946 he curious businessman who shared a qualified as an interpreter in Urdu deep love of the performing arts.” and was demobbed that year. Sir Gerald was knighted in 1986, He then read PPE at New College, was a trustee of the Prince’s Trust Oxford and met Margaret Whale, and served on the Court of daughter of a prominent theologian. Edinburgh University (1984-93). Despite her maiden name her family He is survived by Lady Margaret, had no connection with whaling. their three children, nine Sir Gerald once explained, grandchildren and six great “Margaret comes from a Cornwall grandchildren. His eldest son, Jo, family and there aren’t many whales is now Trustee of the Elliot Clan in Cornwall.” Society. 2 Book Review The Lost World between England and Scotland This border, Graham Robb suggests, detectable territorial division in is probably the oldest national land Great Britain,” with deep roots that boundary in Europe, little changed in predate the nations of Scotland and its course since William Rufus, son England and even the colonists of of the Conqueror, made Cumbria an the Roman empire. According to English colony in 1092. It marches Robb, the Debatable Land sits at the along the watershed of the Cheviot fulcrum of British history – a hills and the valley of the Tweed, a “missing piece in the puzzle,” the diagonal that strikes north-east last part of Britain to be conquered from the Solway Firth until it and brought under the control reaches the North Sea just above of the state. These claims sound Berwick: a political boundary that extravagant, but the author builds looks as though nature intended it, a persuasive case for them in a for most of the way. book that recounts his six-year In 2010, the historian and biographer, Graham Robb, decided to leave his Oxford home for what he describes as “a lonely house on the very edge of England,” so close to the brink that Scotland begins where his land ends. Liddesdale: Walter Scott described it as ‘wild and inaccessible.’ Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo. Only at its western end is the investigation into the history of his geography less helpful. There, until new surroundings in Liddesdale, the the anomaly was resolved in the valley of the Liddel. mid-16th century, the boundary split Graham Robb has a good eye for into two to encircle an area of 50 the small and seemingly ordinary square miles that belonged to things that convey a sense of neither side, known as the Debatable remoteness – of place and time. Land. Three rivers, the Liddel, Esk The young Walter Scott, reaching and Sark, ran at its edges and it had Liddesdale from north of the border sea access along a mile of Solway on a ruin-inspecting and ballad- coast. collecting trip in 1792, described it Confusingly, its name has its origins as a “wild and inaccessible district” in the old English word “battable”, that had once been “the bloodiest meaning pastureland fit to fatten valley in Britain.” Scott represented cattle, rather than in arguments over modernity: he arrived in the first its ownership. Graham Robb asserts wheeled vehicle that many people that it represents “the oldest (continued on page 4) 3 In the Footsteps of Reivers A book by Brian Dingle. published by Olympia Publishers, £16.99. There are so many hidden ruins historic sites in the Borders, and this book attempts to bring them all together. There are endless castles and monuments and in Liddesdale had ever seen, at the moral order broke down in the characters and stories which they “stared with no small the 16th century and the invading wonder.” But what he was after was Armstrongs, Elliots and Grahams that went with them not the pre-modern, the violent imported their traditions of only describe an area of romance of long-vanished Border butchery. lawlessness but how the reivers and moss-troopers, which his A document of 1249 describes this Borderers lived and died.