History of Waterside

From the limited information available, three cottages stood on the site of the current Waterside property in the late 18^th century. One of these was a public house, and the poet Rabbie Burns is believed to have visited the pub on several occasions, while a friend of his was courting Bonnie Jean O'Craigieburn. He is believed to have written the poem 'Willie brewed a peck o' malt' in the pub garden.

The houses and ground were at the time part of the Craigieburn estate, and around 1840, the owners of the estate constructed Waterside, replacing two of the original cottages. By this time it was fashionable for the richer town dwellers to have a country property, and this development is likely to have had a keen eye on the Edinburgh market. And it would seem that the house and about 2 acres of ground were sold, together with the remaining cottage as a gardeners house, although the buyer isn't known.

A later prominent owner of the property was Sir Ernest Wedderburn. He was a partner in the famous Edinburgh firm of solicitors, Shepheard and Wedderburn, which still exists. It isn't known exactly when he bought the property, but it must have been shortly after the 2_nd World War. He used the property for weekends and summer breaks, and was responsible for developing a garden of heathers and conifers, which was opened on occasions to the public. All 3 photographs which are displayed on this page date from the period of Wedderburn ownership.

The Wedderburn family owned the property up to about 1960, when Sir Ernest died. During the time that the family owned the property, they made a lot of changes. Sir Ernest did a lot of work for government bodies, including the Forestry Commision, and at some stage was able to buy ground from them to extend Waterside, at both ends of the property. This increased the holding to the present total of around 11 acres.

Because the Wedderburn family weren't present all of the time, they employed a manager to look after the property and gardens for them. For much of the time, this was a Mr Bob Shanklin, who clearly had a love of the place as well. The photographs on this page show the range and the style of the gardens created, and clearly this involved a lot of love as well as a lot of work.

Looking at the old photographs, it is interesting to see how many of the old features have survived. These include roads and paths, and some of the specimen trees and shrubs. The photographs don't show much of the additional work, such as supporting walls, which clearly Bob Shanklin took a great deal of effort to construct, and many of which are in good repair after over 50 years. Additionally, he obviously reinforced the river banks where necessary. Sometimes this reinforcement was done with stonework; in other cases we have old bicycles and bedsteads as reinforcements.

We suspect that the enlarged gardens were just reaching maturity when Sir Ernest Wedderburn died, and the property sold shortly afterwards. From that time, the gardens initially had some maintenance, but this tailed off over the years, and certainly some major restoration work (to both house and garden) was required when we acquired the property. We have no intention of restoring the garden as the Wedderburns had it - we have our own ideas for this later time. However, we have tried to preserve some of the best remaining features which the Wedderburns left, and which were built or planted by Bob Shanklin.

Footnotes: Shortly after we moved into the house, we were made aware that Bob Shanklin's daughter still lived in Moffat. We made contact, and she has kindly visited Waterside, and given us much information. She lived here until she was 20 years old, and was full of detail about the house and gardens, and we are most grateful to her. The photograph to the right shows her with her fiancee, shortly before the Wedderburns sold Waterside.

We are very aware that as 'incomers' to the Moffat area, we only know what we have been told about the property. We have asked and made deductions, which we hope are correct. If anyone knows more, or if we have made any mistakes with this information, please let us know.