Lamberton, Borders, Scotland

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LAMBERTON is a hilly ancient parish and former landed estate in Berwickshire, Scotland, its eastern boundary being the North Sea. It is four miles north of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and is the first Scottish parish reached after crossing the border from England on the Great North Road (today the A1).

The regional authority is the Scottish Borders Council, based some 50 miles to the west at Newtown St. Boswells, Roxburghshire. The parish returns three elected councillors to the Foulden Mordington & Lamberton Community Council, similar to an English parish council, whose meetings rotate between Foulden Village Hall, and Lamberton Hall, which is near the now ruined Lamberton Kirk. It was at this church, in July 1503, where Margaret Tudor the daughter of King Henry VII of England, met the representatives of King James IV of Scotland (and traditionally is said to have married him by proxy), thus leading to the eventual succession of James VI to the English throne. Only ruins of the nave and chancel remain, as the burial-place of the Rentons of Lamberton.

Lamberton originally fell within the barony of Coldingham. In the Scottish National Archives (RH1/2/59) there is an early charter of Sir Peter de Mordington in favour of Simon de Baddeby of some lands in Lamberton, dated 1270. A further charter (RH1/2/98) of Agnes de Mordington, is in favour of John de Raynton, thereafter designated as "of Lamberton", dated 21 November 1325. David Renton of Billie(d.c1605), Berwickshire, a descendant of the ancient foresters of Coldingham Priory, was lineal proprietor of Lamberton. The family sold the estate of Billie about the beginning of the 18th century, but retained Lamberton. The Rentons of Lamberton were in the early 19th century represented by Alexander Renton of Lamberton, (d. before March 1831), who was served his father's heir in the lands and mains of Lamberton in 1774, and whose only child, a daughter Susanna, married Robert Campbell, a Colonel in the 42nd Highland Regiment. Their son, Charles Frederick (1819 - 1891), Colonel in the 87th Foot Regiment, hyphenated his surname. The Campbell-Rentons of Lamberton, and, later, Mordington House, also failed in the male line with the death in 1948 of Robert Charles Campbell-Renton.

The now demolished Old Toll House at Lamberton, situated just across the border in Scotland, was notorious for its irregular marriages. From 1798 to 1858 keepers of the Toll, as well as questionable men-of-the-cloth used to marry couples in the same fashion as at the more familiar Gretna Green. The site of the house is marked by a plaque.

Lamberton today consists largely of smallholdings compulsorily purchased, under an Act of Parliament, from the last Campbell-Renton laird, to provide a living for soldiers returning from The Great War. However, the land was not suited to crops, the holdings were too small for anything other than subsistance living, and today the original holdings are generally merged with others to make larger farms. Some modern house-building activity has taken place over the past decade along the original A1 (now bypassed). There is no town or village, as such, just scattered housing, with spectacular views over the North Sea.

[edit] References

• A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain & Ireland, by Sir Bernard Burke, C.B.,LL.D., Ulster King of Arms, Ninth Edition, London, 1898, p.1251.
• The Scottish Nation, by William Anderson, Edinburgh, 1870, volume 2, pps: 338-9.
• The Story of Lamberton Toll, by Alexander C A Steven, 1933.
• Borders and Berwick, by Charles A Strang, Rutland Press, 1994, p.20. ISBN 1-873190-10-7
• Smallholding Memories, general editor John Williams, Berwick-upon-Tweed, 2000.