FULTON TOWER AND SOME OF ITS PROPRIETORS

By GEORGE WATSON, Oxford, 1948

Amid scenes of verdant solitude, the Border peel of Fulton stands on rising ground near to and overlooking the highway through the valley of the lower Rule. The hillock which forms its vantage ground lies a mile and a half due south of the now small village of Bedrule, and exactly four miles " as the ‘plane flies" south-south-west of Jedburgh. From and to the county town it formed a pleasant afternoon walk (as I remember well from the days of youth)—chiefly by a right-of-way across the Dunion Moor and Blacklaw. Rising on the Watch Knowe (957 ft.), a stream descends to swell the Rule; and near Fulton it forms a small glen clad with trees, including the hazel. Reminiscing over "An Autumn's Ramble to Ruberslaw," Walter Laidlaw recalls how, passing " o'er the Dunion Hill to Rule with lightsome heart," occasionally “To Fulton Glen, when nuts were full, We played the truant frae the school."

But however pleasant the memories of these associations, it must be admitted that this place owes its name to a slight cast on it by the early inhabitants of the vale, who aspersively called it " he foul toun," or habitation in a noxious or messy locality, as the early hamlet may well have been before the land was broken in, drained, and farmed by the early feudal tenants here. Even yet in soft weather the vicinity of the tower is quaggy.

The environment of Fulton peel-tower is one of wild beauty. Away to the west soars to a height of 1392 feet the rugged mass of Ruberslaw, with the woods of Wells estate clothing its sides and the river Rule laving its base. A little to the north lie the farm-servants' cottages, while about midway between the tower and Bedrule stood in former times a hamlet called Crosscleugh, which (settled by the Turnbulls before 1490) was devastated during the Earl of Hertford's vindictive invasion in 1545. Other places in Rulewater that were then desolated were: Spittal-on Rule, Bedrule itself, Rulewood, " the Wolles," Donnerlees, " Fotton," Westlees, Tronnyhill, and " Dupligis," besides two waulk mills. " Westlies " (as it appears on Gordon of Stralach's map of Teviotdale) stood between Billerwell and Wells ("the Wolles" of the above lies), and thus on the left bank of the Rule, and over against Fulton. Gordon's map (printed in 1654) apparently shows by a symbol a tower as formerly standing at Billerwell; but it seems highly probable that the configuration has been misplaced and should have been located at Fulton, on the opposite side of this romantic stream. Pont's map of Teviotdale (about 1620) assuredly shows the existence of a tower at " Foultoun."

The earliest feudal lairds of Fulton of whom there is any record were a sept of the Turnbulls, that prolific and once powerful Border family whose originator in the early fourteenth century