Lilliesleaf

Lilliesleaf is a small village and civil parish 7 miles (11 km) south east of Selkirk in the Roxburghshire area of Scottish Borders of Scotland.

It was picturesquely situated on a ridge of ground which slopes down first steeply to the village, then gradually to Ale Water.

Lilliesleaf consisted mainly of one long narrow street, half a mile in length, which contained the post office, with money order, savings bank, and telegraph departments, 2 inns, 2 schools, and several good shops.

The houses exhibited considerable diversity, some being thatched and others slated, while old cottages and new villas were not unfrequently found standing close together.

Owing to the trimness of its gardens, and the beauty of its situation, Lilliesleaf was among the prettiest of the Border villages, and its advantages have been fully appreciated by Scottish artists, who have found in it and its environs charming subjects for their brush.

[3] The current parish church, built in 1771, restored in 1883, and extended in 1910, stands a little way beyond the east end of the village.

It is surrounded on three sides by the churchyard, which contains a few curious tombstones, and the remains of an old ivy-grown chapel.

They embraced the addition of a nave and bell-tower, and the remodelling of the interior, in which handsome modern benches took the place of the old 'box-pews.'

It was removed from the church at the Reformation, and eventually found its way into the moss, where for a long time it lay buried.

[2] Lilliesleaf parish is bounded northwest by Selkirk, north by Bowden, northeast and east by Ancrum, southeast by Minto and Wilton, and west by Ashkirk.

The remoter antiquity of the family has been rested upon the discovery, in the old chapel of Riddell, of two stone coffins, one of which contained 'an earthen pot, filled with ashes and arms, bearing a legible date, a.d. 727,' while the other was filled with ' the bones of a man of gigantic size.'

These coffins, it has been conjectured, contained the remains of ancestors of the family, although this view has been rejected by Sir Walter B. Riddell.

Every winter kids could be seen on sledges, bin bags and even surfboards, trying to see who could go the fastest and furthest, trying to reach the iced frozen overflow from the Moss at the bottom of the field.

This time they were delivered to people's houses by boys going round the village with the papers in the wooden bogie.

Lilliesleaf from the air
Sheriff confronted by his sister at a Blackadder conventicle on Lilliesleaf Moor. Robert Bennet of Chesters was in the crowd and sent the people home; they did not dismiss at the threats of the soldiers. [ 4 ]