Berwick-upon-Tweed
, situated in the county of
Northumberland, is the northernmost town in
England, on the east coast at the mouth of the river
Tweed, situated 2.5 miles (4 km) south of the Scottish border.
In
2001 the town had a population of 11,665. The Berwick borough population is 25,949. The population has remained roughly constant since 1911 or so. It is the administrative centre of the borough of
Berwick-upon-Tweed, which had a population of about double that. Berwick town is an
unparished area, the least populated one in
England.
Although in that region the Tweed forms the border between England and
Scotland, and the historic heart of the town of Berwick is located on the northern, Scottish, side, the modern (post-1482) boundary diverts itself around the town to keep it in England. The town proper lies on the north bank and to the north of the
River Tweed, and was formerly the county town of
Berwickshire in Scotland. Apart from the town proper, some nearby hinterland is also included in England and was considered part of the borough, which had an area of about 25 square km.
Berwick is a market town and, if it is taken to include the village of
Tweedmouth on the southern bank of the Tweed (which formed part of the borough), a very modest international
seaport. For a period of 300 and more years from the mid 11th century the town was an extremely important strategic asset in the wars between England and
Scotland. The architecture of the town reflects its past, in particular in having one of the finest remaining defensive ramparts (of 1555, though much repaired in the late 18th century), and in the Barracks buildings, begun in 1717 and the first such buildings in Britain.
Nikolaus Pevsner writes that Berwick is one of the most exciting towns in the country, with scarcely an irritating building anywhere, and the most intricate changes of level.
Including Spittal, Tweedmouth, and
Ord, the town's population in the
2001 Census was 11,665; this within a borough population of 25,949. 59.5% of the population are employed, and 3.6% unemployed. 19% are retired. [
1]. Slightly more than 60% of the population is employed in the service sector, including shops, hotels and catering, financial services and most government activity, including health care. About 13% is in manufacturing; 10% in agriculture, and 8% in construction [
2]. Some current and recent Berwick economic activities include
salmon fishing, shipbuilding, engineering,
sawmilling,
fertilizer production, and the manufacture of tweed and hosiery.
It is unique for an English town in that its
football team,
Berwick Rangers, plays its matches in the
Scottish Football League; owing to the south-west to north-east direction of the border, it is located further north than several Scottish league clubs including
Queen of the South (
Dumfries),
Stranraer,
Ayr United and
Kilmarnock.
The local
dialect, known as 'Tweedside', is a combination of
Lowland Scots and the
Northumbrian accent, although it is recognisably more Scottish. This may reflect the fact that Berwick is slightly closer to the Scottish capital
Edinburgh than to
Newcastle, which is the main centre of
North East England.
 |
Berwick-upon-Tweed from across the river |
Berwick's strategic position on the English-Scottish border during centuries of war between the two nations and its relatively great wealth led to a succession of raids, sieges and take-overs. Between
1147 and
1482 the town changed hands between England and
Scotland more than 13 times, and was the location of a number of momentous events in the English-Scottish border wars. In the
13th century Berwick was one of the most wealthy trading ports in Scotland, providing an annual customs value of £2,190, equivalent to a quarter of all customs revenues received north of the border. A contemporary description of the town asserted that 'so populous and of such commercial importance that it might rightly be called another Alexandria, whose riches were the sea and the water its walls [
3].
In 1174, Berwick was paid as part of the ransom of
William I of Scotland to
Henry II of England. It was sold to Scotland by
Richard I of England, to raise money to pay for
Crusades.
It was destroyed in
1216 by King
John of England, who attended in person the razing of the town. On
30 March 1296,
Edward I stormed Berwick, sacking it with much bloodshed. He slaughtered almost everyone who resided in the town, even if they fled to the churches.
Edward I went to Berwick in August 1296 to receive formal homage from some 2,000 Scottish nobles, after defeating the Scots at the
Battle of Dunbar in April and forcing
John I of Scotland (John Balliol) to abdicate at
Kincardine Castle in July. (The first town walls were built during the reign of Edward I.)
One of the arms of
William Wallace was displayed at Berwick after his execution and quartering on
5 August 1305. In 1314
Edward II of England mustered 25,000 men at Berwick, who later fought in (and lost) the
Battle of Bannockburn.
On
1 April 1318, it was captured by the Scottish; Berwick Castle was also taken after a three-month siege. The English retook Berwick some time shortly after the
Battle of Halidon Hill in
1333. In October
1357, a treaty was signed at Berwick by which the Scottish estates undertook to pay 100,000 marks as a ransom for
David II of Scotland, who had been taken prisoner at the
Battle of Neville's Cross on
17 October 1346.
In
1482 the town was captured by Richard Duke of Gloucester, the future
King Richard III, although not officially merged into England. It has been administered by England since this date.
During the reign of Queen
Elizabeth I of England, vast sums — one source reports "£128,648, the most expensive undertaking of the Elizabethan period" [
4] — were spent on its fortifications, in a new Italian style, designed both to withstand artillery and to facilitate its use from within the fortifications. Although most of
Berwick Castle was demolished in the 19th century to make way for the
railway, the military barracks remain, as do the town's rampart walls — one of the finest remaining examples of its type in the country.
In
1551, the town was made a
county corporate. In
1603, Berwick was the first English town to greet
James VI of Scotland on his way to being crowned James I of England.
In
1639 the army of
Charles I of England faced that of General
Alexander Leslie at Berwick in the
Bishops' Wars, which were concerned with bringing the
Presbyterian Church of Scotland under Charles' control. The two sides did not fight, but negotiated a settlement, "the Pacification of Berwick", in June, under which the King agreed that all disputed questions should be referred to another General Assembly or to the Scottish Parliament.
Holy Trinity Church was built in 1650–52, on the initiative of the governor, Colonel George Fenwicke. Churches of the Commonwealth period are very rare. The church has no steeple, supposedly at the behest of
Oliver Cromwell, who passed through the town in 1650 on his way to the
Battle of Dunbar.
In
1746 the
Wales and Berwick Act was passed, which deemed that whenever legislation referred to England, this encompassed Berwick. Berwick remained a county in its own right however, and was not included in
Northumberland for Parliamentary purposes until
1885.
The
Reform Act 1832, which dealt in large part with the problem of
rotten boroughs, reduced the number of
MPs returned by the town from two to one.
|
Berwick could be said to have remained at war for 110 years after the English made peace |
There is a curious
apocryphal story that Berwick is (or recently was) technically at war with Russia.
The story goes that since Berwick had changed hands several times, it was traditionally regarded as a special, separate entity, and some proclamations referred to "England, Scotland and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed". One such was the declaration of the
Crimean War against
Russia in
1853, which
Queen Victoria supposedly signed as "Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, Ireland, Berwick-upon-Tweed and all British Dominions". However, when the
Treaty of Paris (1856) was signed to conclude the war, "Berwick-upon-Tweed" was left out. This meant that, supposedly, one of Britain's smallest towns was officially at war with one of the world's mightiest powers for over a century.
The
BBC programme
Nationwide investigated this story in the
1970s, and found that while Berwick was not mentioned in the Treaty of Paris, it was not mentioned in the declaration of war either. The question remained of whether Berwick had ever been at war with Russia in the first place. The true situation is that since the
Wales and Berwick Act 1746 had already made it clear that all references to England included Berwick, the town had no special status at either the start or end of the war.
Nevertheless, in
1966 a
Soviet official waited upon the Mayor of Berwick, Councillor Robert Knox, and a peace treaty was formally signed. Mr Knox is reputed to have said "Please tell the Russian people that they can sleep peacefully in their beds." To complicate the issue, some have noted that Knox did not have any authority with regards to
foreign relations, and thus may have
exceeded his powers as mayor in concluding a peace treaty.
*
Berwick Barracks, now maintained by
English Heritage, and built between
1717 and
1721, the design attributed to
Vanbrugh.
*The ramparts or
defensive wall around the town centre
*The
Old Bridge, 15-span
sandstone arch bridge measuring 1,164 feet in length, built between
1610 and
1624, at a cost of
£15,000. The bridge continues to serve road traffic, in one direction only. The bridge was on the main route from
London to
Edinburgh and was ordered by
James I of England.
*The
Royal Border Bridge, designed and built under the supervision of
Robert Stephenson between
1847 and its opening by
Queen Victoria in
1850, at a cost of cost £253,000, is a 720-yard-long
railway viaduct with 28 arches, carrying the
East Coast Main Line 126 feet above the River Tweed.
*The recently refurbished
Royal Tweed Bridge, built in
1925 and in its time having the longest concrete span in the country at 361 feet, originally designed to carry the
A1 road across the Tweed; the town now has a road bypass to the west. In the early
2000s, its fabric was renovated, the road and pavement layout amended, and new street lighting was added.
*The
Union Bridge (five miles upstream), the world's oldest surviving suspension bridge.
*The Guildhall, built in the
1750 in a Classical style, and formerly housing the town's prison on its top floor.
*Berwick was the first parish in which
John Knox, the
16th-century Scottish religious reformer, who founded the
Presbyterian Church of Scotland, was appointed a preacher in the
Church of England.
*
Mason Jackson,
engraver, was born in Berwick in about
1820*
Alexander Knox,
Canadian actor, died at Berwick in
1995*
L. S. Lowry holidayed in Berwick regularly, and painted a number of pictures of the town and beaches. [
5]
*
Wendy Wood, controversial founder of the
Scottish Patriots was arrested on more than one occasion for moving the border signs to the old bridge over the
Tweed.
*The classic sitcom
Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? also featured an episode where the 'lads' visited Berwick. Significantly, in it the two Northern Englishmen refer to Berwick as "Scottish".
*
Trevor Steven, (born Berwick-upon-Tweed,
September 21,
1963) was a highly-regarded England footballer who shot to fame with the all-conquering Everton side of the 1980s.
*
Peter Ramage lived in Berwick for the majority of his childhood. He is now a professional
football player for
Newcastle.
*
Henry Travers, born in Berwick in
1874, was a character actor best known for his roles in
Hollywood film productions, most famously as Clarence the angel in
It's a Wonderful Life (
1946).
Berwick is an area rich in a diverse and varied form of language. People from Berwick and its surroundings have a unique sound to their voice. The language is essentially a mixture of
Scots,
north east England's English (both of which have had a long exchange of words), and
British English.
Below is a sample of the words used in Berwick. Many are of
Romani origin, such as Gadgie (originally a non Romani), jougal and jiga:
*Gadge (Gadgie): A man
*Jiga: A Door
*Deek: To look
*Manishee: A lady
*Jougal: A Dog
*Clemmy: A Stone
*Ladged: Embarrassed
*Plaffs: Feet
*Bary (Bar-ee) - Lovely, great, nice
*Hadaway: Go away
*Peeries: Toes
*Huckle: To spit
*Covied: Dead
*
Explore Berwick*
Images of the 'Berwick Bounds' English-Scottish border*
A tale of one town - 2004
BBC news story concerned with the ongoing debate about whether Berwick should be part of England or Scotland.
*
Berwick Photos
