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HENRY BALLANTYNE & SONS, WALKERBURN

The Ballantyne family came from Bellenden in Ettrick. A William Ballantin, on the birth of his son Walter in 1692, was described as a "weaver in Galashiels". David Ballantyne (1773-1855) had established himself as a master weaver in the town, where he owned a weaving shed in the Market Square. The family resided in Galashiels continuously until 1854.

Son, Henry (1802-1865), at the age of 18, rented Caerlee Mills, Innerleithen from about 1820-1829, before returning to Galashiels. In 1837 he was elected Deacon of the Galashiels Manufacturers' Corporation. He took the decision to move his mills from Galashiels to a site 10 miles west that offered water power and other requirements.

In 1856 Tweedvale Mill was opened, with dwelling houses built for workers and the tweed manufacturing village of Walkerburn was thus founded; its prosperity entirely bound up with that of Henry Ballantyne & Sons ie. Henry and his two eldest sons David and John. In 1866 the railway reached the village.

The company experienced considerable growth and Ballantyne's revenue grew from £51,000 in 1860 to £100,000 in 1864. As profits grew, so the mill grew with them, and by a 100 years later the Walkerburn complex extended to 11 acres. Likewise the population of the village rose from 882 in 1871 to its peak of 1288 twenty years later.

When Henry Ballantyne died in 1865, aged 63, his sons David and John inherited the business, with the three younger sons George, James and Henry also entering the partnership. A few years later in 1870, they left to start up for themselves at Innerleithen under the name of Ballantyne Brothers.

In 1883 eldest son David Ballantyne dissolved the partnership at Walkerburn and built the March Street Mills at Peebles with his sons Henry and Robert under the name of D. Ballantyne and Co. At Walkerburn John met the demand for increased plant by acquiring in 1893 the Leithen Mills at Innerleithen.

In 1896 John took his two sons Henry Norman and John King into partnership. In 1904 Ballantyne's Wool, Walkerburn became a limited liability company with John as chairman until his retirement three years later.

The years preceding the Great War saw Scotch Tweeds making their way into the world's markets and establishing valuable connections abroad. The Walkerburn mills were self-contained and covered the full range of processes for converting raw wool into woollen cloth of the highest grade. In 1859, 3400 pieces of cloth were produced - in 1920 33,420, though the trade, like other industries experienced periods of depression.

In 1904 in memory of this father, David Ballantyne built the Henry Ballantyne Memorial Institute to provide education and entertainment for mill workers and their families. It remained in the trust of the Ballantyne family until 2000 when it was donated to the village.

The First World War brought disastrous results for export trade, but resulted in mass production at Walkerburn for the military of khaki, flannel and tartan (with a weekly average of 10,000 yards of tartan for the Highland regiments).

1920 saw a major remodelling of the company's power supply. Steam engines installed in 1860 depended on the fuel supply from Lothian pits. A revolutionary hydro-electric power scheme was evolved pumping water from the Tweed up to a reservoir on Kirnie Law above the village, then bringing it down to drive a Pelton turbine to produce electricity - a unique project, way ahead of its time.

Family members continued to lead the company through the recession of the 1920's and 1930's. During the Second World War, khaki, serge and tartan, as previously formed the basis of production.

In the changing pattern of post-war industry, Henry Ballantyne & Sons decided to remain independent, at a time when family offshoots decided otherwise, with amalgamation seen as the way to success.

However by 1967-68, the two Ballantyne businesses, originally established by David and Henry, amalgamated with the Scottish Worsted and Woollens Group. All processes after spinning ceased to function at Walkerburn, with Peebles now the centre of the weaving division. In 1975 a disastrous fire destroyed the carding department and main wool store at Tweedvale Mill, with damage estimated at £2 million. The railway had ceased in 1961 and by 1981 the Walkerburn population had fallen to 697.

1980 saw the Scottish Worsted and Woollen Group joining forces with Dawson International, The Ballantyne family name was largely lost, only applying to Ballantyne Sportswear of Innerleithen. In 1986 the original part of Tweedvale Mills, founded by the first Henry Ballantyne, was demolished and the last mill closed two years later.

Sources: "	Henry Ballantyne & Sons, Ltd., 1929 "	Ballantyne Henry. The evolution of a water power scheme 1854-1921 "	Pearce, F. W. Walkerburn: its origins and progress 1854-1987. Walkerburn Community Council, 1987, "	www.scan.org.uk

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A Short History of Ballantyne

Caerlee Mills from the Chapel Street Gate in 1975 Photo: ScotlandPlaces.com

Though Scotland's most celebrated knitwear brand made a modestly late start in 1921, the Ballantyne family, in fact, had played a leading role in country's textile industry for several hundred years prior. The earliest account of the family’s involvement in woolens was recorded in 1666 when David Ballantyne built a mill in Galashiels, then a major spinning and weaving hub. Nearly one and a half centuries later his descendant Henry Ballantyne left the family’s ancestral home and for nine years rented Caerlee Mill*, situated further upstream the river Tweed in Innerleithen. Following a brief return to Galashiels, Henry successfully established his own mill just east of Innerleithen, which he called Tweedvale. Planned housing erected for the mill employees soon emerged as the village of Walkerburn, named after the Walker Burn that flowed into the Tweed at this site. Henry Ballantyne and Sons, as the firm was subsequently known, experienced tremendous success throughout the mid-nineteenth century thanks to explosive growth in demand for Scottish tweeds among Britain’s upper class and, increasingly, overseas in the United States.

After Henry’s death in 1865 his five sons pursued the family's concern with even greater tenacity. The younger three immediately departed Walkerburn to found the Waverley Mills in Innerleithen under their own partnership, Ballantyne Bros. Meanwhile, the elder two continued to manage their father’s mill until 1884 when the senior-most, David, set out to establish his own enterprise, the March Street Mills of Peebles, even further upstream the Tweed. Two years later David purchased Caerlee Mills in Innerleithen from the heirs of its deceased owner, Robert Gill, thus returning his father’s original mill to family hands. After David's death in 1912 his heir, Sir Henry, appropriated his uncles' Waverley Mills under his own control, combining the family's possessions in Peebles and Innerleithen under one name, D. Ballantyne Bros and Co Ltd.

"D. Ballantyne Brothers & Co Ltd Photographed From An Aeroplane" Photo: maxwellancestry.com

The first half of the twentieth century brought sweeping change to the fortunes and composition of the Ballantyne family’s holdings. During the Great Depression the business was substantially reorganized: the firm’s carding and spinning operations were centered at the Waverley Mills in Innerleithen while weaving became the devotion of the March Street Mills in Peebles. The knitting division at Caerlee Mills shuttered during the Second World War, but reemerged after as Ballantyne Sportswear Co and moved away from lower-value production to concentrate on exotic luxury fibers, particularly cashmere. The firm had pioneered intarsia knitting since the 1920s, whose designs grew increasingly complex and popular in the post-war period such that Ballantyne became a generic name throughout the world for the style. Ballantyne Sportwear was eventually sold off and traded hands several times in the 1960s before its acquisition by Dawson International, who made it a cornerstone of their vertically integrated, global cashmere empire. As a Dawson subsidiary the firm enjoyed several decades of unchallenged preponderance as the world’s leading manufacturer of cashmere knitwear. Elizabeth II personally visited Caerlee Mills in 1966 and honored the firm three times – in ’67, ‘82 and ’91 – with the Queen’s Award for Industry for export achievement. (Nevertheless, Pringle steadfastly retained her Royal Warrant.)

Elizabeth II Visit to Ballantyne in 1966 Photo: Caerlee Mills Ltd

Meanwhile, the rump D. Ballantyne Bros and Co Ltd merged with Henry Ballantyne and Sons, uniting the Peebles and Walkerburn branches of the family’s operations. This new group, called Scottish Worsteds and Woolens, initiated a spree of takeovers in the Borders until the Dawson conglomerate, in turn, absorbed it in 1981. To distinguish its product from the Ballantyne knitwear division already under Dawson ownership, the weaving mill assumed a new name, Robert Noble, after the founders of two reputable Borders mills it had earlier acquired. In 1995 Dawson sold Robert Noble to Moorhouse and Brook, now the Moorbrook Holdings, which currently possess the mill.

By the close of the twentieth century Dawson International found itself in deep financial straits. The group had grown heavily indebted over its ambitious acquisitions and heavy pension payouts while severe rises in commodity prices and stiffening overseas competition eroded its bottom line. In 2004 Dawson sold Ballantyne Sportswear to Charme, a venture capitalist firm headed by Ferrari-chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo. Hampered by continued lackluster performance, Charme spun off the Innerleithen facility in 2008 from the Ballantyne label, presently headquartered in Milan, Italy. The new partnership with Italian textile manufacturer Zegna Baruffa and American retailer Brooks Brothers lasted merely fifteen months when, in January 2010, J.J. & H.B. 1788 Cashmere Mills were placed into receivership. Most of the firm’s assets and employees were liquidated; however, the intarsia unit was preserved and continues to operate in the original, though now substantially deserted premises as Caerlee Mills Ltd. Nonetheless, the future of the facility remains in doubt, for the receivers have sought a buyer or developer for the property without success. In recent months local authorities have entertained the possibility of the mill's demolition.


 * At the time Caerlee Mill was called Brodie Mill, after Alexander Brodie who originally founded it in 1788. The mill's later name was adopted from Caerlee Hill, which forms Innerleithen's western geographic boundary. "Caerlee" means approximately "meadow fort" in Gaelic, in recognition of the circular Iron-Age earthworks on the hilltop that once were surrounded by woods.