HIS week, reader John Ker brings us part one of the history of a Peebles blacksmith...

This photograph is one of James Ker with his blacksmiths in the early 1860s at his forge in Ker Place Northgate Peebles.

He was a blacksmith and veterinary surgeon who ran the family business in partnership with his brother Charles Tod Ker also a blacksmith who specialised in the engineering work they undertook.

The family’s very long-established premises were originally at sites where the Eastgate Theatre now stands and one now occupied by a land agent in the Northgate, neighbouring the Cleikum. This must have been a favoured site well-placed beside a coaching inn on the main road North.

The 1860s saw the further development of the railways begun five years previously.

Before this Peebles lived up to its reputation of being, “As quiet as the grave or as Peebles”. With the railways came industry and people and money.

Commercial Peebles began to develop and the Northgate was no exception. Up until then the Northgate was little more than the road out of town with several pastoral tofts strung out along it. Laird Girdwood, was a larger-than-life character and also one of the prominent proprietors. He was also a member of the Peeblesshire Rifle Volunteers.

Then as now, such organisations accommodate a little social networking.

It is not surprising then that Charles Ker, also a Volunteer and his sister acquired one of these tofts from a comrade. Meanwhile James Ker lived with his wife at Red Lion House in Biggiesknowe. Their toft was more than half an acre in size with a barn whose gable end faced the street and a single-storey cottage attached. Parts of the barn were rebuilt into a new dwelling house.

The barn itself is not without interest being the one scene of Laird Girdwood’s Venison Feast to which all the residents of the Northgate were invited everyone, however, to bring his own beverage.

It was a resounding success—“Never before did the rafters ring with such glee.” was the reported account of the event.

A traditional forge and a modern purpose-built engineering workshop were built as well as a ‘spec’ tenement of four dwellings.

Look out for the second part of the story by John in next week’s Peeblesshire News...