Pringle of Torwoodlee
The Pringles of Torwoodlee, Selkirkshire, are descended from William Pringle of Smailholm who had a tack of the forest steid of Caddonlee in 1488, and one of Torwoodlee in 1509, to him and his son George. In the same year he had a charter of one-fourth part of the barony of Cliftoun, Roxburghshire, which afterwards was sold to another branch of the Pringles. He was slain at the battle of Flodden in September 1513.

His son, George Pringle of Torwoodlee, was at the battle of Pinkie in 1547. In 1568 he was murdered by a party of Liddesdale reivers, to the number of 300, consisting of Elliots, Armstrongs, and other clans from the west border, under John Elliot of Copshaw, who had attacked, plundered and burnt the house of Torwoodlee.

Torwoodlee Tower was built in 1601 by George Pringle to replace an earlier stronghold, and reflects the aspirations of the family as well as their expectation of more settled times in the new century. Power and money could guarantee security more effectively than the old cramped tower-house so recently demolished.

Torwoodlee Tower stands in ruins now, abandoned in its turn when the Pringles built a fine Georgian mansion in the eighteenth century. The remains of the older building stand on an extensive terrace above the valley of the Gala Water about a mile above Galashiels.

The prominent feature of the ruins is the stair tower which, though an empty shell, still rises to its full height. Though the tower was not designed as a defensible building there is still a hint of the need for security in the loopholed parapet of a fragment of courtyard wall.

Torwoodlee Tower is still owned by the Pringle family. It is no longer just a tower and lands, a Georgian mansion was added in 1783, with later additions in Victorian times.

Map of Torwoodlee (Multimap.com) 

Meaning: Tor = Hill; Wood = Wood; Lee = Shade, shelter

Please visit: www.torwoodlee.com for further information.

Also : www.wildlifeshadows.co.uk

The lineage of the Pringles of Torwoodlee:

This family are a branch of the ancient stock of the Pringles of Galashiels and Smailholm.

1. William Hoppringill, 1st Laird of Torwoodlee, a younger son of James Pringle of Smailholm, was slain at the battle of Flodden on the 9th September 1513. He took a "tack" or lease of Torwoodlee in 1501; he continued to hold this tack until the land was "feued" or sold to him in 1510 just after his son George had been included in the lease
2. George Hoppringill, 2nd Laird of Torwoodlee, born in 1505 and died in December 1568 when John Elliot of Capshaw, Robert Elliot and Jock Armstrong along with some 300 of their men sacked the Tower at Torwoodlee and took the Goodman George Hoppringle away as 'captive and prisoner and most cruelly and unmercifully murderist and slew him'. In the then distracted state of the kingdom, and with the weakness of the Government, it appears that there was no attempt at the time to punish them but in 1607 the survivors were called upon to answer for the crime and, having failed to appear, were outlawed. He was also at the battle of Pinkie in 1547.
3. William Hoppringill, the 3rd Laird, died in August 1577
4. George Hoppringill, the 4th Laird, built another Tower at Torwoodlee in 1601), almost on the same site as the original; he was the instigator of the belated prosecution of the Elliots and Armstrongs. He was one of the representatives for the county of Selkirk in the Parliaments of 1617 and 1621. In 1624 accepted the office of Sheriff of Selkirkshire. Dying in 1637.
5. James Pringle, the 5th Laird, a Member of Parliament in 1641 and appointed a collector of Selkirkshire's quota to maintain the Scottish army in Ireland. He died in 1658.
6. George Pringle, the 6th Laird. During the Civil War he adhered steadily to the Royalist cause, and was in most of the engagements fought in Scotland at that time. However, later on he was charged with being concerned in the Rye-house plot and had to flee to Holland and his lands were confiscated by King James VII. George died in 1689.
7. James Pringle the 7th Laird, had the forfeiture rescinded by an Act of Parliament in 1690 and the land restored and much of the money returned with interest. He went on to become a Captain in the defence of the country after the Earl of Mar raised the standard of HRH Prince James Stuart at Braemar in 1715. He died 20 years later.
8. George Pringle, the 8th Laird, died unmarried and was succeeded by his nephew in 1780.
9. James Pringle of Bowland, the 9th Laird, one of the principal Clerks of Session. In 1783 James built a new mansion house at Torwoodlee and abandoned the 1601 tower, as the need for defence had dwindled, and in 1788 sold Bowland and bought the lands of Buckholm and William Law which had belonged to another branch of the Pringles from 1540 to 1713. He was a great friend of Sir Walter Scott's and lived to a great age for the time (81 years), dying in 1840 having served as Convener of Selkirkshire for more than 50 years and having been Vice-Lieutenant for 3 years
10. James Pringle the 10th Laird, who served for 50 years with the Royal Navy, rising to the rank of Vice-Admiral by 1847 when he retired to Torwoodlee and died 12 years later.
11. James Thomas Pringle, the 11th Laird, a Commander in the Royal Navy. Deputy-lieutenant of Selkirkshire. He founded the Torwoodlee Golf Club. Died in 1902.
12. James Lewis Pringle, the 12th Laird, a Captain in the Lothian & Border Horse. Died in 1953.
13. James Harold Pringle, the 13th Laird, a Chartered Accountant. Died in 1969.
14. James W Pringle, 14^th and present Laird of Torwoodlee and Buckholm.

Looking at the house from the back, the left-hand wing has an upstairs room that is sometimes used for lunches and other functions, whilst downstairs is a workshop. The right hand wing was built to contain the butler’s living room, the knife sharpening room and the shoe cleaning room among other recondite uses and, as the Laird now had no use for these functions and did not need the space, this wing was currently closed.

Ascending the steps into the beautiful main sitting room with its lovely wallpaper and curtains, its Steinway grand piano which had come from the S.S. Orontes, a 20,000 ton liner that had mainly sailed the Bombay to England voyage. Next the dining room which has now been taken over as the children’s play room. This contained the family ancestor portraits. The first recorded mention of the name Hoppringle was in 1208. This may have come from the Old Norse "Hop" meaning a safe place, "Ring" being a circle or "surrounded by" and "hill", so giving Hoppringle, "a safe place surrounded by hills". The family seat was at Smailholm Tower until the 1450s. Until then they had been Squires to the Douglases but when that Clan became too powerful, James II moved against them and the Hoppringles wisely changed their allegiance to the king who gave them a great deal of land around Galashiels. Hoppringle dropped the "Hop" to become Pringle, Laird of Gala. He had five sons and the Laird gave each of them a quantity of land on which each family later built a tower house including Whitbank, Buckholm (1582), Langshaw and the one in the grounds of the present house (1601) from which the Braw Lad of Gala takes a stone annually to be part of the Braw Lad’s Ceremonial Gathering. The lands extended right up to Borthwick where the ruling family was too powerful to overcome so the Pringles married into it. The Scotts got involved when the Pringles became crippled by debt and a daughter Pringle married the wealthy Hugh Scott to revive the family fortunes. One of the portraits is of George Pringle who, being a king’s man, found it prudent to flee to Holland during Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth and in fact did not feel it safe to return until the accession of William III and Mary in 1689.

Next there are some very nice portraits on the stairs including the present Laird’s grandmother, Ada Pringle, whose claim to fame was that she had her drawing room packed with stuffed animals from the museum so that she would not have live people billeted on her during the war, and ones of James, the present Laird’s father and George, his uncle, both as boys. At the head of the stairs were two excellent paintings by Dick Smelly, one of the present Laird, James, and one of his wife, Alice.

Exit the house via the front stairs between two St. James gas lamp holders on the banister posts to the front drive. Afterwards, walk down part of the drive, turn right at the Wellingtonia that was planted by Dorothy, the Laird’s mother, and walk up to the 1601 tower.

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