Another grand day: brilliant calm morning with a S.W. wind as the day went on but delightfully warm. Saw some town cases in Backrow, Southport, Chapel Place + then cycled to Clifton Road, Raeburn Place + Forest Mill. Got a message to Howden Moat1 where I haven’t been since 1910 when the girl had measles. Walked to the top of Howden hill + back by a walk through a wood. The wild apple blossom + violets lovely. Helen + Dora2 down at Elm Park3 for tennis + croquet.
1 Howden Moat is not identified independently of Howden (just short of Middlestead and Oakwood, to the south west of Selkirk) in any contemporary records that the Editor can find except for a reference to a property at the Motte itself, at approximate grid reference NGR NT458,268, which is visible as The Mote south of Howden Hill on Ordnance Survey 6 inch Selkirkshire Sheet XI.SE, published 1900 and John Thomson’s Atlas of Scotland, published 1832 and is recorded as Canmore ID 54204 Howden, Motte where P Fenton, 1957, notes “Motte, Howden, An oval rocky knoll, which protrudes from the back of a ridge 700 yds ESE of Howden farmhouse … bordered almost all round by a low earthen bank … together with a number of similar banks which verse the top of the motte it is most probably connected with the occupation of a cottage whose ruins overlie the ditch at the W. apex.”; note however that the 1886 Valuation Roll links a property named only Moat (occupier William Arnot, shepherd) with Brownmuir, as part of the Haining estate of the Pringle Pattisons [1886 Valuation Roll, VR011700006-/472, Selkirk County, page 472 of 513]
2 Helen Frances ‘Mousey’ Muir (1880-1963), Dr Muir’s third daughter and sometime housekeeper and Andrina Dorothy ‘Dora’ Muir (1882-1978), Dr Muir’s youngest daughter and a nurse
3 Elm Park, Selkirk, home of Agnes Mackintosh née Watson, formerly Harper (1859-1946)
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/25, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1922]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 