Another nice day + very mild in afternoon. Jean1 + her friends2 got back about 4 this morning. I drove round town + to Hospital, Bridgelands + Firs. Sent via [?] case of Typhoid (Matin3, Halliday’s Park). After lunch walked to Howden with Sim4 to investigate the discharge of sewage from Howden Farm. Bartie5, Pritty6 + young Grieve7 were there also. We walked back by the foot of the Scaurs where I had never been before.8
Jack9 was in the chair + did well, though rather nervous. The Hall was quite full. River full.
1 Jane Henderson Logan ‘Jean’ Pike née Muir (1877-1941), Dr Muir’s eldest daughter.
2 Jean’s friends, with whom she had partied the night before, were Elsie Lindsay and Joy Mitchell, both so far unidentified.
3 The Editor cannot decipher the name here and nothing leaps out from the Valuation Rolls. Janet Martin was the Proprietor of one of the properties at Halliday’s Park, Selkirk, according to the 1902 and 1903 Valuation Rolls and up to at least 1915. However she did not live there so cannot be the person referred to.
4 Robert Sim of Tweed Knowe House, tweed manufacturer, was the only person thus named in the 1901 Census but does not look like a good match for this situation.
5 James Bartie (about 1845-1921), Civil and Borough Engineer. He lived with his family at Alva Cottage, Selkirk [1901 Census].
6 John Pritty (about 1857-1920), Surveyor, Master of Works & Sanitary Inspector [Slater’s Royal National Commercial Directory, 1903].
7 Grieve is so far unidentified.
8 The Scaurs at Howden are not named on any map the Editor can see but a scaur is generally “sheer rock, crag, precipice, cliff, a steep hill from which the soil has been washed away” but perhaps a better fit here is J Richmond’s “Precipitous banks of streams, formed of reddish sand and rocks, are called Scaurs in some parts of the borders of Scotland” [both references from the Dictionar o the Scots Leid].
9 John ‘Jack’ Roberts junior (1876-1966), mill owner and Dr Muir’s son-in-law.
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/7, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1904]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 
The Howden Scaurs or “The Skers” to folk in Selkirk were concrete platforms built to divert the Ettrick river away from the banking. At one time you could walk down that side of the river from Howden to Selkirk but now the Skers and the riverbank have been washed away.
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Thank you, that’s interesting. Would they have been there in 1904?
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Not sure when they were built but my parents talked about playing at the Skers when they were children so that would be in the 1920s. It’s possible “Scaurs” originally referred to the steep banking and over the years the name was adopted for the concrete butts.
If you search Skers on the Bygone Selkirk Facebook page there’s a photo from an old Southern Reporter Annual of the Ettrick winding past Howden Scaurs.
Hope this helps.
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