The Crook Inn

A staging post for travellers between Scotland and England, Tweedsmuir’s historic inn fed and watered many literary greats down the centuries

Tucked away in the spectacular Upper Tweed, the village of Tweedsmuir has long attracted local and visiting writers. It is a settlement synonymous with the River Tweed – its source rising just a short distance away at Tweed’s Well – and it is home to The Crook Inn, a coaching house at the centre of many a story over its 400-year lifetime.

Most famously, the Crook was a stop-off for a travelling Robert Burns (1759-1796) in 1792. The story goes that his affectionate advances toward the wife of a local weaver from Linkumdoddie were rebuffed, spurring him to write the scandalous poem, Willy Wastle’s Wife, in the kitchen of the inn.

Willie Wastle dwalt on Tweed,
The spot they ca'd it Linkumdoddie.
Willie was a wabster guid
Could stown a clue wi onie body.
He had a wife was dour and din,
O, Tinkler Maidgie was her mither!
Sic a wife as Willie had,
I wad na gie a button for her.

Novelist John Buchan (1875-1940) was another who enjoyed the Crook’s hospitality. His maternal grandparents lived in the village of Broughton just eight miles away and he regularly holidayed in the area with his siblings in the late 1800s.

In later life, the novelist was a regular at inn, most famously around the time he penned his greatest adventure story, The 39 Steps. It’s impossible not to picture the hills and glens around as you follow the desperate Richard Hannay on a cat-and-mouse chase across the south of Scotland. The hostelry featured in Gideon Scott – one of Buchan’s earliest short stories – and again in his autobiography, Memory Hold-the-Door, published posthumously in 1940:

It was the Great South Road from the Scottish capital to England. … It followed Tweed to its source, past places which captured my fancy – the little hamlet of Tweedsmuir where Talla Water came down from its linns: the old coaching hostelries of the Crook and the Bield:… Tweedshaws, where the river had its source and then, beyond the divide, the mysterious green chasm called the Devil’s Beef Tub, and enormous half-mythical England.

Last orders were called at the Crook in 2006, and the estate is now carefully managed by the local Tweedsmuir Community Company. Exciting plans to bring the site back to life as a bunkhouse and glamping hub on the River Tweed Trail, a long-distance walking route, are currently in development. In the meantime, the fabulous Wee Crook café is a welcome stop-off for hill walkers, anglers, paddlers and cyclists. Perhaps the odd writer, too.

Further info

Much of the action in A Lost Lady of Old Years and Witch Wood (both novels by John Buchan) takes place in and around Broughton. If visiting, head to the village store to discover a tipple from Scotland’s original microbrewery, Broughton Ales. Their famous Greenmantle Ale, like the former hotel in the village, celebrates John Buchan’s spy novel of the same name.

Image credits: VisitScotland; Maureen Thornborrow