The Battle of Melrose: Blood on the Borders

The Battle of Melrose

I found an image that shows an old engraving of a standing stone with location unknown.
My video shows part of the investigation on finding this standing stone and what monument it serves to the history of the Scottish Borders.

Blood in the Borders. A King, a Reiver, a Stone…

Last night, while casually scrolling through some historical archives online, I stumbled across something intriguing — an old engraving of a standing stone titled “Turn Again Stone.” The scene looked oddly familiar: a stone nestled into a wooded slope, with the Tweed below and the Eildon Hills rising beyond. But I’d never heard of this stone before.

That was enough to spark an investigation.

What followed was a journey into one of the bloodiest and most forgotten chapters of the Scottish Borders’ past — The Battle of Melrose, also known as The Battle of Skirmish Hill, fought on 25 July 1526.

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A King Held Hostage

Following the death of James IV at Flodden in 1513, his son James V was still just a child. By 1526, he was under the control of powerful nobles — particularly Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus.

But young King James V wanted out. Secret messages were sent. A rescue was plotted.

Enter Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch — no, not that Walter Scott — the fierce Border chieftain and head of Clan Scott. At the King’s request, Buccleuch gathered an army of Border men to intercept the royal party on its route north from Jedburgh to Edinburgh.

And the location he chose for the ambush? The River Tweed, just outside Melrose, where the only bridge in miles would funnel the enemy into perfect position.

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Battle at the Tweed

As the Douglases and their allies — including the powerful Kerrs of Cessford — crossed the bridge near Bridgend, Buccleuch and his men attacked from the slopes of the Eildon Hills.

The fight was brutal. Despite losing over 100 men, the Douglases held the King. Buccleuch’s men — the Scotts, Elliots, and others — were pushed back.

But the story didn’t end there…

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The Death of Kerr of Cessford

As the Scotts retreated into the woods above Abbotsford, they were pursued by the Kerrs — including Andrew Kerr of Cessford himself.

At some crucial, hidden point in Caddonlee Wood, the Scotts turned.

There, Kerr of Cessford was slain. The place was named “Turn Again Wood,” and a standing stone was erected to mark the spot where the tide of the pursuit turned — and blood was spilled.

That stone, the Turn Again Stone, became a silent witness to centuries of Border hatred and reprisal — between Kerrs and Scotts, Douglases and Armstrongs, nobles and kings.

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Does the Stone Still Exist?

Armed with the engraving and the legend, I went hunting.

Deep in the undergrowth near Abbotsford, buried beneath centuries of moss and leaf, I finally found it — the Turn Again Stone.

It stands there still, crooked, worn by time, half-swallowed by the forest floor. A monument not to a king or a saint, but to blood, betrayal, and the brutal poetry of Border warfare.

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A Forgotten Monument, A Forgotten Battle

Today, the Battle of Melrose — or Skirmish Hill, as it’s now quaintly called — is commemorated by a single information board by the River Tweed.

But the truth is written in the land itself.

The standing stone survives. The old tower at Darnick still watches over the route. The scars of history are etched into the Borders, hidden in plain sight.

And if you go looking for them — really looking — they’re all still there.