Re: toudupp village
-
In reply to:
toudupp village
wallace tudhope 2/09/09
Hi Wally,
With respect to the village of Toudupp, this would be what is called a Fermtoun, or farming town, which were usually a collection family or marriage related people who jointly rented land for farming, cattle or sheep rearing, usually all three. The Borders or Scottish Marches had hundreds of such small settlements, often as small as two cottages, only a few grew into villages that remain to day. Most, however, were cleared during the ‘Lowland Clearances of 1760-1830’, almost certainly amongst these were both Toudupp and the settlement at Carewoodrighope Burn, Tudhope hill. Some three times the number of people were displaced than in the better known ‘Highland Clearances’. If, such people were initially able to afford to rent land, by 1760 onwards, the rents were raised to such high levels that the return on the land could no longer support these rents, and the people were forced to leave, barter being no longer acceptable. Hence, the land was free to be enclosed and used for the landowner’s own cattle and sheep, which would eventually be sold for English money at the great cattle markets in the south. The great cattle trade was the driving force that drove the land enclosures and clearances, in 1760 an estimated eighty thousand head of cattle were being driven south, firstly to Northfolk for winter fatting, then on to the London markets in the spring. The passage of cattle through the Scottish hills for nearly a century, left beaten trails in the ground known as ‘Drove Roads’. Toudupp was south east of what is now known as Newcastleton.