Natural History of Pointfield

The grounds at Pointfield

Pointfield is a Georgian grade II listed building that occupies about 1 acre of land stretching down to the North bank of the River Tweed on the outskirts of the town of Kelso. Initially the plot was used for market gardening but since 1830 it has been the garden to a private residence, ‘Pointfield’. Since 2015 we have been developing the grounds to encourage a diversity of wildlife. The grounds currently encompass a variety of habitats - a pond, an unimproved short-grass meadow, a vegetable plot, wooded areas, rockeries, nettle patches and both formal and informal (native plant) borders. Veteran orchard trees (apples, pears, plums) occupy a major part of the grounds and there is a massive cut-leaf beech tree. Walnut and hazelnut trees were planted in the 1980s.

Early history

First record of the land at Pointfield is in 1778 when the market gardener Alexander Blackie sold the land to John and Thomas Tompson who owned adjacent plots on either side. The market garden plot was at that time separated by mud-dykes and hedges from the adjacent plots. In 1815 the land had been acquired by the Kelso architect John Gray from Alexander Stephenson, writer in Edinburgh, and was at that point sold to another local architect William Elliot for £234.05. Gray and Elliot designed and built a residential home on the grounds. House building of Pointfield was begun in the 1820s after 1823 (it does not appear in the 1823 map of Kelso by John Wood) and was completed by 1830 (the painter and decorator A. Aimes scratched his name and date “26th July, 1830” on the lead flashing of one of the chimney stacks, presumably indicating completion on that date). The earliest recorded occupant was Royal Navy Captain Pringle Hume Douglas, who in February 1845 passed the house deeds on to his son.