The Border Reivers
The area around Gilsland is Border Reivers Country.
The clans and families of the Borders were able to endure the struggle for survival due to their strength of character and their bonds of kinship.
They were both the inflicted and the inflictors. It was they who were responsible for the lawlessness but not the cause of it.
s one successive generation of reiving families followed another, the skills of rustling and raided were refined until they became an art of which the reivers were proud.
It was a profession to be admired. A way of life.
Find out more about the Border Reivers, the people and places here.
