Langholm’s tannery in Elizabeth Street was owned and run by Charles Paisley and two of his three sons, Robert and Thomas. His third son Scott had a chemist’s shop in the High Street.

The tannery was established in the 1850s by Hawick-born Walter Scott, having dissolved his prior tannery business in Henry Street, parallel to Elizabeth Street.

Scott was an instigator of the Evangelical Union (‘EU’) movement in the border area, providing its first meeting place in Langholm in his original tannery’s bark-house (tree bark being used for tanning). He provided much of the financing for a new church building constructed near the High Street in 1870 and was the church’s first ordained elder.

Charles was the nephew of Walter Scott’s wife and took over the business when Scott died, renaming it Charles Paisley & Sons.

Charles was chairman of the Parish Council, a prominent member of the Langholm Liberal Club and an elder in the Evangelical Union Congregational Church.

His daughter Mary (1883-1907) married Langholm Academy schoolteacher Robert Hamilton (1878-1960). She died shortly after the death of their infant firstborn. Three years later Robert, by then rector of Langholm Academy, married her younger sister Maggie Paisley (1884-1948).

Maggie and her elder sister Lizzie both played for the Langholm Ladies hockey team.

Former apprentice tanner Frank Thomson (1892-1915) enlisted in the regular army in early 1914 and was a bomb (grenade) thrower. He was killed on 25 September 1915 in the Battle of Loos, France.

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