Border Mills

The book explores the rich material contained within a collection of oral history recordings with Peeblesshire textile mill workers, made by Ian MacDougall between 1996 and 2004. Their testimonies chart a period of immense change across all aspects of textile manufacturing, an industry which was always in a state of flux with innovations in processes and fibres. The recordings encompass the experience of a generation of workers affected by two World Wars – their fathers having been in the First and themselves in the Second. They also reflects on the role of women in the workplace, and community life and how this has changed in correlation to the rise and decline of the textile industry. Published by NMS Enterprises Limited – Publishing in association with The Scottish Working People's History Trust and the European Ethnological Research Centre.