About a mile and a half on the Edinburgh side of Penicuik, on the great south road leading to Peebles and Dumfries, is the military station of Glencorse, the dépôt of the Royal Scots Regiment. Until about ten years ago the place was known as Greenlaw, but the name was changed owing to postal confusion with Greenlaw in Berwickshire.
In 1804, when, for many reasons, war-prisoners were hurried away from England to Scotland, the old mansion house of Greenlaw was bought by the Government and converted into a dépôt for 200 prisoners of war. It was situated in the south-west corner of a park of sixty acres, and consisted of a great square building, which was surrounded by a high wooden palisade, outside which was an airing ground, and space for the necessary domestic offices, guard rooms, garrison quarters, and so forth, within an outer stone wall. Other buildings, chiefly in wood, were added, and until 1811 it was the only Scottish war-prison south of Edinburgh.
For a year Greenlaw depended upon regulars from Edinburgh for its garrison, but after 1805 the drain upon the army for foreign service was so great, that the Militia was again requisitioned to do duty at the war-prisons. The garrison at Greenlaw consisted of one captain, four subalterns, eight sergeants, four drummers, and 155 rank and file, the head-quarters being at the Old Foundry in Penicuik. Discipline seems to have been strict, and special attention was given to the appearance and turn-out of the men. Eleven sentries were on duty night and day, each man having six blank and six ball cartridges, the latter only to be used in case of serious need—a very necessary insistance, as the militiamen, although of a better class generally than their successors of recent years, were more apt to be carried away by impulse than seasoned regulars. A private of the Stirling Militia was condemned in 1807 to receive 800 lashes for being drunk and out of quarters after tattoo, for having struck his superior officer, and used mutinous language—and this was a sentence mitigated on account of his previous good conduct and his expression of regret.
After the Peace of 1814, Greenlaw seems to have remained untenanted until 1846, when extensive buildings were added—mostly of wood—and it was made the military prison for Scotland. This it continued to be until 1888. In 1876 still further additions were made in a more substantial fashion, as it was decided to make it also the Scottish South Eastern Military Dépôt. In 1899 the old military prisons in wood were demolished, and with them some of the original war-prison buildings, so that all at present existing of the latter are the stone octagon Guard House, in the war-times used as the place of confinement for officers, and the line of building, now the married men’s quarters, then the garrison officer’s quarters, and some of the original stone boundary wall.
In 1810 the Government bought the Esk Mills at Valleyfield, and on February 6, 1811, the first batch of 350 prisoners arrived. Building was rapidly pushed forward to provide accommodation for 5,000 prisoners at a cost of £73,000, the new war-prison being known as Valleyfield.
‘About nine miles south of Edinburgh,’ says a writer in Chambers’s Journal for 1887, ‘on the main road to Peebles, stands the village of Penicuik, for the most part built on the high road overlooking and sloping down the valley of the North Esk. Passing through the village, and down the slope leading to the bridge that spans the Esk and continues the road, we turn sharply to the left just at the bridge, and a short distance below are the extensive paper-mills of Messrs. Alexander Cowan and Sons, called the Valleyfield Paper Mills.’
I followed this direction, and under the courteous guidance of Mr. Cowan saw what little remains of one of the most famous war-prisons of Britain.
Until 1897 one of the original ‘casernes’ was used as a rag store. In August of that year this was pulled down. It measured 300 feet long, ‘and its walls were eleven feet six inches thick.’[[8]] It had formed one of the first buildings at Glencorse. Valleyfield House, now the residence of Mr. Cowan, was in the days of the war-prison used as the Hospital.
In 1906, during excavations for the new enamelling house at the Mills, a dozen coffins were unearthed, all with their heads to the east. The new buildings of 1812 at Valleyfield consisted of six ‘casernes’, each from 80 to 100 feet long, of three stories, built of wood, with openings closed by strong wooden shutters. They were without fire-places, as it was considered that the animal heat of the closely-packed inmates would render such accessories unnecessary! The whole was surrounded by a stout wooden stockade, outside which was a carriage-road.
Notwithstanding apparent indifference to the comfort of the prisoners, the mortality at Valleyfield during three years and four months was but 309, being at the rate of 18·5 per mille, and in this is included a number of violent deaths from duels, quarrels, and the shooting of prisoners attempting to escape.