’The Great Foot-Ball Match on the Field of Carterhaugh and the Birth of Rugby

Ian W Landles, Hugh Hornby and Billy Gillies

The game of Rugby Union Football was said to have been invented at Rugby School in 1823, when William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it but William Riddell, shepherd at Bellendean did this eight years earlier at the “great football match at Carterhaugh”.

A new book called Caterhaugh Ba'  suggests that it may well have been from the mass handba’ games of the Scottish Borders - still very much alive and kicking - that the handling game first evolved or from what may well be considered to be Britain’s first ever mass participation sports event which took place at Carterhaugh a decade before what happened or didn’t happen on the playing field at Rugby School. The book tells of the parts played by Charles, 4th Duke of Buccleuch, Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd that faroff December afternoon at the confluence of the Ettrick and Yarrow. Beautiful hard backed book and good read.

Kindly donated by BMF Trustee, Ian Landles