Cossars Building on Earlston High Street

We are grateful to Thom Young for contributing this post  on the history of his house  - Cossars Building on Earlston High Street.  It is an abridged  version of a seven page article detailing  his  in-depth research,   which has been added to the Auld Earlston Archive Collection.   

‘Cossars Buildings’ - What’s in a name? 

Three of the four terraced houses in Earlston High Street between the Church Hall and ‘South Crofts’ are called ‘Cossars Buildings’.  We bought the westmost one in 2018. I fixed a name plaque, but nobody I asked, knew the origin of the name.

Below is a sketch of all I could piece together from public records; inevitably it gives no more than sporadic glimpses of a story with a little context.  It turns out the explanation for the building name is simple and obvious. Cossar is the name of a family whose members owned the property through 5 generations from 1744/5 until the death of the last of them in 1926 and one of whose members was responsible for the construction of the present buildings.

The First Cossar in the  Story
Scotland in the 1700s was predominantly rural with a high proportion of the people living a subsistence existence.  Most of the Lowlands was open moorland with almost no roads. There were few property owners.  By 1791, out of a total population of 1351 in Earlston Parish - roughly 6 miles from east to west and between 3 and 4 miles north to south - there were only 40 ‘proprietors’ of land.  The first Cossar in the story may seem a little surprising.  

James Cossar was described as a ‘Herd in Huntlywood’, a shepherd or cattle herdsman.  He had married Margaret Marshal (or ‘Mershal’) in 1740. They had one son and three daughters.  

In 1744 James bought two ‘coathouses’ on the south side of ‘the street in Earlstoun’, together with two yards behind and also 5 acres of the ‘East Muirs of Earlstoun’ from the trustees for creditors of George Gray, shoemaker in Fans.  This property had been sold in 1721 by John Shiel of Croftrigg, Earlstoun to John Cowan, Maltman Brewer.  After Cowan’s death his daughters sold in 1735 to George Gray. In 1745, James Cossar bought an adjacent coathouse and yard from George Pringle, Merchant in Earlstoun.

‘Coathouse’ is another form of the term cottarhouse, a small, basic, single storey dwelling. In 1744 it would probably have had a turf roof with an earth floor, possibly accommodating quite a large family.

The five acres was included in the original sale in 1721 as compensation for the loss of rights in the ‘commonty’ that was available for grazing and taking of turf.  Statutes of 1695 permitted the division of arable land that had been worked on a runrig system of strips, which in Earlston were called ‘husbandlands’ and  also the division of ‘commonties’ that had been available for grazing and taking of turf.   Some time before 1721, court petitions had been submitted and granted for the permanent division of both in Earlston.   The five acres was part of John Shiel’s share.

Thomas Cossar - when James' twins, Thomas and Margret, were born in 1747, James was ‘Herd in Chapplie’, now Chapel on Leader and by the time he died, sometime before 1793, his son Thomas was a tenant farmer in ‘Birkhillside’ near there.  Thomas had married Peggy Weir in 1781 and had two sons and two daughters.  He inherited the Earlston property.  Sometime after 1805 he leased Mosshouses farm on the moor 3 miles west of Earlston, part of the Mellerstain estate. 

James Cossar - After Thomas died, the Earlston property and Mosshouses farm tenancy passed to his son James.  In 1815 he recorded the first Cossar title to the Earlston property, previously relying on unrecorded deeds, then quite common.  In 1816, James sold the five acres of the ‘East Muirs of Earlstoun’ to James Thomson, ‘labourer, Earlston’. It was sold in 1838 to George Baillie, landlord of Mosshouses.

In 1828 James Cossar married Alison Craw, daughter of the tenant of West Mains farm, Lauder. They had a daughter and 3 sons.  The first census in 1841 records James and family at Mosshouses together with 7 labourers and 2 female servants accommodate in the house and two other buildings. 

Ten years on  Mosshouses was recorded as 653 acres with 420 arable. The 1851 census records James and family with son Thomas, now 17, 4 labourers, a shepherd and a housemaid, only one from 1841.

James had suffered from heart problems for some years.  In 1855 he conveyed the Earlston coathouses to his wife, Alison, in life rent, entitling her to rental income during her lifetime, and then outright ownership to son, Thomas.  James,70, died two months later. 

James'  estate inventory gives a rare glimpse into the family’s financial standing.  A stock of 8 horses, a riding pony, 34 cattle, 417 sheep and 6 pigs valued at just under £1,000,  bank deposits of £1200 and a total of £2391 (roughly £250,000 in 2020). The farm lease and bulk of his estate went to Thomas, subject to paying £50 (£5,400 in 2020) yearly to each of his two brothers and £300 (£32,500 in 2020) to each on the death of their mother.  He left £200 to daughter Isabella who had received £100 on marriage.

The 1861 census records Thomas’s brother John and 3 ploughmen, 2 agricultural labourers, a shepherd and 2 domestic servants. None was employed in 1851.

Thomas Cossar - In 1863, not long before Alison died, she and Thomas sold the Earlston property to brother John, aged 23.  John had already demolished the coathouses and had built two two-storey houses, the one adjacent to South Croft, now ours, and the adjoining one. It has been suggested that the building was constructed by Rodger Builders of Earlston, who started up in 1847. Moray Cottage at the other end of the terrace is older, so the final part of Cossars Buildings, now known as Foremans Cottage, must have been a later infill between two gables. 

In 1867 Thomas married Elizabeth Broomfield, a grocer with her sister in Earlston. The 1871 census Shows Thomas, Elizabeth, her sister, who may have been visiting and John as well as a shepherd, a cattleman, 4 labourers, a female farm servant and a domestic servant, none other than John employed in 1861.  Two cottages housed families, one with 8 children and both provided two of the labourers each. .

Family Blows:  Thomas’s other brother, James, born 1839, qualified as a Solicitor in Edinburgh.  James married in 1867 and had a son, Thomas John Cossar, in 1872.  Any joy from that was short lived;  that same year James died of heart disease, aged 36, compounded by the death of his widow, Helen, the following year, aged 41. The infant Thomas John was taken to Mosshouses to live.  It must have been a devastating time, but the losses didn’t abate. Thomas’s sister, Isabella, who had married a widowed farmer of neighbouring Langshaw farm in 1855 and had three daughters, died in 1875 aged 43.  Two years later, brother John, the ‘developer’ of Cossars Buildings, died suddenly aged 37. The Earlston property passed back to Thomas.  

The 1885 Valuation Roll of Earlston shows Thomas as proprietor of 9 houses rented out.  The 1890 Valuation Roll shows Thomas as proprietor of 10 houses and Elizabeth as proprietor of 5 houses and a shop with total rental of £55,6s,8p per annum.  This included 3 houses and a stable in New Street (now Thorn Street).  Apart from Cossars Buildings and one house and stable in Thorn Street, I have found no evidence of them taking title to or disposing of any property in Earlston!  Unfortunately, the Valuation Roll does not give any indication of individual location other than High Street and New Street.  It is clear, however, that somehow the Cossars contributed in a considerable way to the development of Earlston.

The 1891 census shows Thomas, Elizabeth and Thomas John, who at 18 is simply ‘Farmer’s nephew’.  Employed are a general domestic servant, a farm servant and an assistant shepherd or ‘lambing man’.  Now in his own house is the same shepherd from 1871.  There are also two ‘Hinds cottages’ with two families providing 7 labourers between them.  Hind or hynd was the common term in the borders for a married agricultural employee provided with accommodation, who was obliged to provide another person, normally female, to work as a condition of being employed on the farm.  The hind was responsible for providing board and lodging and for paying the bonded person out of the payment they received from the farmer.

Ten years on the 1901 census shows Thomas, Elizabeth and Thomas John, who at 26 is shown as ‘living on own means’.  Employed are a general domestic servant, a shepherd and a labourer as well as two families housed in cottages providing a Farm Steward, a cattleman, 3 ploughmen and another 2 labourers.  The term Hind is not used.  The arrangement seems to have fallen out of favour after a good deal of general protest amongst those who were not directly employed.

Thomas, Elizabeth and Thomas John left  Mosshouses some time between 1901 and 1904 to live in Earlston.  Thomas and Elizabeth had built a house in New Street bearing Elizabeth’s maiden name, ‘Broomfield House’.  Elizabeth died in 1904 aged 70 and Thomas died in 1908, aged 74.  Ownership of what is now known as Cossars Buildings passed to Thomas John Cossar along with Broomfield House.

Cossars Building immediately right of the white house (Moray House) c.1900

Thomas John Cossar married Helen Stewart, both aged 38 in 1911 and moved to Peebles.  They returned around 1918 to live in Broomfield House. He was then designated  as a ‘retired farmer’. He died in 1926 after suffering heart disease and kidney disease for some years.  Helen, still living at Broomfield House, died in January 1930 11 days after an accident.  She died at the Edinburgh home of Lord Fleming, a Judge in the Court of Session.  It may not be a coincidence that his father had been a Solicitor and a contemporary of Thomas John’s father, James.

Thomas John bequeathed Cossars Buildings after the death of Helen to Thomas Cossar Scott, who was working for Standard Bank in Nyasaland, now Malawi.  He appears to have grown up at Cairneymount farm on the Earlston side of Mosshouses.    

Although it is easy to see how the building would have become known by the family name, the first title record of the building name appeared in 1934 after 190 years of Cossar ownership when it was sold by Thomas Cossar Scott to Adam Rodger, builder, Earlston, who had acted as agent for the Cossars for some years. His family controlled ownership of the house we now live in from then until we bought it 86 years later. 

Having discovered something of the generally unknown part the Cossars played in Earlston life, it is  gratifying that our sign now records their name, possibly the first time it has appeared on the building.

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