County town: Selkirk
Selkirkshire was one of Scotland's smaller Border counties, established as a sheriffdom from the medieval period. Its territory was once largely occupied by the great forest of Ettrick.
Selkirkshire is a small but historically distinct Border county of the upper Ettrick and Yarrow valleys, whose landscape of moorland and forested hills was the setting for James Hogg — the 'Ettrick Shepherd' — whose pastoral poems and the extraordinary novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner came from a deep knowledge of its character. Selkirk, the county town, was once an important centre of the Border textile industry. The Battle of Flodden in 1513 — Scotland's greatest military disaster — hit Selkirkshire particularly hard, and the Selkirk Common Riding, an annual civic ceremony, still commemorates the town's losses. Bowhill, seat of the Dukes of Buccleuch, stands in the Yarrow valley.
The Statistical Accounts of Scotland — the Old Statistical Account (1791–99) and the New Statistical Account (1834–45) — provide detailed parish-by-parish descriptions of Selkirkshire at two moments of transformation. Aubrey draws on these accounts when generating reports for Scottish locations, providing historical context specific to the parish and county.
Scotland's 33 traditional counties, established as sheriffdoms from the 12th century onward, were the administrative framework of the country until the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1975 replaced them with regional councils. They remain the reference framework for historical records, genealogy, and cultural identity.
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Selkirkshire draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data, Statistical Account records, and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.
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