Article Date: 01 October 2010

Categories: Live | Visit

Butchers are a blessing to the Borders. We’re lucky to enjoy their counters stocked with local beef, lamb, pork, chicken and game, all reared on local land by local farmers, and skilfully prepared by hand in their backroom. In a world bereft of true experts, it’s rare to find the mastery practised by our Border butchers, passed down generations from father to son, or learnt as young lads on apprenticeship. Tradition and innovation mix evenly in the meat we take home for tea. 

So why, if butchers are surviving and even thriving in the recession, are they the subject of a shop local campaign? Butchers draw shoppers into the town centres, and so into neighbouring local shops too. Success breeds success. It’s a knock-on effect: the better one shop does, the better they all do. It doesn’t do any town any good to have empty shops. And butchers don’t just bring money to the towns, but to the farms too, via John Swan’s market in St Boswells. Consider a typical trip into town.

You go to the butcher for a pound of mince, and although you might decline an expertly chined loin of pork, or a well hung tranche of beef, or some exquisite hill-farmed lamb chops, you might very well emerge with a few pies, some sausages, and a proper chicken. It doesn’t end there, however: having been enticed into town by the excellent butchers, you may as well get some fruit and veg from the shop next door. You’re in town after all. And then you might pop into the newsagents for a paper. Suddenly, you become aware of an artful display of bags, coats, scarves, and in a rush of smugness you remember someone’s birthday. You may have a little gossip outside the post office where you buy a card. And then you are persuaded to have a coffee, and perhaps a little cake. You enter the delicatessen. 

One example of the Borders’ fine array of delis is Turnbulls in Hawick High Street. The owner of this delicatessen and coffee house, 25 year old Ross Irvine, is himself an inspiring story: he started the business from his bedroom while studying at university, and while he was there resurrected Turnbulls whisky, founded by his great great great grandfather in Hawick in 1855. Once a taxi of tourists even turned up outside his student flat, expecting a tour of the distillery. “We put Hawick on the whisky label to sell Hawick around the world;” Ross says, “ The point is to make Hawick a destination, and build a successful business. Now more shops are opening up this end of town. People habitually come to Hawick from Melrose and Kelso – what a great turnaround!” 

Turnbulls deli, like Border butchers, illustrate the power of successful shops to help neighbouring businesses. So keep popping into town for sausages for supper, a quick coffee, or a chat over cake – it helps everyone. And why not go Christmas shopping at your local deli too, at Pharlanne in Kelso, Deli Beans in Peebles, the Country Kitchen in Melrose, the Teviot Smokery or the Selkirk Deli. And take the opportunity to go shopping in town at this year’s Scott’s Selkirk too.