Border Mills: Lives of Peeblesshire Textile Workers

Explores the rich material contained within a collection of oral history recordings with Peeblesshire textile mill workers, made by Ian MacDougall between 1996 and 2004. Their testimonies chart a period of immense change across all aspects of textile manufacturing, an industry which was always in a state of flux with innovations in processes and fibres. Describes the experience of a generation of workers affected by two World Wars – their fathers having been in the First and themselves in the Second. Also reflects on the role of women in the workplace, and community life and how this has changed in correlation to the rise and decline of the textile industry.