PEEBLES  , a royal and

police burgh and county town of Peeblesshire, Scotland, situated at the junction of Eddleston Water with the Tweed . Pop . (19o1), 5266 . It is 27 M. south of Edinburgh by the North British Railway (22 M. by road), and is also the terminus of a branch line of the Caledonian system from Carstairs in Lanarkshire . The burgh consists of the newtown, the principal quarter, on the south of the Eddleston, and the old on the north; the Tweed is crossed by a handsome five-arched bridge . Peebles is a noted haunt of anglers, and the Royal Company of Archers shoot here periodically for the silver arrow given by the burgh . The chief public buildings are the town and county halls, the corn exchange, the hospital and Chambers Institution . The last was once the town house of the earls of March, but was presented to Peebles byWilliam Chambers, the publisher, in 1859 . The site of the castle, which stood till the beginning of the 18th century, is now occupied by the parish church, built in 1887 . Of St Andrew's Church, founded in 1195, nothing remains but the tower, restored by William Chambers, who was buried beside it in 1883 . The church of the Holy Rood was erected by Alexander III. in 1261, to contain a supposed remnant of the true cross discovered here . The building remained till 1784, when it was nearly demolished to provide stones for a new parish church .

Portions of the town walls still exist, and there are also vaulted cellars constructed in the 16th and 17th centuries as hiding-places against Border freebooters . The old cross, which had stood for several years in the quadrangle of Chambers Institution, was restored and erected in High

Street in 1895 . The industries consist of the manufactures of woollens and tweeds, and of meal and flour mills . The town is also an important agricultural centre . The name of Peebles is said to be derived from the pebylls, or tents, which the Gadeni pitched here in the days of the Romans . The place was early a favourite residence of the Scots kings when they came to hunt in Ettrick forest . It probably received its charter from Alexander III., was created a royal burgh in 1367 and was the scene of the poem of Peblis to the Play, ascribed to James I . In 1544 the town sustained heavy damage in the expedition led by the 1st earl of Hertford, afterwards the protector Somerset, and in 1604 a large portion of it was destroyed by fire . Though James VI. extended its charter, Peebles lost its importance after the union of the Crowns . On the north bank of the Tweed, one mile west of Peebles, stands Neidpath Castle . The ancient peel tower dates probably from the 13th century . Its first owners were Tweeddale Frasers or Frisels, from whom it passed, by marriage, to the Hays of Yester in Haddingtonshire, earls of Tweeddale .

It was besieged and taken by

Cromwell in 165o . The third earl of Tweeddale (1645–1713) sold it to the duke of Queensberry in 1686 . The earl of Wemvss succeeded to the Neidpath property in 18ro .