Triermain

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Sir Walter Scott penned a ballad called ‘The Bride of Triermain,’ a ruined castle that lies just a few miles west of Gilsland and was built as a protection against Liddesdale raids in the 14th Century with stone taken from Hadrian’s Wall.
The tower that stood on top of a glacial mound was demolished at the end of the 17th Century, with the stone being recycled into the farm buildings nearby, so just a thick wall and fragment of the gatehouse remain of the moated castle.
Triermain was built by the Norman de Vaux family, whose ancestors went on to become brewers in Sunderland with their famous Double Maxim beer popular among the Wearside shipworkers in the last century, and was in ruins by the end of the 16th.
Gilsland was Bell territory during the reiver period, with a few Milburns and Hardens for good measure. The Bells also lived across the line on the Scots’ side and were at feud with the Grahams in 1583 after the murder of two Bells – and a Graham that rode with them – the year before in retribution for the death of one of the Grahams, who was kinsman to his murderer. Lord Scrope reckoned that the complicated inter-family nature of the feud made it ‘the greatest ever on these Borders.’
With strong family ties on both sides of the divide, the West March was virtually ungovernable.

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