eric robson's bewcastle...

One of Bewcastle's lesser-known claims to fame is that it was the location of the first recorded England Scotland football international.

The year was 1599 and a team of six Armstrongs had ridden down out of Liddesdale to take on a team of English lads at Bewcastle. After the match they retired to the pub and much drink was taken.

So far so much like an average Saturday afternoon.

Where things started to unravel was when a very unsportsmanlike Mr. William Ridley, an Englishman with a grudge against the troublesome Scottish Armstrongs got wind of their visit. He decided that while they were rather the worse for wear on English ground he would capture them and hand them over to the local law officer - the captain of Bewcastle. He got a bunch of locals together and laid an ambush.

Unfortunately for him somebody tipped the Armstrongs off. Ridley suddenly found himself facing not just a bunch of inebriated football hooligans but two hundred stone cold sober Scottish riders. It must have been like that moment in the cowboy films when a couple of hundred mounted Indians suddenly appear over the horizon.

Ridley and a couple of his men were killed, thirty were taken hostage and others sorely injured. The contemporary chronicler was particularly fascinated by the injuries to one John Whytfield ‘whose bowells came out but are sowed up againe'. Sadly the same chronicler let us down over one vital piece of information. He forgot to mention the result of the match. But then even in the sixteenth century Scotland 2: England 3 dead might have seemed inflammatory.