The entrance to the Waterloo Monument on Peniel Heugh

The Waterloo Monument near

Ancrum Ancrum ( gd, Alan Crom) is a village in the Borders area of Scotland, 5 km north west of Jedburgh. The village — which currently has a population of around 300 — is situated just off the A68 trunk road on the B6400 which runs through A ...

in the

Scottish Borders The Scottish Borders ( sco, the Mairches, 'the Marches'; gd, Crìochan na h-Alba) is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders the City of Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway, East Lothian, Midlothian, South Lanarkshire, West Lothi ...

is a 150-foot tower, built between 1817 and 1824 to commemorate the

Battle of Waterloo The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo, Belgium, Waterloo (at that time in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, now in Belgium). A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by two of the armie ...

.
Waterloo Monument. It was designed by the architect

Archibald Elliot Archibald Elliot (August 1761 – 16 June 1823) was a Scottish architect based in Edinburgh. He had a very distinctive style, typified by square plans, concealed roofs, crenellated walls and square corner towers. All may be said to derive from ...

, after the original

monument A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, his ...

William Burn William Burn (20 December 1789 – 15 February 1870) was a Scottish architect. He received major commissions from the age of 20 until his death at 81. He built in many styles and was a pioneer of the Scottish Baronial Revival,often referred t ...

collapsed. The monument stands on Peniel Heugh, OS ref: NT 653263, a hill between

and

Nisbet, Roxburghshire Nisbet is a small hamlet on the B6400, in Roxburghshire, along the River Teviot, in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland. It is located north of Jedburgh and south of Roxburgh. The village has several Nisbet location names: Nisbet, East Nis ...

. It is on private land, but walkers may park at the Harestanes Visitor Centre and then follow the marked walk to the top of the hill. The tower can be climbed using a key which can be borrowed at a small cost from the Lothian Estates Office in nearby

Bonjedward Bonjedward (Scottish Gaelic: ''Bun Jedward)'' is a hamlet in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland, two miles north of Jedburgh where the Jed Water joins the River Teviot. The village stands on a ridge of land formed by the approach of the Teviot ...

. Inside the monument is a

spiral staircase Stairs are a structure designed to bridge a large vertical distance between lower and higher levels by dividing it into smaller vertical distances. This is achieved as a diagonal series of horizontal platforms called steps which enable passage ...

with 226 steps leading to the wooden balcony which encircles the top of the tower. The memorial at the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium also has 226 steps. On 1 May 2011, a temporary

zip wire A zip-line, zip line, zip-wire, flying fox, or death slide is a pulley suspended on a cable, usually made of stainless steel, mounted on a slope. It is designed to enable cargo or a person propelled by gravity to travel from the top to the bo ...

was erected at the monument as part of a fundraising event for the

Anthony Nolan Anthony Nolan is a UK charity that works in the areas of leukaemia and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. It manages and recruits donors to the Anthony Nolan Register, which is part of an aligned registry that also includes the ''Welsh Bon ...

charity. The zip wire, built by Vertical Events, is believed to be the longest ever set up in the UK and was long. The monument underwent some renovation in May and June 2018 and was out-of-bounds for access.

References

{{Coord, 55, 31, 45.22, N, 2, 33, 00.7, W, display=title Tourist attractions in the Scottish Borders Monuments and memorials in Scotland Buildings and structures in the Scottish Borders Battle of Waterloo Military monuments and memorials

See also

References