Scotsman Obituaries: Madge Elliot, campaigner whose efforts to reopen the Borders Railway saw a locomotive named after her

Her little boy Kim was only three when he was run over and so badly injured that there was a very real prospect his right foot would have to be amputated.

The youngster spent more than four months in hospital near Galashiels and underwent several operations in Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children. His mother visited daily, taking the train from their home in Hawick to the capital.

The rail line, known as the Waverley Route, provided the vital link to her son in his hospital bed during those traumatic weeks in the early 1960s.

And when it was threatened with closure under the infamous Beeching cuts she put up a spirited fight to save the route. She collected close to 12,000 signatures in support of the line and, in 1968, along with Kim, by then 11, and the Liberal MP David Steel, hand-delivered the petition to Prime Minister Harold Wilson at 10 Downing Street.

Despite her valiant efforts the closure went ahead the following year but she remained committed to reviving the route, which had originally opened in 1849.

Almost 50 years later, in 2015, the Campaign for Borders Rail, which she had helped found and been so enthusiastically involved in, saw the new Borders Railway route to Tweedbank opened by the late Queen Elizabeth II. Madge travelled on the first train and a Class 66 locomotive was named in her honour.

But it was only one of the many causes she championed as a passionate Borderer.

Matilda Elliot, universally known as Madge, was the daughter of George and Rebecca Robson and the great, great niece of Willam Lockie of Hawick’s Lockie’s Mill. She was born in the house at the mill in the town’s Drumlanrig Square and spent her entire life in the Borders town.

The middle of three children, she had an elder brother and a sister 11 years her junior. After leaving school at 14 she worked at Robert Pringle & Son, mainly for one of the directors, and trained in secretarial skills.

An athletic young woman, she was an accomplished tennis player and met her husband Bob Elliot, a teacher, through the sport. He was eight years older and after their marriage in 1952 she gave up work and concentrated on homemaking and raising their two sons, Kim and Sean.

Madge and Bob were both qualified to teach tennis – she obtained her certification four years before him – and were passionate about the sport.

They spent their summers at Hawick’s Wilton Park Tennis Club, playing and organising matches and competitions for the many juniors who passed through their hands, and even managing the courts when a council court attendant was no longer provided.

When the concept of short tennis was devised, it was a boon for the couple – a new, easy way to introduce youngsters to the sport.

They grasped the opportunity and each winter spent hours volunteering their skills coaching local children at Hawick High School’s games hall on Saturday mornings.

Their devotion enthused countless young players and they were an influential partnership, Madge doing the groundwork and Bob the finishing off, producing a steady stream of players successful at club, county and national level.

In 1999 both were made MBEs for their services to lawn tennis and contribution to local life.

Madge was involved in a swathe of Hawick organisations including the Citizens Advice Bureau, Hawick Tourist Association, the Friends of Dangerfield Mill and the Borders Festival of Jazz and Blues.

A lifelong socialist who never stood any nonsense, she was always ready to stand up to the powers-that-be for any perceived injustice meted out to Hawick, her rail campaign a testimony to her temerity.

She later went into battle for a footpath linking the west end of Hawick to Wilton Lodge Park after discovering that local kids, including her son Sean, had been taking a dangerous shortcut involving the perils of the main A7 road. Much letter-writing and lobbying of local councillors ensued and after seven years’ campaigning Madge finally succeeded in persuading the council to create a new footpath which affectionately became known as Madge’s Path.

Her last campaign was alongside Sean, fighting to save the Teviot Day Service for the elderly which had been closed by Scottish Borders Council. Just weeks before she died Madge was invited to reopen the service.

Many years earlier Madge had satisfied her wanderlust and desire to experience different cultures by holidaying on her own in Moscow and Bulgaria – to see what life was really like behind the Iron Curtain.

Although she loved to travel, her heart remained in the Borders, where she was passionate about its wealth of song and poetry. Much in demand to recite at Hawick nights, she committed verses to memory by sticking them up at the kitchen sink and learning them off by heart as she did the dishes.

Described as Hawick’s equivalent of the legendary Fair Maiden Lilliard who fought at the Battle of Ancrum, Florence Nightingale, Emmeline Pankhurst and Rosa Parks, she died after a ten-year battle with Alzheimer’s.

A few days later she was the subject of a motion in the Scottish Parliament, lodged by local MSP Christine Grahame, who praised Madge “as a force of nature” who represented the very best of communities working together to improve their areas.

Predeceased by her husband of 63 years in 2016, Madge Elliot is survived by her sons, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Obituaries

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