12/02/2025
Did you know the Well house used to be a very popular inn and was called The Angel Inn? Parts of the building are estimated to be built in 1640 and has a fantastic local history.
Read on to find out about the great story of a local he**in called Grizel Cochrane:
A local Legend tells of an 18-year-old girl whose courage and daring delayed the delivery of her father's death warrant.
Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree was the second son of the 1st Earl of Dundonald.
On the death of Charles II in 1685, he joined the Earl of Argyll's invasion of Scotland as part of the unsuccessful Monmouth rebellion, a plot to overthrow the Catholic James II.
He was arrested and taken to Tolbooth prison in Edinburgh where he was charged with high treason and condemned to be hanged.
His daughter Grizell hoped to delay the ex*****on so that the supporters of her father would have more time to negotiate a pardon.
Dressed as a man, she armed herself with pistols and decided to intercept the post boy carrying her father's death warrant he was known to be in the habit of resting in Belford at The Angel Inn, the previous name for Well House.
Grizell posed as a traveller in the same inn. She asked the landlady for water from the well, hoping to steal the warrant from the sleeping postboy in her absence. Unfortunately he used the mailbag as a pillow, so she used the opportunity to remove the charge from his pistols instead.
Having paid what she owed, she rode her horse south from the village and took a detour to rejoin the mail route North of Belford, where she waited for the postboy to appear.
She greeted him in a friendly manner and they rode on a few miles together before Grizell made her move and demanded that he should hand over the mailbags. They both drew their pistols and the postboy fired his, only to discover there was no charge in them. He dismounted and tried to seize her, but she grabbed the bridle of his horse and galloped on to what is now known as “Grizy’s Clump”, where she cut open the mailbags and retrieved and destroyed the death-warrant.
Grizell was born in approximately 1667 to Sir John Cochrane and his wife Margaret Strickland. Grizell married John Kerr of Morriston Berwickshire on February the 18, 1686, the year following the courageous part she played in the reprieve of her father. The memorial reads as follows:
“Her rests the corps of John Ker of Moristown who departed this life the 27 of September 1691 in the thretth year of his age. As also the corps of Grizell Cochrane his lady who died the 21 of March 1748 in the 83rd year of her age.”
Grizell Cochrane has of course, been ever since the he**ine of a Border song:
The warlocks are dancing th*****me reels
On Goswick’s haunted links;
The red fire shoots by Ladythorne,
And Tam wi’ the Ladythorne fa’s and sinks.
On Kyloe’s hills there’s awfu’ sounds
But they frighted not Cochrane’s Grizzy.
The moonbeams shot from the troubled sky
In glints o’flickerin’ light;
The horseman cam skelping thro’the mire
For his mind was in affright.
His pistol cocked he held in his hand
But the fient a fear had Grizzy.
As he cam’ fornenst theFenwicke woods
From the whin bushes shot out a flame;
His dappled filly reared up in affright,
And backward over he came.
There’s a hand on his craig, and a foot on his mouth,
‘Twas Cachrane’s bonny Grizzy.
“I will not tak thy life,” she said,
“But gie me thy London news;
No blood of thine shall fyle my blade
Gin me ye dinna refuse.”
She’s prie’d the warrant and away she flew
With the speed and strength o’ the wild curlew.
