Peel towers (spelt Pele towers in England) are small fortified keeps, built along the English and Scottish Borders, intended as watch towers where signal fires could be lit to warn of approaching danger. By an Act of Parliament in 1455 each Peel Tower was required to have an iron basket on its summit and a smoke or fire signal, for day or night use, ready to hand.

A line of these towers was built in the 1430s across the Tweed valley from Berwick to its source, as a response to the dangers of invasion from the English Borders . Others were built in Cumberland, Westmorland and Northumberland, and as far south as Lancashire, in response to the threat of attack from the Scots and the Border Reivers.

Apart from their primary purpose as a warning system, these towers were the homes of the Lairds and landlords of the area, who dwelt in then with their families and retainers, while their followers lived in simple huts outside the walls. The towers also provided a refuge so that, when cross-border raiding parties arrived, the whole population of a village could take to the tower and wait for the marauders to depart.

The Peels in Peeblesshire formed an unbroken chain, within sight of one another, from the source of the Tweed down to its mouth at Berwick.

In the upper Tweed valley, going downstream from its source, they were as follows: Fruid, Hawkshaw, Oliver, Polmood, Kingledores, Mossfennan, Wrae, Quarter, Stanhope, Drumelzier, Tinnies, Dreva, Stobo, Dawyck, Easter Happrew, Lyne, Barnes, Caverhill, Neidpath, Peebles, Horsburgh, Nether Horsburgh, Cardrona, etc.

Peel towers are not usually found in larger places which have a castle, but in smaller settlements. They are often associated with a church: for example the pele tower in Embleton, Northumberland is a fine example of a so-called vicar's pele and the one at Hulne Priory is in the grounds of the priory. Hawkshaw, ancestral home of the Porteous family at Tweedsmuir in Peeblesshire, a peel tower dating from at least 1439, no longer stands but its site is marked by a cairn.

Nowadays some towers are derelict while others have been converted for use in peacetime; the Embleton tower is now part of the (former) vicarage and that on the Inner Farne is a home to bird wardens. The most obvious conversion needs will include access, which was originally difficult, and the provision of more and larger windows.

See also

• Bastle house