Back through the NTS shop the party gathered to hear Mrs Barbara Linehan make a short speech about the three archaeologists, in whose memory she was to unveil the plaque (worded succinctly by Mr Ian Brown of Galashiels). She began with George Macdonald, the austere Secretary of the Scottish Education Department, but also an archaeologist and coin expert, and a frequent visitor to Melrose, first as a colleague and ‘trainer’ of James Curle and then as his friend. A man devoted to his work, who prided himself in having no conversational ‘small talk’ and with an indifference to pursuits like card and ball games and fishing, he could be a trying guest to Mrs Curle at dinner, but a friend to James Curle and the best of companions to small children (like Mrs Linehan) whom he would take on walks and who were delighted with his party piece of not merely moving but actually waggling his ears.

Mrs Linehan’s uncle, Alexander Ormiston Curle, was James Curle’s younger brother, and he was allowed (as James was not) to go to Cambridge University and have a career in the public service as a recorder of sites, an archaeologist himself at Traprain Law (the hack silver hoard) and Jarlshof in Shetland (a multi-period site) and a director of museums in Edinburgh. He was a charming man with children of his own, a number of interests and a habit of ‘speaking his mind’ – but in a disarming manner. He had been known to indicate to his hosts at dinner that one of the chairs was not original but a reproduction. Like Macdonald, with whom he was friendly in Edinburgh, he was good with children, particularly at holiday times and Christmases. One of his interests was gardening and he had produced new strains of meconopsis eg a blue poppy, some of which were still in Harmony garden.

Of her own father Mrs Linehan said that he had not married till in his forties and, in a sense, was more of a grandfather figure to his children. He had not had the chance of a University education, which he would have dearly liked, and, working in his father’s firm had not expected, nor been expected, to be engaged in archaeology. The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, of which he was a member, had asked him, being on the spot, to investigate the site at Newstead and he had initially thought that a couple of articles for the Society’s Proceedings would be all that would result. In fact the report became his magnum opus and he ‘little thought’, as he says in the Preface, that it would take so long. He was not a moraliser but he had given his children three pieces of advice:- never maltreat a book; never be late; and never buy anything in Galashiels – ‘the Melrose shopkeepers are our clients and we must support them’. Amid general laughter Mrs Linehan pulled the cord and revealed the oval plaque with a light yellow background and black lettering, happily coinciding with the Melrose rugby colours.