Henry Andrew Scott was recorded in the 1881 Census of Rothbury as being unmarried, aged 24, a chemist, living with his mother, Jane Scott and his siblings in Rothbury, on what is now Stephenson Terrace.

In the same Census, Ann Allan, a widow, and her daughter, Mary Ann are both recorded as being next door.  Again, no precise address is given. Although there is no record to date about Henry's place of employment, an old, undated photograph of Front Street appears to have the name SCOTT & SON above the frontage of the shop at Simonside House. This later became, simply, SCOTT’S.

There is a possibility that the Scott family already were running a business at Simonside House.

In 1887, Henry Andrew Scott married Mary Ann Allan at Rothbury .
There were two children, one of whom, Charles Ernest Scott took over the running of the shop following Henry's death on 5 April 1922.
About 1936, after the death of Ernie Scott, his widow sold the house and business to Ernie’s cousins, Alan & William Arthur Armstrong.

A new shop front was installed made of chrome and Italian marble, which is still in place behind the current name board.  The main door to the shop is also the original installed in 1936.

Immediately prior to the start of WW2, the shop was leased to Andrew Tully, a grocer who continued with the lease until 1955, when Simonside House and the shop were sold to the Tweedside Co-operative Society.
At the outbreak of war, the house, being empty, was requisitioned by the War Department and was used to billet troops until Alan Armstrong regained control to move his family out of the coastal area.

During the military period, a considerable amount of damage was done, trenches were dug in the garden for war games, a hole was knocked through the wall between two bedrooms so that the occupants could speak to each other with ease.  

The Armstrong family occupied Simonside House from about 1940 until the sale in 1955, spending most of the time repairing the vast garden to produce a crop, and also the various damages done to the house, as well as a modest number of improvements.

It was not really a user-friendly building, having stairs, steps and landings all over, which created a large number of levels within the house.

The ground floor consisted of an entrance hall with a door through to the shop, a step up to the dining /living room and another step up to the kitchen and scullery leading off to the rear of the house. The first room upstairs was a toilet, leading from a small landing, then four steps up inside the door to the 'throne'.

Then more stairs to a second landing,  with one step to a bedroom on the left and  a sitting room on the right. From the lower part of that landing, right up a further three stairs into the bathroom, to the rear of the house.
Between the bedroom and the lounge, a third flight of steep stairs led up to the top floor.

To the left of the stairhead, a large bedroom looking out on the front street and from that, down a step at the back of the room was a further room, unfinished and used as a lumber room, to the rear of the house. To the right of the stairhead a small bedroom looking out over the rear of the house, and then another large bedroom, facing the front street.

Behind the house, lay what had been two storeys of warehousing; past that was a stone arch, which led, via a flight of stone steps, up to the garden.   This is now part of the cottage, as is the top floor of the old  warehouse.

The garden to the left of the steps contained two outbuildings attached to the rear of the warehouse. One was used as a woodshed and rough cutting shed and the other was the wash house, complete with large coal heated copper boiler. No drainage tap! Also, a large, old, cast-iron framed mangle with wooden rollers, later replaced with a more modern ‘Acme’ mangle, still muscle powered. 

Electricity was supplied by a 5 amp. system, (try to iron clothes with another item switched on and it was a case of light the candle to find and renew the fuse).

Cooking was carried out on three Valor paraffin burners, which used a single oven and a double oven and which used about 2 gallons of paraffin a week, obtainable from Mackay’s hardware shop in Bridge Street, in one gallon cans. No paraffin collected, then no pocket money earned.

Cleaning consisted of a carpet sweeper, muscle powered, eventually, at the end of the war replaced with a Hoover vacuum cleaner, which was only marginally more successful at the task of keeping carpets in good order.

Twice a year, the carpets were lifted, dragged up to the garden, where they were thrashed for what seemed like hours with wicker carpet beaters, which only had the effect of raising the dust, only for it to settle back on the carpet, unless there was a strong breeze blowing.

Simonside House was really a wonderful place to grow up in, as was Rothbury, but as is usual, one has to move away and look in, to fully realise just what sort of privileged childhood was, unknowingly at the time, spent there.

If one tired of the river, then there was the woods; tire of the woods then there was the moors, tire of them, then there was always Billy Pikes coal heap to slide down.