HANGING above the bar in Lockerbie’s Mid Annandale Comrades Club is the well known Tucker’s Mace.
And the town’s pipe band have shared more information about the artefact and how it came to be there.
It’s connected to WWII when a training battalion of the 10th Black Watch was set up at Milkbank, near Lockerbie. After their initial training, the recruits had a further four weeks of intensive training before being posted to either France or the Far East.
The pipe band of The Black Watch would play every Saturday afternoon on Lockerbie High Street to entertain the locals.
Seeing that the band had no mace, a group of local businessmen decided to buy them one as a sign of appreciation for the entertainment they had given during such difficult times.
On November 6 1945, Mr DK Wilson presented the new mace, on behalf of the town, to Major Macgregor who handed it over to Drum Major Johnny Egan. The band then played off for one of the last times as the war ended and the training battalion was disbanded, whereupon the mace was displayed within the Black Watch Museum in Perth.
Lockerbie British Legion Pipe Band was formed in early 1947 and on hearing that the band did not have a mace, Major-General McMeekin, of the Black Watch, ordered that theirs be handed back to the town.
And that happened on October 19 1952 when it was received by Provost Miss Reid and Drum Major Tommy ‘Tucker’ Adamson.
Tucker used the mace from then until his retirement from the band 38 years later.
Ted Hills played with him and described Tucker as “always smart and a legend in his own lifetime.”
Recalling one performance at Workington, Ted said: “The band marched on to the sports field. Tucker went left, the band right, marched to the edge of the field, counter marched and met up again in the middle.
“The crowd went crazy thinking it had been rehearsed.”
Meanwhile, current pipe major Cameron Lauder said: “Although the mace belongs to the people of Lockerbie it has always been affectionately known as ‘Tucker’s Mace’.
“When Tucker passed away, the mace was handed back to the band by his family and was presented by former Pipe Major Henry Rogerson to Mid Annandale Comrades Club chairman Jim Campbell in November 1994, where it remains on display in the place where Tucker spent many happy days.”
