Tradespeople in Galashiels, Scottish Borders

About Galashiels

Galashiels is the largest urban centre in the Scottish Borders, a town of around 12,000 people on the Gala Water near its meeting with the Tweed.

The Borders Railway terminus — the first new railway built in Scotland in over a century — has transformed the town's connections, putting Edinburgh Waverley within 55 minutes.

Heriot-Watt University's School of Textiles and Design is based here, continuing the town's long association with the textile trade.

The town centre has undergone significant regeneration, with the Great Tapestry of Scotland housed in a purpose-built gallery that opened in 2021.

Galashiels serves as the commercial hub for the central Borders, with supermarkets, retail parks, and services that draw from surrounding towns and villages.

Nearby: Lauder, Melrose, Selkirk, Stow, Tweedbank

Missing a trade?

If there’s a trade you’d like to see listed in Galashiels, let us know and we’ll add it.

About Scottish Borders

The Scottish Borders is the largest council area in southern Scotland, stretching from the edge of Edinburgh and East Lothian in the north to the English border in the south.

It is a landscape of rolling hills, river valleys, and market towns — the Tweed, Teviot, Ettrick, and Yarrow rivers carve through countryside that has been fought over, farmed, and written about for centuries.

Hawick and Galashiels are the largest towns, but the region's character is shaped by a string of smaller burghs — Kelso, Jedburgh, Peebles, Melrose, and Selkirk — each with its own abbey ruins, common riding traditions, or rugby loyalties.

The Borders Railway, reopened in 2015, connects Tweedbank and Galashiels to Edinburgh Waverley, bringing the northern Borders within commuting distance of the capital for the first time in decades.

The region is known for its textile heritage, its abbeys, and an outdoor culture built around hill walking, fishing, mountain biking, and rugby — a place where community identity runs deep and the landscape is never far away.

Nearby: East Lothian, Midlothian