The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns: Creation, Growth and Fragmentation 9781474409827

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The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

For Ewan, Sylvie and Tilly

The Evolution of ­Scotland’s Towns Creation, Growth and Fragmentation E. Patricia Dennison

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high ­editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © E. Patricia Dennison, 2018 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in Miller Text by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire and printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 0981 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 3297 9 (paperback) ISBN 978 1 4744 0982 7 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 0983 4 (epub) The right of E. Patricia Dennison to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgements Image Credits List of Abbreviations Introduction 1

Medieval Towns I Towns before towns: pre-twelfth-century settlement II The first burghs III The built environment IV Keeping order

vii xi xiii xv 1 7 7 11 16 31

2 Daily Life in the Middle Ages I Markets and merchants II Home life III Health of the townspeople IV Relaxation

47 47 54 60 67

3 Medieval Faith and the Church I The Church routine II The parish and its people III Reformation IV The aftermath of Reformation

77 77 78 85 93

4 Encroachment on Burgh Society, 1550–1750 I New burghs, markets and shrinking hinterlands  II New burghs: two test cases III Urban clearances IV A slow disappearance

110 110 119 122 128

vi   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

5

Man-made and Natural Disasters, 1550–1750 I War and occupation in the seventeenth century II Continuing unrest and occupation III Lifestyles IV Famine’s devastating and final strike

138 138 152 156 161

6 The Birth of Urban Scotland I Improvement and Enlightenment II Population growth III New townscapes and new identities IV Railways and improving communications V Growing industrialisation

170 170 178 181 190 195

7

The Victorian Town I Housing conditions and health II The dawning of a better lifestyle III Leisure time IV The changing townscape V Visionary thinking?

209 210 214 229 232 241

8

The Twentieth Century I The Garden City ideal II The ‘Great War’ and the inter-war years III World War II, austerity and recovery IV Modernisation: new ideals or the demolition ball? V Architecture: a mirror of the twentieth century?

247 247 248 260 269 277

Post-script: Footprints to Fragmentation

291

Appendix: Population Statistics – A Select List Bibliography Index

299 301 329

Figures

I.1 Folio 4v. of the fifteenth-century Gild Court Book of Dunfermline 1.1 Aerial view of the site of Newstead 1.2 Map showing Scotland’s early burghs 1.3 View of Glasgow from the South (Pont 33, detail), Timothy Pont 1.4 View of Inverness (Pont 8, detail), Timothy Pont 1.5 View of Nairn (Pont 8, detail), Timothy Pont 1.6 Plan of Dumbarton, 1818, John Wood 1.7 Plan of Kirkcaldy, 1824, John Wood 1.8 Kirkcaldy High Street; raised beach and truncated burgage plots 1.9 Dunblane on a Rainy Day, 1880s, W. E. Lockhart 1.10 View of Tain ([Gordon 20], detail), Timothy Pont 1.11 View of Elgin ([Gordon 23], detail), Timothy Pont 1.12 The House of the Knights Hospitaller, Linlithgow 1.13 A typical backland scene 1.14 The control of power in the medieval burgh 2.1 A market scene 2.2 A leather scabbard 2.3 A bone pipe/recorder 2.4 A port scene 2.5 Pottery goods  2.6 Medieval wooden goods 2.7 Medieval wooden dish and barrel 2.8 A medieval leather shoe 2.9 The sole of a shoe with pointed toe 2.10 An elaborate medieval buckle 2.11 A medieval latrine seat 2.12 A Description of New and Old Aberdeen, 1661 (detail), James Gordon of Rothiemay 2.13 Spine of a child with healed tuberculosis

2 8 12 17 17 19 20 22 23 24 27 28 30 36 38 49 50 50 52 55 55 56 58 58 59 61 63 66

viii   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

2.14 Stone discs, probably used as gaming counters 3.1 Dunbar’s parish church 3.2 Merchant marks, folio 59r, Gild Court Book of Dunfermline 3.3 Prospect of the Abbey of Dunfermline, Theatrum Scotiae, 1693, J. Slezer 3.4 Coupar Angus from the South, 1843, Anon. 3.5 Melrose Abbey Complex, Alan Sorrell 3.6 Prospect of the Town and Abbey of Dunfermline, Theatrum Scotiae, c. 1693, J. Slezer 3.7 Prospect of the Town of Dunblane, Theatrum Scotiae, J. Slezer 3.8 Ruins of Cardross Parish Church 3.9 St Bartholomew, Glovers’ Incorporation, Perth, 1557 3.10 Plan of Dunbar, 1830, John Wood 4.1 New burghs founded between 1660 and 1707 4.2 Saltpans at Culross 4.3 Pourtraicte of ye new citie of Edzel, 4 Septb, 1592, David Lindsay of Edzell 4.4 Castle of St John, Stranraer, c. 1810, Anon.  4.5 High Street, Dalkeith 4.6 Musselburgh Road, Dalkeith 4.7 Plan of Dalkeith, 1822, John Wood 4.8 ‘Plan of Dalkeith, 1770’, John Lesslie 4.9 The Lews estate, Stornoway 4.10 Hamilton School 4.11 The old Hamilton Parish Church 4.12 A Plan of Hamilton, 1781, Thomas Barns 4.13 Plan of the Town of Hamilton, 1819, John Wood 4.14 The blocked access to the Hietoun of Hamilton 5.1 A Description of New and Old Aberdeen, 1661 (detail), James Gordon of Rothiemay 5.2 Kirkcaldy from the North, 1838, Anon. 5.3 St Nicholas Parish Church, Dalkeith 5.4 Prospect of the Town of Dundee from the East, Theatrum Scotiae, 1693, J. Slezer 5.5 Prospect of the Town of Air from the East, 1716, J. Slezer 5.6 ‘Plan of the Cromwellian Fort’, Stornoway, c. 1653 5.7 Aerial view of The Peel, Linlithgow 5.8 Linlithgow Townhouse 5.9 Pinkie House 5.10 ‘The Sanctuary House’, Dunfermline, E. Henderson 5.11 Twentieth-century use of the Medieval Sanctuary House 6.1 The West Port, Dunfermline

68 79 81 85 88 89 91 92 95 96 98 111 112 119 121 123 123 124 125 127 129 130 132 132 133 139 143 145 146 147 148 150 151 154 159 159 173

Figures   ix

6.2 Montrose High Street, Alexander Milne 6.3 Nairn Academy (Rose’s Academical Institution), c. 1882 6.4 View of New Lanark 6.5 A Plan of the Town of Paisley and Suburbs, 1781, William Semple 6.6 Plan of Paisley, 1828, John Wood 6.7 Dunbae House, Stranraer 6.8 The Edinburgh Trades, 1720, R. Chalmers 6.9 A Residenter in an Ancient Burgh on his Way to procure a Burgess Ticket, 1830, Thomas Sinclair 6.10 Mechanics of an Ancient Burgh going to Church to claim the Superiority of their Seats, 1830, Thomas Sinclair 6.11 View near Provan Mill Bridge Looking West, 1831, David Octavius Hill 6.12 ‘Railway baskets’ awaiting collection, Dunbar 6.13 Portobello Beach, c. 1850, Anon. 6.14 Galashiels from Buckholm Hill, 1845, Anon. 6.15 The Town of Dumbarton, 1818, John Clark 6.16 Abbey Brewery, Canongate, late nineteenth century 7.1 Pipe House Close, 93 High Street, Glasgow, 1868 7.2 The Market Place, Kelso, 1780, Anon. 7.3 Collector’s Close, Nairn, c. 1886 7.4 Provost Skene’s House, Aberdeen 7.5 Workmen’s Co-operative Dwellings, Edinburgh 7.6 Brechin Mechanics Institute, 1838, Anon. 7.7 Fastern’s E’en Ba, 1901, Melrose 7.8 The house of the secretary to Duchess Anne, Hamilton 7.9 Levengrove House, Dumbarton 7.10 Forfar’s Town and County Hall 7.11 The cattle market at Forfar 7.12 The Custom House, Greenock, 1820, Robert W. Salmon 7.13 Nos 225–229 High Street, Kirkcaldy 7.14 Princes Street with the Commencement of the Building of the Royal Institution, Edinburgh (detail), 1825, Alexander Nasmyth 7.15 Templeton’s Factory 8.1 Recruiting in World War I 8.2 Rosyth Garden City houses 8.3 15 Market Street, Greenock 8.4 North Wynd, Dalkeith 8.5 A typical post-war ‘prefab’ house 8.6 Seafar Development, Cumbernauld 8.7 ‘The Sun’, Golden Cross Café, Linlithgow 8.8 ‘The Moon’, Golden Cross Café, Linlithgow

174 176 180 182 182 184 186 187 188 190 192 194 197 201 202 210 218 222 223 224 227 231 233 234 236 237 238 238 239 240 249 253 255 257 264 267 270 270

x   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

8.9 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 8.14 8.15 8.16

The Linlithgow flats which replaced the Golden Cross Café India Tyre and Rubber Factory St Andrew’s House The BOAC Building Caley House The New Museum of Scotland The Scottish Parliament The Pier Arts Centre, Stromness

271 278 279 280 281 283 285 286

Acknowledgements

T

his book could not have been completed without the support of many people, so many that I cannot mention everyone. But to all those who quietly and unobtrusively helped me through the several years, good and bad, that saw the gradual emergence of this book, I am extremely grateful. My own researches into Scotland’s urban history have been widened and deepened through contacts with colleagues in Scotland and beyond. I would particularly like to mention the Scottish History Department of Edinburgh University, now within the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, which I found a vibrant, helpful environment within which to study and teach. Professor Richard Rodger, Professor Michael Lynch and Dr David Ditchburn of Trinity College, Dublin, have given me more than generous support, which I greatly appreciate. I would also like to thank the postgraduates who acted as my research assistants when I was Director of the Centre for Scottish Urban History. Their help in the production of the Scottish Burgh Surveys was invaluable. The Scottish Burgh Survey project was, for me, an exceptional experience. I am grateful to Historic Scotland (now Historic Environment Scotland) and the colleagues and friends I made there for the opportunity to learn in greater depth about individual towns in Scotland. While travelling around the country, staying in various and varied towns, I met so many kind and helpful people with a genuine interest in their own localities. I thank them for sharing their knowledge and their hospitality. As ever, I have benefited from the willing assistance of staff and friends in the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, now Historic Environment Scotland; the National Records of Scotland; the National Library of Scotland, in particular the more than generously helpful staff of the Map Library; and the very many local libraries who managed to remain outwardly happy while dealing with my niggling little queries. I also, especially, include in my thanks the libraries, museums and art galleries, as well as the private owners of paintings, photographs and illustrations, who have so willingly

xii   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

permitted me to include copies of their images in this volume; their names are listed below. That I have been able to include so many informative illustrations in this volume is largely thanks to the great generosity of the Strathmartine Trust, the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and the Marc Fitch Trust. Their financial support of this volume, and their confidence in my work, has been invaluable. Without their more than welcome assistance, this volume would have been a poorer reflection of my research. I extend my extremely grateful thanks to them all. Edinburgh University Press have been encouraging and thoughtfully supportive at all stages of the production of this volume. I owe them a great debt of gratitude not only for their efficiency and encouragement but also for their friendliness. Jenny Daly, Adela Rauchova, Eddie Clark, Anna Stevenson, Susan Tricklebank and Rebecca Mackenzie, in particular, have guided me with tolerance through the intricacies of the final stages of production. But I would particularly like to thank John Watson, the original commissioning editor, for his tolerance of the irritating but necessary postponements in the date for submission of my text. It did finally arrive! That it did so, is in no small measure due to the care of staff at the Queen Margaret Hospital, Dunfermline, the Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, and the Primrose Lane Medical Centre, Rosyth. For their skill and professionalism, I shall for ever be indebted to Mr A. I. Amin, Dr A. Sengupta and Dr Matthew Sweeney. To Benjie Gilbert, my physiotherapist, I also extend my thanks. They all shared in my battle. Without them this book would not have been completed. My greatest debt goes to my family and close friends. They have been consistently helpful over the last few years and I am grateful for their understanding and quiet, practical assistance. Most of all, my husband Michael has been both a real solace and solid support; I offer him great respect and deepest thanks.

Image Credits

Alamy Ltd, Figs 6.11, 7.15 Angus Collections managed by ANGUSalive Museums, Galleries and Archives, Figs 6.2, 7.10, 7.11 Annet House Museum, Linlithgow, Figs 8.7, 8.8 Bert McEwan, Fig. 5.11 Christina Unwin, Figs 1.2, 4.1 Christopher Marr, Fig. 8.13 City Art Centre, Fig. 6.13 Colin Martin, Fig.1.1 David Bowler, Alder Archaeology, Ltd, Figs 2.3, 2.9, 2.10, 2.14 Donnie Nelson, Stranraer, Fig. 6.7 Dunbar and District Historical Society, Fig. 3.1 Dunblane Museum, Fig. 1.9 The Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, Fig. 4.3 Edinburgh City Libraries, City of Edinburgh Council, Figs 1.12, 4.9 Ewan Torrie, Fig. 8.9 Fife Cultural Trust Ltd (Dunfermline Local Studies) on behalf of Fife Council, Figs 6.1, 8.5 Fife Cultural Trust Ltd (Kirkcaldy Galleries) on behalf of Fife Council, Fig. 5.2 Gavin Fraser, Fig. 8.16 Grant Bulloch Architect, Ltd, Figs 8.2, 8.11 Historic Environment Scotland, Figs 1.12, 2.5, 3.4, 3.5, 5.7, 6.4, 6.8, 6.9, 6.10, 6.14, 7.13, 8.4 Incorporation of the Guildry of Dunfermline, Figs I.1, 3.2 Jamie Stormonth Darling, Fig. 7.2 Jan Dunbar Fig. 1.13 Jean O’Reilly, Fig. 8.6 © Keith Hunter, Figs 8.10, 8.14 Lord Dalhousie, Fig. 7.6

xiv   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council, Figs 7.12, 8.3 Michael Lynch, Fig. 1.14 Nairn Museum, Figs 6.3, 7.3 National Galleries of Scotland, Fig. 7.14 Paisley Museum and Art Gallery, Renfrewshire Council, Fig. 6.5 Perth Museum and Art Gallery, Perth and Kinross Council, Fig. 3.8 Peter Stubbs, Figs 7.5, 8.15 Provost and Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford, Fig. 5.6 Russel Coleman, Derek Hicks and E. P. D. Torrie, Fig. 1.8 Scottish Urban Archaeological Trust, Figs 2.1, 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, 2.11 © South Lanarkshire Council, Leisure and Culture, Figs 4.10, 4.12, 4.14, 7.8 Stranraer Library, Fig. 4.4 The Trustees of the National Library of Scotland, Figs 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.10, 1.11, 2.12, 3.6, 3.9, 4.2, 4.7, 4.13, 5.1, 5.4, 5.5, 6.6, 6.15 Tom K. Anderson, Fig. 6.12 University of Glasgow Archive Services, William Younger Collection, Fig. 6.16 (GB248 WY/12/10/1) Virtual Mitchell Image Library, Glasgow Life, Culture and Sport Glasgow, Fig. 7.1 West Dunbartonshire Libraries and Cultural Services, Fig. 7.9

Abbreviations

Abdn Recs Early Records of the Burgh of Aberdeen, 1317, 1398–1407, ed. W. C. Dickinson (SHS, 1957) ACA Aberdeen City Archives Abdn Chrs Aberdeen Charters and Other Writs Illustrating the History of the Royal Burgh of Aberdeen, ed. P. J. Anderson (Aberdeen, 1890) Abdn Council Extracts from the Council Records of the Burgh of Aberdeen, ed. J. Stuart (Spalding Club, 1844–80) Abdn Reg. Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis, ed. C. Innes (Spalding and Maitland Clubs, 1845) ADCP Acts of the Lords of Council in Public Affairs, 1501–54: Selections from Acta Dominorum Concilii, ed. R. K. Hannay (Edinburgh, 1932) Adv. MS Advocates’ Manuscripts (NLS) Ancient Burgh Ancient Laws and Customs of the Burghs of Scotland, Laws 1124–1424 and 1424–1707, ed. C. Innes (SBRS, 1868–1910) APS The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ed. T. Thomson and C. Innes (Edinburgh, 1814–75) Ayr Accts Ayr Burgh Accounts, 1434–1624, ed. G. S. Pryde (SHS, 1937) BOEC Book of the Old Edinburgh Club Brechin Reg. Registrum Episcopatus Brechinensis, ed. P. Chalmers (Bannatyne Club, 1856) CBA Council for British Archaeology CDS Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, 5 vols, ed. J. Bain et al. (Edinburgh, 1881–1888) Chron. Fordun Johannis de Fordun, Chronica Gentis Scotorum, ed. W. F. Skene (Edinburgh, 1871–2)

xvi   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Cowan & Easson, Cowan, I. B. and Easson, D. E. (eds), Medieval Religious Religious Houses Houses: Scotland (2nd edn, London, 1976) CSP Scot. Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Scotland and Mary, Queen of Scots 1547–1603, ed. J. Bain et al. (Edinburgh, 1898–) CUH The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, 3 vols, ed. D. M. Palliser, P. Clark and M. Daunton (Cambridge, 2000) DARC Dundee Archive and Record Centre DBHCB Dundee Burgh and Head Court Book DNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online, 2004–) Dunf. Recs The Burgh Records of Dunfermline, ed. E. Beveridge (Edinburgh, 1917) Dunf. Reg. Registrum de Dunfermelyn (Bannatyne Club, 1842) ECA Edinburgh City Archives Edin. Recs Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 13 vols, ed. J. D. Marwick et al. (SBRS, 1869–1967) Elgin Recs The Records of Elgin, 1234–1400, 2 vols, ed. W. Cramond (New Spalding Club, 1903–8) ER The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, 23 vols, ed. J. Stuart et al. (Edinburgh, 1878–1908) EUP Edinburgh University Press Glas. Chrs Charters and Other Documents Relating to the City of Glasgow, 2 vols, ed. J. D. Marwick (SBRS, 1894–1906) Groome Gazetteer F. H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: a Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical, and Historical, 6 vols (Edinburgh, 1882–5) GUARD Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division HES Historic Environment Scotland HS Historic Scotland IR The Innes Review Lanark Recs Extracts from the Records of the Royal Burgh of Lanark, ed. R. Renwick (Glasgow, 1893) Lawrie, Charters A. C. Lawrie (ed.), Early Scottish Charters prior to 1153 (Glasgow, 1905) Melrose Recs Selections from the Records of the Regality of Melrose, 3 vols, ed. C. S. Romanes (SHS, 1914–17) Moray Reg. Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis, ed. C. Innes (Bannatyne Club, 1837) MS Manuscript NAS National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh NLS National Library of Scotland

Abbreviations   xvii

NRS National Records of Scotland (formerly Scottish Record Office and National Archives of Scotland) NSA The New Statistical Account of Scotland, 1834–45 (1845) OSA The Statistical Account of Scotland, 1791–1799, ed. J. Sinclair, new edition ed. I. R. Grant and D. J. Withrington (Wakefield, 1973) Peebles Chrs Charters and Documents relating to the Burgh of Peebles (SBRS, 1872) Peebles Recs Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Peebles (SBRS, 1910) Pryde, Burghs G. S. Pryde, The Burghs of Scotland: a Critical List (Glasgow, 1965) PSAS Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland RCAHMS The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland RCRBS Records of the Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland, 7 vols, ed. J. D. Marwick and T. Hunter (Edinburgh, 1866–1918) RIAS Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland RIBA Royal Incorporation of British Architects RMS Registrum Magni Sigilii Regum Scotorum, 11 vols, ed. J. M. Thomson et al. (Edinburgh, 1882–1914) ROSC Review of Scottish Culture RPC Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, 38 vols, ed. J. H. Burton et al. (Edinburgh, 1877–) RRS Regesta Regum Scottorum, 4 vols, ed. G. Barrow et al. (Edinburgh, 1960–2015) RSCHS Records of the Scottish Church History Society RSS Registrum Secreti Sigilli Regum Scotorum, 8 vols, ed. M. Livingstone et al. (Edinburgh, 1908–) SBRS Scottish Burgh Records Society SCRAN Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network SHR Scottish Historical Review SHS Scottish History Society SRO Scottish Record Office SRS Scottish Record Society Stirling Recs Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Stirling, ed. R. Renwick (Glasgow, 1887–9) SUAT Scottish Urban Archaeological Trust TA Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, 13 vols, ed. T. Dickson et al. (Edinburgh, 1877–1916) £ £1 Scots to 1707; thereafter £1 sterling

Introduction

T

his book traces the emergence of towns and assesses their topography and the lives of the people who lived there. Many towns, both large and small, have been considered. The aim has not been to concentrate on the ‘big four’ – Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen. Their experiences are important in any study of Scottish towns; they may however not be typical. The small town has too often been overlooked and an attempt has been made here to redress that balance to some extent. Not all towns can be considered in a project of this size – multiple volumes would be required – and, with a certain inevitability, a specific town not mentioned will perhaps not sit neatly with the experiences of the rest; each has its own special history. A work covering a broad thousand years requires varying approaches. The urban historian faces major difficulties in the lack of early source material. The earliest urban archive is that for Aberdeen which commences as late as the end of the fourteenth century, and even this series has a loss of registers for 1413–33.1 Other burghs, such as Lanark, are fortunate to have records of their burgh courts from the late fifteenth century.2 Some gild (guild) court records survive from the fifteenth century, the earliest being that for Dunfermline which commences in 1433, but medieval gild records in general survive only sparsely (see Fig. I.1).3 There is a reference to a meeting of the Edinburgh gild court in 1403, but this is probably a misdating and should, more correctly, be 1453. Thereafter, there are mentions of isolated entries to the Edinburgh gild in the records of the burgh,4 but no gild court book, as such, survives until 1550.5 There is reference to the curia gilde of Aberdeen in 1437; and from 1441 the gild dealings are well documented for this burgh.6 For Ayr, a few folios detail the proceedings of the gild court of the town from 1428 to 1432;7 the Perth ‘Gildrie Book’ dates from 1452;8 and a parchment roll minutes the gild court of Stirling from 1460 to 1475.9 So the urban historian is forced to rely for the early period on state papers, such as the ‘Leges Burgorum’, reputedly drawn up for Berwick in the reign of David I (1124–53), the ‘Statuta Gildae’, the statutes of the gild

2   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure I.1  Folio 4v. of the fifteenth-century Gild Court Book of Dunfermline. The scribe indicates matters of importance with a pointing hand.

Introduction   3

of Berwick, the earlier part of which is said to be dated to 1249 and the later specifically to 1281 and 1294, and ‘Assise Regis Willelmi’, compiled in the reign of William I (1165–1214); on early charters; and on the cartularies of religious houses.10 From the sixteenth century, there is a growing repository of archival material to offer insights into the early modern town. Various kinds of records of urban government begin to proliferate, both in number and in volume: typically, they include the minutes of burgh council meetings and the accounts of town treasurers and deans of guild, who had oversight over the built environment and also over the fabric of the burgh church, both before and after the Reformation. Burgess rolls, recording entry to burgess-ship, become common, although they list only about a third of adult males. Taxation of urban dwellers, both by town councils and the crown, became more frequent. Again, however, tax rolls capture only a minority of the working population. The evolution of the incorporation of craft guilds began to produce formal craft records; amongst the earliest of these were of Edinburgh crafts, dating from the 1470s. The capital would by the 1530s have fourteen craft incorporations; other large towns, such as Aberdeen and Dundee, had half of that number, but a significant number of smaller towns retained a single gild well into the seventeenth century. Notarial protocol books, recording property and financial transactions, begin to proliferate, reflecting the rise of a new breed in towns of secular lawyers and notaries. The Reformation of 1560 resulted in a new kind of record: the minutes of kirk sessions. Most of the early session records to survive were urban. Typically, they reflected the widening and tightening grip held by the urban patriciate over burgh society. It is, however, not until the very end of the seventeenth century that any form of comprehensive record exists to reveal the bulk of urban society. The hearth and poll taxes of the 1690s, levied by government on the vast majority of urban dwellers, reveal, in town after town, details of population, household size and structure, comparative wealth and poverty, and living conditions. Such a large and inclusive picture of urban society is not found again until the advent of census records from the 1790s onwards. After the mid-eighteenth century, the urban historian might easily be overwhelmed with the documentation that may be consulted. Many individual towns  have available, either centrally or in local archives, a mine of local  resources that can often give a satisfyingly full insight into a town’s intimate history. There are as a result numerous ‘town histories’, many attractive  and  well-illustrated, but their content is of necessity narrowly-focused. There is, however, an abundance of more general information available to give a wider, more sweeping view  of urban society. National records are fulsome, housed, mostly centrally but not exclusively, at the National Archives of Scotland, now the National Records of Scotland (NRS); contemporary

4   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

s­ tatistical accounts and gazetteers, newspapers, private diaries and correspondence increasingly may all be consulted. Visual sources also become more abundant. Paintings, maps and extant buildings supplement the vast resource of archaeological evidence, both standing and below-ground, that has added so greatly to our understanding of historic and earlier societies from long before first urbanisation in Scotland. To consult all the written and visual sources to hand from the nineteenth century would be labour-intensive and more than a lifetime’s work for one person. Historians have chosen to be selective, depending on their specific areas of interest. Specialisation covers a wide range of topics – political, geographical and topographical, legal, economic, architectural, educational and environmental, to mention a few. The evolution of towns is reflected in all of these; the urban historian cannot but be selective. When more recent times are considered, care has to be taken not to be overawed by the vast proliferation of reports such as those of evangelicals and sanitary inspectors of the nineteenth century. Well meaning and necessary as they are, our understanding of industrial nineteenth-century Scotland should not be totally coloured by them. Progress in architecture, culture, franchise, education and medical knowledge engages in a lengthy, if at times interrupted, journey throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The invention of photography and, in particular, twentieth-century aerial photography has opened up a vast resource; the archive of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) is the major repository (now amalgamated with Historic Scotland (HS) as Historic Environment Scotland (HES)). These are times, also, when memory of kin and self come into play. Everyone is a repository of memories but memories are liable to be eclectic. These may illuminate and substantiate the past, and, inviting though it may be, the urban historian should advisedly not indulge in a personal or community memory trip. In our present time, a greater awareness has grown of the necessity to set the town within its historic context, while recognising that setting as one that is constantly and inevitably changing. But much has been irrevocably lost and Scotland faces a crisis of homelessness. Burghs have been abolished as has much of the pride associated with them; urban sprawl has led to a loss of identity and encouraged a lack of feeling for community and heritage; unwise planning decisions have meant inappropriate expansion, demolition, street signage and lighting. Much of this is the result of a misunderstanding of the past and an attempt to reinvent the urban space. For many now there is a hankering after the old sense of community. The task, no matter how difficult, is to look at the past, not as an individual with a personal history, but as an urban historian. It is, therefore, with some caution that the evolution of the town in Scotland over a broad one ­thousand years is undertaken.

Introduction   5

Notes   1. ACA, MS Council Records; the early records are edited and transcribed by W. C. Dickinson as Early Records of the Burgh of Aberdeen, 1317, 1398–1407 (SHS, 1957). Later extracts from the Council Register are edited and transcribed as Extracts from the Council Register of the Burgh of Aberdeen (Spalding Club, 1844–80).   2. Extracts are edited and transcribed by R. Renwick as Extracts from the Records of the Royal Burgh of Lanark (Glasgow, 1893).   3. MS Gild Court Book of Dunfermline (in the possession of the Guildry of Dunfermline); transcribed by E. P. Dennison Torrie (ed.), The Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, 1433–1597 (SRS, 1986).   4. ECA, MS Council Records.   5. ECA, MS Gild Court Book.   6. ACA, MS Aberdeen Gild Records, v, ii, council records 1441/65.   7. NRS, PA5/2, MS ‘The Ayr Manuscript’, fos 8–10 and 85v. See also T. Dickson, ‘Proceedings of the Gild Court of Ayr, from the Ayr Manuscript’, Archaeological and Historical Collections Relating to the Counties of Ayr and Wigton (1878), i, 223–30.   8. Perth Museum and Art Gallery, Archive 1/1, MS The Gildrie Book. This volume has been transcribed and edited as The Perth Guildry Book, ed. M. Stavert (SRS, 1993).   9. Stirling Council Archives, PD6/1/1, MS Stirling Gild Records, 1460–75. 10. For fuller discussion of the available source material see I. Flett and J. Cripps, ‘Documentary sources’, in M. Lynch et al. (eds), The Scottish Medieval Town (Edinburgh, 1988), 18–41.

1

Medieval Towns

T

he first documentary evidence of towns comes in the twelfth century. But it is unwise to assume that formal written evidence and the first appearance of towns were coincidental. There is much to suggest that some forms of urban settlement were in existence well before this time. It is known that there were early civilian townships attached to vici, settlements outside the gates of Roman forts, with shops and taverns lining the main road. Here, the merchants and traders who travelled with the army into Scotland set up business. Archaeology has pinpointed Newstead by Melrose (see Fig. 1.1), Inveresk beside Musselburgh and potentially Elginhaugh by Dalkeith; but there is little to suggest that they were truly independent urban settlements. Traprain Law, with its group of agricultural workers and a function as a trading base, would seem to have been some form of proto-urban settlement from the late Iron Age. Typically, the form of settlement that predominated in the eleventh century was the pastoral toun, subsisting on an agricultural basis, growing crops and rearing animals. But there are clues that another form of settlement, which merited the name of urban, existed in this century.

I.  Towns before towns: pre-twelfth-century settlement Twelfth-century St Andrews had a pre-burghal focal point at Kinrinmund. This was a religious centre which supported the shrine of the saint, and it may be traced back to at least the eighth century and possibly a century earlier. It is unlikely that it could have survived from then without the support of a nearby secular settlement. Indeed, the town’s charter of 1144x53 specifically refers to the existing toun; and in 1189x98 the burgesses were given the right to move the existing market cross to their new market place from ‘the place where the clochin used to be’. This was undoubtedly the Gaelic ‘clachan’ (or hamlet) which formed the pre-burghal nucleus of St  Andrews.1 Archaeologists in the town discovered a burgage plot (the piece of land allocated to a freeman of a burgh) ­overlaying

8   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 1.1   Aerial view of the site of Newstead.

an existing dwelling, and the harbour,  being  the only  safe one  between Crail and Ferryport-on-Craig (Tayport), would have been an  important venue for pilgrim trade before pre-burghal times.2 Dunfermline was made a burgh by at least 1124x27. A charter of David I (1124–53) ratifying the grants of previous kings to Dunfermline in c. 1128 notes the donations made by King Malcolm III (1058–93) and Queen Margaret to the township, indicating clearly that there was settlement at the site before the grant of burghal status. A royal hunting lodge with a small church nearby was the setting in 1067x70 for the marriage of the king and his queen in Dunfermline. Such a royal presence would require the supplies and services of local people. This probably means a settlement, however small; and proto-urban settlement was perhaps also stimulated by the new priory at Dunfermline patronised by Queen Margaret. Fordun in his chronicles refers to Dunfermline as an ‘oppidum’, which could imply that trading was ongoing and the township had at the very least a proto-urban existence.3 Aberdeen was a burgh by the reign of David I. Kingship in this period was still peripatetic and Aberdeen was of sufficient note that it housed the king and his court on a number of occasions; the king issued at least one charter from the

Medieval Towns   9

town.4 But it is known that Aberdeen was of considerable importance long before burghal status was granted. It was a flourishing trading township by the early years of the twelfth century, at least. William I (1165–1214) in c. 1180 granted to his burgesses at Aberdeen, Moray and north of the Mounth the right to enjoy their free ‘hanse’ as they had at the time of David I. This specifically meant that Aberdeen was a trading post and had settlements of both native and foreign traders.5 Even by the reign of Alexander I (1107–24) it was classed as one of the three major trading centres north of the Forth.6 It may have been so for decades previously, as it is unlikely that it reached this status overnight, and, just like Dunfermline, it could well have been an established township in the eleventh century. Nairn was established as a royal burgh by probably the end of the twelfth century, when it was known as Invernairn. A charter of Alexander II (1214–49), dated between 1215 and 1226, refers to his predecessor, William I, setting aside lands with the purpose of founding a castle and the burgh of Invernairn.7 This might imply a totally new creation on a greenfield site. But it is more likely  that the king was merely enlarging or re-establishing an existing castle which during the twelfth century had belonged to the bishops of Moray.8 This ancient castle was reputedly captured by the Danes in the reign of Malcolm I (943–54).9 A chronicler writing in 1666 maintained that the castle was still standing in the reign of Alexander I.10 Castles could not survive without the backup of an associated settlement, however small. So the township preceded the burgh. Although burghs were artificial foundations, very rarely were they founded on greenfield sites, but, rather, on sites where there were pre-existing settlements. Archaeological evidence has shown that there was settlement on the west bank of the River Tay, in an area where the town of Perth would emerge from the late eleventh century at the latest;11 and Canongate, also a twelfth-century burgh, was laid out on a site that had experienced considerable previous human activity including a possibly pre-existing town ditch.12 Archaeological excavations have illuminated the long and significant history of Dunbar. Britons and, later, Northumbrians occupied and fortified the headland where the later medieval castle was sited.13 A small Dark Age settlement grew up within the fort, protected by ditches and later by additional palisades. The occupants of this fortified spot would need the manpower and commodities of a local population and, in return, the fort could offer a measure of protection to the nearby settlement. The small township was of sufficient import that in 849 it was burned by Kenneth MacAlpin, king of Scots and Picts (c. 843–58).14 The area of Dunbar, from the little evidence there is, suggests that here was a prosperous place. The church of Dunbar, with a chapel at Whittingehame, was assessed at 180 merks in the 1176 taxio of Lothian – an exceptionally high rate for a town church. And charter ­evidence shows that there was a flourishing east-coast trade in the

10   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

twelfth century which Dunbar shared in even though it was not yet formally a burgh.15 Documentary evidence shows clearly that settlement in the Musselburgh area either continued or re-established itself in the early Middle Ages. The Registrum de Dunfermelyn contains a charter dated 1070x1093 in which Malcolm III granted ‘Inveresk’ and the shire of ‘Musselburge’ to the abbey of Dunfermline.16 Some have thought this to be spurious, but there is adequate charter evidence to show that it was accepted as genuine in the twelfth century.17 It is clear that by the latter decades of the eleventh century, at least, some form of township was in existence and by the reign of David I ‘Infrech maiorem’ (Musselburgh) had a mill, fishing rights and a church. Moreover, the existence of the ‘ecclesia de Muskilburgh’ in 1020 would suggest a few worshippers, religious or lay, in the vicinity.18 Precisely when Musselburgh became a burgh is unclear but it may have had this status by 1184 when a papal bull refers to the ‘burgus’ of Musselburgh.19 What is certain is that a township preceded the burgh. Quite where is less clear. The site up the hill, near to the erstwhile Roman camp, was probably less suitable than a location closer to the shore. The most likely chosen site was by the old Roman bridge – the essential routeway from Edinburgh and Leith to the coastal road south. Even burghs that were not founded until later in the Middle Ages can reveal significant pre-twelfth-century antecedents. Maybole was not made a burgh of barony until 1516,20 when it formed part of a pattern of new burghs in this region of Ayrshire: Newmilns (1491), Auchinleck (1507), Cumnock (1509) and Mauchline (1510).21 But Maybole appears in the documentary sources in the twelfth century and its origins are much earlier. The first known form of the name is Meibothel, perhaps derived from the Old English maege-botl, meaning ‘maiden’s hall’.22 This, and the dedication of the parish church to the Northumbrian saint Cuthbert, suggests that Maybole, like Whithorn, was an Anglian settlement created during the period of Northumbrian control of the area which lasted from the mid-seventh to the tenth century. Firm archaeological evidence might prove that this site continued to be occupied until the twelfth century, as it was endowed with an essential for settlement: an excellent water supply, the most important being Welltrees Spout, described in the seventeenth century as ‘so very plenteous that falling through severall mouths through rock and stone it would be accounted a rich treasure to the Capitall city of the nation’.23 These cases are merely examples of urban centres with demonstrable origins prior to the twelfth century and before they received formal legal rights as burghs. There were many others with pre-burghal nuclei, which might be called pre-urban or proto-urban settlements. Canongate, Forfar, Dundee and Perth are known from archaeological and documentary evidence to be four such examples. The theory that towns did not come into existence until they received a burgh charter is flawed. It is also very doubtful whether more than one or two twelfthcentury burghs were established on totally greenfield sites.

Medieval Towns   11

II.  The first burghs Burghs are first documented in Scotland in the early twelfth century. Berwick and Roxburgh, and possibly also Perth, Stirling, Edinburgh and Dunfermline, were privileged with grants of burghal status even before David I became king of Scots.24 During his reign several more small townships and urban settlements benefited in this way. His initiation of the policy of founding and bestowing privileges on favoured settlements was continued by his grandson Malcolm IV (1153–65) and became a regular feature of the reign of his younger grandson, William I. By the end of David I’s reign some seventeen (possibly nineteen) burghs had been founded.25 At the death of William I, there were between forty and fifty (see Fig. 1.2). 26 David I, in beginning the process of establishing these burghs, was following in a tradition prevalent in western Europe where the word burg, bourg, burh, borg or ‘borough’ denoted a settlement and community of privileged merchants and craftsmen.27 But there was something intrinsically different about Scottish burghs. Much of this depended on the country’s geography and geology. Often considered to be a country of sharp divide between Highlands and Lowlands, Scotland is, however, geographically much more complex. It was not merely the seemingly unapproachable Highlands that appeared distant from the mellow Lowland terrain, but areas in the south-west – Galloway and Ayrshire – were far removed from the east coast. The east coast looked to the Baltic, Scandinavia, eastern England, the Low Countries and northern France, while Galloway, Ayrshire and the Western Highlands and Islands were only short distances by water from settlements in Ireland and northern England. And the country’s southern Border region, with an uncertain frontier, often had a different agenda from the rest of Scotland. The Scots invaded the north of England in 1135, annexing Cumberland by 1138 and Northumberland and Westmorland, or Kentdale, between 1140–2 and 1151. This ‘English empire’ south of Lothian was held until 1157.28 Berwick was lost and regained numerous times, remaining unambiguously Scottish until 1296, before it finally ceded to the English in 1482. The Border region as a whole fell under both Scottish and English domination at various times, especially during the Wars of Independence, with disastrous effect on many Border towns such as Melrose and, even more so, Roxburgh.29 It was in the passes running north to south between the two countries that towns grew up. Such geographical variants were to have a profound impact on where the first burghs were founded. There are no extant charters establishing burghs prior to 1160, and many known to have existed soon after this, such as those bestowing liberties on Edinburgh, Perth and Berwick, were lost or otherwise destroyed. Extrapolation is therefore necessary from surviving evidence, such as the charter of William I to Inverness or that to Rutherglen, reiterating, as it claimed, the rights bestowed by

12   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 1.2   Map showing Scotland’s early burghs.

Medieval Towns   13

David I;30 or from the charter granted to Perth in 1209; and also from the early laws relating to burghs.31 But there was no intrinsic need for early burghs to have been granted their privileges by written charter and it is quite possible that David I and his successors established burghs by word of mouth.32 Although initially, as far as the evidence shows, it was solely the crown that could grant burgh status, in due course this right was bestowed upon important magnates, whether lay or ecclesiastic. What was it about these early settlements that encouraged the crown and favoured magnates to give them extra status? There were probably three main reasons. Their geographical position, mainly on the eastern seaboard, offered ideal sites for trade overseas with English and European neighbours. Roxburgh and Berwick were two such towns described as burghs before 1124. Roxburgh, at a greater distance from the sea than Berwick, formed part of a significant network for inland trade. An important road network radiated from the burgh to Edinburgh, via Lauder, Berwick by the Tweed valley, Newcastle via Jedburgh and Corbridge, Glasgow by Selkirk, Peebles and Lanark and also to Annandale and Carlisle.33 The merchants of Berwick, Edinburgh, Inverkeithing, Perth, Dundee, Montrose, Arbroath and Aberdeen were among many who travelled, during the early years of burgh life, as far afield as northern France on trading missions. Their destinations would soon be considerably further afield. Burghs could also offer political impact in areas where the crown might feel that it did not have full dominance. Dumbarton was a prime example. Established as a burgh in 1222, it was at a suitable location, at the western extremity of secure royal control, to become a burgh that would be dependent on the king. In the words of a 1609 charter, this would encourage the people of the Highland region ‘by having converse and making merchandise in the burgh to become more civil and obedient to the law’.34 The chronicler, Jean Froissart, writing in the fourteenth century, described Dumbarton as ‘standing in the marshes [sic] [marches?] against the wild Scots [Gaels]’, an interesting comment on both its political and geographical situation.35 And thirdly, the founding of burghs brought tremendous economic advantages to the burgh superior, initially the crown. The main purpose of these settlements was to act as markets. Although burgh status implied the possession of constitutional liberties and obligations (see p. 15) mercantile privileges may have been already in place: the grant of burgh status with constitutional liberties and obligations was intended to reinforce existing economic rights. Markets could, and did, exist outside burghs, but ‘a burgh without a market was a contradiction in terms’.36 The burgh was a community organised for trade37 and was recognised as such as early as the twelfth century. This is supported by the high ­percentage in burgh charters of clauses dealing with mercantile privileges.38 The burgh community gained the right to have its own market, at which it might exact on others a toll, a payment or fee, for use of the market.

14   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

One of the primary benefits bestowed at the founding of a burgh was freedom from payment of toll to the owner of a market, exemption from tolls and some customs due to the crown; and, consequently, the right to trade freely. Some burghs gained the establishment of a gild merchant, which enabled the burgesses to take full advantage of their economic privileges.39 The gild of Berwick appears to have been of an earlier than thirteenth-century origin, and Roxburgh and Perth are known to have had gilds by 1189x1202, as they are referred to in a charter of Roger, bishop of St Andrews, when the gild of that burgh was founded.40 In some charters there are specific references to an even greater concession: the monopoly of trading over an extended zone, establishing in effect an economic contado. This was a grant relatively common in Scotland, but not usual elsewhere in Europe. All inhabitants in a specified landward area were in theory obliged to market their goods in the burgh of their locality.41 It was not merely the burgh that benefited from this economic policy but the burgh superior also, as burghal dues were to be paid to him. The tolls paid by outsiders to attend the market, even if originally paid in kind, could be transmuted into cash and provided the superior with a regular income. Burgh rents were a further source of revenue. Indeed, the rents of burgesses formed as far as we know the sole revenue in money of David I.42 There were, however, latent problems within the establishment of trading zones. Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy, whose economic hinterland boundaries were unclearly defined, disagreed over control of the shire of Goatmilk (Gatmilk). As a result, according to the Registrum de Dunfermelyn, in 1448 the Abbot of Dunfermline, the burgh superior of both towns, specified in detail which localities should fall within the mercantile control of each burgh, the shire of Goatmilk being named as within Dunfermline’s authority.43 Overlapping of trading monopolies often led to dissent. Forfar’s market, held on a Sunday,44 obliged all within Forfar’s hinterland to attend for the sale of goods. Robert I (1306–29), however, bestowed a charter on Dundee giving its burgesses the sole right to trade throughout the sheriffdom of Forfar in wool and skins, two of the most profitable commodities in the Scottish economy; it laid down that all goods brought by foreign merchants to the shire should be offered first for sale at Dundee, and further decreed that all foreign merchants in the sheriffdom were to trade solely with Dundee burgesses ‘reserving the rights of other burgesses within the said sheriffdom’.45 Here was clear potential for dispute between Dundee and Forfar, but also with the merchants of Montrose and Brechin whose privileges were threatened by this charter too.46 In 1372, in mutual self-protection, Forfar entered into a free-trade agreement with Montrose, to the exclusion of Brechin.47 Rivalry between the towns lasted until the fifteenth century and beyond.48 But Forfar’s landward position meant that, although it continued to function as a small market town, it lost out to the coastal ports of Dundee, Arbroath and

Medieval Towns   15

Montrose.49 The old ditty shows the small town’s determination to not be ‘done down’ by its bigger neighbours: Bonnie Munross will be a moss, Brechin in braw borrough toon, But Farfar will be Farfar still When Dundee’s a’ dung doon.50

Other towns suffered from Dundee’s desire to dominate. Little Coupar Angus’ fair was proving detrimental to the trade of Dundee by 1352; and seven years later Coupar Angus, Kettins, Kirriemuir and Alyth were forbidden to hold markets as they were within the liberty of Dundee.51 Such measures were largely ignored but were typical of the in-fighting that could arise with overlapping trading jurisdictions throughout the country. The establishment of new burghs and consequent redefining of trading precincts undermined the status quo. Irvine was confirmed in 1372 as having a hinterland stretching over Cunningham and Largs, so reducing the effective control of Ayr, although this threat was greatly reduced by the gradual silting of Irvine’s harbour from the sixteenth century.52 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries rights over Culross, the extent of the parish of Kinghorn, the petty customs of Dysart and the customs of St Luke’s fair at Kinross all became matters of contention for Inverkeithing,53 whose north-eastern boundary abutted the jurisdiction of Cupar.54 Smaller burghs would also at times find themselves overwhelmed by nearby larger neighbours. Kintore and Fyvie probably considered themselves outwith the jurisdiction of Aberdeen but the latter, by the late fourteenth century, was claiming that Fyvie, now a burgh of barony, along with others such as Inverurie, were within its mercantile control.55 In exchange for economic rights, the first burgesses gained further privileges, whether they were established by the crown, a wealthy magnate or an important churchman. The granting of burgh status assured fundamental rights for its privileged inhabitants – the burgesses. Initially, this group was an extremely small elite; we do not know how many burgesses lived in the very first burghs, but it may have been as few as one in twenty-five adult men in a burgh population of probably less than 200. Most striking in a largely rural society was the relative freedom of the urban individual; while recognising the authority of the burgh and its superior, other feudal ties were severed. Allied to this personal freedom went a right to burgage tenure, inalienable if inherited, except in extremis, and protected by the king’s peace and later by burgh law.56 Indeed, initially, the ­possession of a ‘biggit’, or built, burgage plot (sometimes called a toft) was one of the essential qualifications for burgess-ship.57 The general notion of burgage tenure promoted not only a degree of self-determination but also one of continuity and security for future generations of burgesses and the burgh weal.58 These

16   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

privileges, however, contained obligations, one of the most important being that burgesses had to ‘watch and ward’ the town from potential enemies. They were also expected to protect the burgh’s boundaries and to participate in the constitutional organisation of the town (see pp. 32, 35).

III.  The built environment To assess early townscapes, archaeology, geography, geology and placename evidence must be used as early charters reveal little of the built environment. The basic essentials for early urban settlement were security from human and other predators, shelter from the elements with firm, dry ground for building, a local food supply and ready access to drinking water. The last was probably the most important and all first settlement sites would be found beside a stream or river, although there could be a shift from the early site once wells were dug. In Dundee, wells, such as the Lady Well and the Cross Well, were sunk at the junction of impermeable igneous rock with the permeable Devonian sedimentary series, the Lower Old Red Sandstone.59 In Dunfermline, the Causagait, or High Street, probably not the original nucleus of the town,60 was laid out along a spring line.61 In Aberdeen, a shift of focal point could be made from the Green to the Broadgait/Castlegait area, where there was open space, ideal economically and physically for a market where, although ill-endowed with streams, wells might be sunk.62 Other natural geographic features attracted first settlement. A fording point might be the pre-urban nucleus, as at Glasgow (see Fig. 1.3), Hamilton and Cumnock, and possibly also encouraged settlement at Melrose. Roxburgh had command of the crossings of the Tweed and Teviot, and Ayr and Dumfries grew up at the lowest places where bridges might be built on the rivers Ayr and Nith. Dunblane, clustered beside the cathedral, which in itself encouraged settlement, developed at a ford sited a little to the north of the present bridge over the Allan Water (see Fig. 3.7). Timothy Pont’s depiction of Inverness illustrates clearly the importance of a bridge to a growing town (see Fig. 1.4).63 A natural harbour was also an attractive magnet, as may still be seen at Inverkeithing, Arbroath and Montrose. Other burghs developed on main routeways; Dalkeith was positioned on one of the primary routes south from Edinburgh, just as Musselburgh grew up on the main trackway leading east. Linlithgow emerged on the main connecting link between the two royal castles at Stirling and Edinburgh, using the only possible fording point of the River Avon for many miles. Kirkintilloch stood on a major route between Glasgow and Edinburgh; there was a ford over the Luggie Water at Oxgang but, importantly, it was possible for a bridge to be built later over the Luggie beside the town.64 Certain human factors could influence both the original site and a shift of

Medieval Towns   17

Figure 1.3   View of Glasgow from the South (Pont 33, detail), Timothy Pont. Fording points, as here at Glasgow, were favoured spots for early settlement.

Figure 1.4   View of Inverness (Pont 8, detail), Timothy Pont. Fords were later replaced with nearby bridges, great assets to burgeoning towns.

18   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

focus. Peebles initially clustered north of the Eddleston Water but the king’s castle lay to the south. By probably the thirteenth century, possibly for security, a new settlement site was favoured east of the castle and the original site was largely abandoned.65 Other urban settlements grew up beside man-made features such as a highly defensible castle, as with Stirling and Edinburgh. Religious traditions associated with certain areas could also attract occupation, such as in St Andrews, Whithorn and possibly Kirkcudbright. Other settlements clustered besides a monastery or abbey, as was the case with Melrose and Arbroath. Coupar Angus, Culross and Kinloss all emerged beside Cistercian nuclei. The nature of the terrain could sometimes lead to disaster. In 1210, Perth lost its royal castle to flooding when the River Tay burst its banks and it was never to be replaced. Annan’s castle was washed away a little earlier, in the late twelfth century, with more serious consequences: the burgh lapsed and Lochmaben took its place as the chief place of Annandale.66 The Nethertoun, the first site of Hamilton, or Cadzow as it was originally called, was in an area close to the Clyde and became liable to flooding, as it is to this day. It is unlikely that a flood risk site would have been the early medieval choice. Possibly there is here a sign of climatic change; but if Cadzow was to survive it needed to transfer to higher ground. This had been effected by the mid-fourteenth century.67 Hence the development of the ‘Hietoun’ – medieval Hamilton. As there is no firm archaeological or documentary evidence it is not certain where precisely urban settlement was  originally concentrated at Glasgow but, thanks to the charting of the early medieval flood plain by geographers, the area near to the confluence of the Camlachie Burn and the Clyde can be discounted as one of intense early settlement.68 Somewhat intriguingly, Timothy Pont’s Mapp of Murray, c. 1590 (see Fig. 1.5), depicts a ruined castle surrounded by the waters of the Moray Firth.69 Were these the ruins of Nairn Castle (see p. 9)? The coastline is notoriously unstable in this area and the River Nairn also moved its course dramatically in the historic period. Since settlement often clustered close by a strong fortification, is this a clue that early Nairn was inundated with water, as happened to other settlements along this coast? If this were the case, the classic burgh plan of medieval Nairn, still to be seen today, may not be the first burghal layout but a later plan, perhaps of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Pont’s late-sixteenth-century map may be evidence that Nairn, as some other burghs, was either forced or chose to change its early focal point and to elect for a town on a more protected site.70 Again, is there a sign here of climatic change? Dumbarton may have been of strategic importance to the crown (see p. 13) but its topographical position was less than satisfactory (see Fig. 1.6). The River Leven is tidal to approximately two miles above the town. A high spring tide, allied to spate conditions from melting snows from the Highland hills,

Medieval Towns   19

Figure 1.5   View of Nairn (Pont 8, detail), Timothy Pont. Pont’s late-sixteenth-/earlyseventeenth-century map shows the remnants of Nairn Castle still extant.

invariably meant floods. The north part of the town was to become particularly vulnerable, and some time around 1580 it was flooded when the river burst its banks. Much of this area, known as the Broad Meadow, was to lie under water and became called the ‘Drowned Lands’, unreclaimed until the nineteenth century. Townend, as it was sometimes named, became separated from the rest of Dumbarton.71 Tobias Smollett, the novelist, a pupil at Dumbarton Grammar School in the 1730s, would recall feeling cobble or paving stones under the water as he paddled the old pathway from school at the collegiate church to Townend.72 It may be that Dumbarton was one of the very few burghs founded on a greenfield site. The ancient castle on Dumbarton Rock (Alcluith to the subjects of the kings of Strathclyde; Dun Breatann to the Gaelic speakers of Dalriada) would have needed the supplies and services of a nearby settlement. Throughout the Middle Ages the Rock was surrounded by water at high tide, so first settlement was probably on the Rock itself or immediately at its base, above the high-water mark. There are specific references to the ‘sands’ on the north side of the castle and Rock, which implies unsuitability for building,73 so it seems reasonable to deduce that this new burgh of Dumbarton was established a little further north still, on a greenfield site. The morphological development of the medieval town can best be understood within its geographical and geological context. The linear expansion of Dundee was determined by natural factors: dolerite ridges and swampy ground to the north and the Tay to the south were not conducive to building in the Middle

20   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 1.6   Plan of Dumbarton, 1818, John Wood. The early burgh was probably founded on a greenfield site for safety from high tides. As the centuries would prove, this was illconceived. The town was prone to flooding, as indicated on Wood’s plan of 1818, and Townend, as shown, would become cut off from the urban centre.

Medieval Towns   21

Ages.74 Edinburgh, founded on a ridge with a steep northern slope bounded by streams and later a loch, waterlogged to the south and hemmed in on the east by another burgh, the Canongate, would ultimately extend south to the Cowgate and Grassmarket.75 Kirkcaldy High Street is a graphic illustration of urban man’s response to his physical environment. Whether experienced on foot, viewed from above or studied as a plan (see Fig. 1.7), its curving form appears perverse, until a close analysis of pre-determining geological and geophysical features reveals that this medieval street very logically followed the line of the cliff-like raised beach which initially prevented expansion inland. This physical phenomenon gave the further effect of truncating burgage plots to the west of the street, compared to the east side, from which burgage plots ran down to the Forth (see Fig. 1.8).76 Nineteenth-century paintings reveal how small plots, such as those on the west side of Dunblane High Street (see Fig. 1.9) suffered compared to larger neighbours. This same view also highlights how burgage plots initially confined by topographical features, such as a steep slope or a raised beach as in Kirkcaldy (see Fig. 1.8), could overcome these limitations (see Fig. 5.2). In the case of both Dunblane High Street and Kirkcaldy High Street, the burgesses dug into the rising ground and extended their plots by terracing. There were distinctive features that set the town apart from the surrounding countryside, as may be seen vividly on the maps of the cartographer Timothy Pont, drawn in the last decade of the sixteenth century and early in the seventeenth (see Figs 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5). Many Scottish burghs were quite deliberately and formally laid out; Glasgow by Ranulf of Haddington and St Andrews by Mainard the Fleming, who had probably taken part in the planning of Berwick and was also a royal moneyer.77 Often, although not always, the Scottish plan was a single street with back lanes. These back lanes might in due course become developed, forming a more complex town plan and in some cases creating a grid pattern, as in Crail and Perth. Among the most important urban features were the market cross and the tolbooth. It was at the market cross that all transactions, whether mercantile or not, took place and from where proclamations were made to the townspeople. The tolbooth was initially the place where tolls or customs to use the town’s market were paid. It came to serve also as the meeting place for the burgh courts and assizes and often functioned as the town jail. These two were the symbols of the burgh’s power and both were maintained by the townspeople. Close by stood the tron, or weighing machine, for use on market days. Equally important to the town was its parish church. Several parishes were established before urbanisation took place and in consequence many parish churches served also the nearby people of the countryside. These and other ecclesiastical buildings – cathedrals, abbeys, chapels, monasteries and friaries – dominated the town both architecturally and emotionally. Most were constructed of stone, in sharp

22   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 1.7   Plan of Kirkcaldy, 1824, John Wood. Wood’s plan highlights the town’s response to the natural environment. Hugging the edge of a raised beach, its elongated form gave it the name ‘the Lang Toun’.

Medieval Towns   23

Figure 1.8   Kirkcaldy High Street; raised beach and truncated burgage plots.

24   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 1.9   Dunblane on a Rainy Day, 1880s, W. E. Lockhart. The elongated tofts to the right may be compared with Fig. 5.2, Kirkcaldy’s solution to truncated burgage plots.

contrast to the domestic dwellings. The setting of friaries gives an interesting insight into the extent of medieval urban settlement, as they were usually deliberately set on the edges of towns. This helps make clear how closely confined were medieval burghs; the majority of towns did not develop suburbs until into the modern period. Many burghs had a large, open market place, as may still be seen at Musselburgh and Montrose (see cover and Fig. 6.2). Others, for geographic reasons, were not so fortunate and in consequence their markets were linear, hugging the main street, as at Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy (see Fig. 1.5). Set more or less at right angles to the main street were the tofts, or burgage plots, of the townsfolk, as is vividly shown in Gordon of Rothiemay’s seventeenthcentury plan of Old Aberdeen; they may be detected to this day (see Fig. 2.12). Archaeologists have shown that in the relationship between plots and abuttals, for example a river at Ayr or a back lane at Selkirk or Elgin, there was a great deal of continuity throughout time. In Aberdeen, however, it is known from archaeological evidence that reorganisation and regularisation of toft

Medieval Towns   25

­ oundaries caused changes in toft frontage sizes.78 Corner sites and plots accesb sible on more than one frontage in particular were vulnerable to change. It does seem, however, that in most towns there was a strong degree of similarity in the initial layout of the frontages unlike their lengths (see p. 21). Archaeological ­evidence suggests that the average width of a plot along the main thoroughfare in Edinburgh was twenty-five feet (7.62 metres), which accords more or less with other early burghs: Perth’s frontages, for example, are estimated to be twenty feet (6.10 metres); in Dunfermline, twenty-two and a half feet (6.86 metres) with a variant of twenty feet and nine inches (6.32 metres) and twenty-five feet; and in Dundee, twenty and a half feet (6.25 metres), with a variant up to twenty-five feet.79 Major disasters could produce large disturbances to territorial boundaries. Fire, the potential hazard in any medieval town constructed largely of wood, could devastate the urban fabric. Roxburgh was destroyed by fire in 1207 and 1216, as was Forfar in 1244.80 Berwick suffered even more so in 1296 when it succumbed to the English army of Edward I; it never truly overcame its losses. Virtually all towns experienced, to a greater or lesser degree, such visitations. It was a latent urban disaster that lingered for centuries (see pp. 156–8). Although man’s memory and sense of property, so fully recorded in the burgh records, might ensure rebuilding to the old land measurements, this cannot always be assumed. But on the whole, continuity of plot layout is the norm and the medieval burgage plots can be traced through nineteenth-century cartography and, in many towns, on the ground still today. Normally the burgess built his dwelling on the front of the plot, leaving the ground to the rear for sinking wells and midden pits, growing vegetables and rearing animals. The plots were divided from each other either by small gulleys or wattle fencing. In due course development in the rear meant that houses and workshops appeared in the backlands. This was a process called repletion and, to give exit and access – ische and entrie – to the properties at the rear, closes were inserted running back from the main street. The central cores of many towns became, as a result, a jumble of closes and small vennels. To add to the congestion, the open market place might in time become encroached upon or even, as in Montrose, Musselburgh, Haddington and several others, built upon to form an island unit of dwellings. By the end of the medieval period some towns, most notably Edinburgh, were responding to this urban pressure by building upwards, with multi-storey buildings. Apart from a few exceptions, such as Stirling, Peebles and Edinburgh which had substantial stone defences by the middle of the fifteenth century, stone walls surrounding the town did not become common until at least the sixteenth century. Foreign visitors sometimes expressed surprise at the lack of strong stone defences as might still be seen at York, Carlisle, Siena and Carcassonne. In the fifteenth century Ghillebert de Lannoy, the Burgundian traveller, saw little of

26   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

note in the five towns that he visited – Dumfries, Dunbar, Perth, Stirling and St Andrews – other than that they were unwalled.81 Pedro de Ayala, the Spanish ambassador to the court of James IV (1488–1513), wrote with total misunderstanding in 1498 that ‘there is no more than one fortified town in Scotland’. The Frenchman Jean de Beaugué, who visited Dunbar in 1548, expressed the view that the burgh was accommodated with so many of the good things which profit the life of man, that if the town were enclosed with walls . . . we might reckon it to be among the most beautiful of towns in the isles of the oceans.82

Clearly, foreign visitors were judging Scottish towns from a challenging European standpoint, perhaps with overtones of certain twelfth-century dismissals of Scotland as a barbarous appendage to England, on the outskirts of the world.83 However, towns did not have to set themselves apart by sturdy edifices. Other symbols of containment and exclusion might serve equally well. Scotland had much in common with Scandinavian countries. Very few there had walls, the exception being some large towns, such as Copenhagen and Malmö. Smaller towns might have merely a delineating fence of no defensive purpose. Others could have earthen fortifications, some of which, such as Stege, Faaborg and Flensborg, supplemented this defence with town gates of stone. This was very much also the Scottish tradition.84 Timothy Pont’s extant manuscript maps of the end of the sixteenth century and early into the seventeenth85 illustrate clearly how towns delineated themselves. Stirling, one of the few towns to be stone-walled, is depicted clearly and boldly with a double line around the settlement. This is a device he uses on his first draft of Perth, another rare stone-walled town. Significantly, Pont does not delineate the Stirling wall as totally encircling the town. This coincides with the information of a 1625 plan which suggests that to the north, where the town was least vulnerable to attack due to swampy land, there was no wall and the town was probably protected here merely by a ditch.86 Whether the single line drawn to the north of the burgh depicts this ditch is not proven, but it seems to be so when other evidence is assessed. The depiction of Tain is intriguing (see Fig. 1.10). Just as nearby Dornoch, and Sanquhar further south, it is illustrated with merely a single encircling line. This seems to suggest an enclosure of only a ditch, probably reinforced by a wooden palisade. The map clearly, and correctly, marks the two small rivers to the east and west of the burgh. To the north, however, at the peninsula jutting out into the firth, the encircling line is a double one. Is Pont suggesting that this northern shore was vulnerable to attack and required some form of stronger fortification? Or is he implying that natural features, as at Stirling, could themselves form adequate defences?87

Medieval Towns   27

Figure 1.10  View of Tain ([Gordon 20], detail), Timothy Pont.

In most towns small wooden fences, in some cases reinforced with a ditch, distinguished the town from the countryside beyond. The fences, however, might be so insubstantial that they could blow down in high winds.88 These ‘heid dykes’, formed by the small fences at the foot of the tofts, were often pierced with gates, giving access to the countryside beyond. These are seen clearly to the south of Elgin in Pont’s depiction (see Fig. 1.11).89 Town walls were punctuated with larger gates – the town ports. These were mostly in the nature of wooden barresses, or barricades, and were more of a psychological than a defensive barrier. St Andrews is an extant exception with its impressive West Port. Other towns likewise in due course placed stronger ports into their walls. Dundee was one such town and its medieval east port may be seen standing diminutively behind later fortifications on Slezer’s late-­ seventeenth-century view of the town (see Fig. 5.4). The wooden barresses were shut at night at curfew and could be closed against warring outsiders or when disease such as plague was travelling the country. The growth of medieval towns, such as Glasgow, may be plotted by the gradual replacing of the ports away from the central core as the town expanded.90 Archaeological research, largely in Perth and Aberdeen, has given insights into house construction.91 The majority of medieval buildings were constructed of wood. The maps of Timothy Pont are testament to the lasting afforestation of Scotland throughout the Middle Ages. Hard woods, such as oak timbers, were

28   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 1.11   View of Elgin ([Gordon 23], detail), Timothy Pont.

used in impressive buildings and were then often re-utilised on less prestigious sites. There was also an adequate supply of soft woods, which required minimum preparation prior to use. Alder, ash, elm and willow proved the mainstay of lesser buildings. The dwellings of the townspeople were mostly of relatively simple design. Indeed, Froissart sums up their slightness: ‘with four or five stakes and plenty green boughs to cover them’ they were remade almost as soon as they might be destroyed.92 He may, however, have been categorising country living, rather than urban structures which would be expected to exhibit greater sophistication. But twelfth- and thirteenth-century houses were probably at first little more than basic hut-type dwellings made of stakes and interwoven wattle with ­free-standing posts to support the walling. Roofs were thatched with heather or cut turves of growing plants which were water-repellent. The importance of timber for house construction is highlighted in a charter of Alexander II. While granting the burgesses of Ayr the land of Alloway, it was expressly forbidden to use the timbers there for fuel: it was to be reserved solely for the building of houses.93 The crown had a policy, however, of granting a toft in many burghs to favoured ecclesiastical bodies; and they, as well as local gentry, came to build town houses in the burghs. It may be presumed that these dwellings were of more substantial structure than the norm, but we have little evidence, although prestigious housing from the later Middle Ages which survived until the ­nineteenth century in towns such

Medieval Towns   29

as Glasgow, Linlithgow, Dunblane and Aberdeen is sure indication that quality homes did exist. From the late thirteenth century a growing sophistication in house structure is evidenced. Walls supported by free-standing posts were replaced with stakes and wattle set in ground sills of wood, which were in turn in some cases superseded by the use of stone foundations for ground sills. This extra strength was reinforced by heavy clay, dung, mud or peat cladding for the walls, so creating a more effective barrier against the wind and cold. Many of the later medieval houses were built with their gable ends to the street to economise on space. Internal partition walls indicate different functional areas and the records show by the fifteenth century an increasing number of homes with lofts, cellars, forestairs, vaults and forehouses.94 Few windows would have been glazed; at night time shutters closed the window space and some, by day, may have been covered with a light canvas material.95 Larger wooden buildings were in due course roofed with tiles. Each flat tile overlapped the other and was fixed to the wooden sarking by nails at the top corners. The tiles surmounting the ridge were often decorated and finished  in  yellow, brown or green glaze,96 which set off the varied colours of the walls. Slates by the end of the Middle Ages were also in use, but in most towns these were not the norm and the majority remained thatched. The practice in towns of referring to a ‘sclait house’ or ‘slate house’ even into the sixteenth century is sure indication that this roofing material was still unusual.97 Gordon of Rothiemay said of Aberdeen in 1660 that the ‘buildings of the toune are of stone and lyme, rigged above, covered with slaits. Mostly of thrie or four stories hight, some of them higher’. He was obviously speaking of the better-quality homes; in 1613  twenty-three shillings had to be expended ‘for repairing the gramer scole,  the thak thairof being blaun off’.98 Clearly, there were vast improvements in house construction during the Middle Ages, but the continuing predominant use of wood was to be a dubious legacy for the future. Local and itinerant masons were employed on the town churches, friaries and castles, but there is no evidence of stone dwellings in the early centuries of burgh life. Documentary sources have indicated a stone house in Aberdeen by 1317.99 In the fourteenth century there were three stone houses in Ayr and one in Edinburgh.100 But stone houses remained scarce throughout the Middle Ages, although by the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries many dwellings may have been constructed with a ground floor of stone and upper storeys of timber. A house on the south side of one of the most prestigious streets in Aberdeen, Castlegate, named Menzies of Pitfodel’s Lodging, was replaced in stone as late as 1535, the timber predecessor having burnt down in 1529, and the Earl Marischal’s town house, further east, built c. 1540, was probably the first stone structure on that site.101 Linlithgow, probably as a result of the sophistication of the nearby palace, had several prestigious houses. One noted stone building, regrettably, was demolished

30   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

in the late nineteenth century. It was probably the town house of the Knights Hospitaller of Torphichen (see Fig. 1.12). With a block of buildings ­fronting the High Street, an archway led to an interior courtyard. Beside the courtyard was a square tower with crow-stepped gables, and at the south end of the courtyard stood another tower of five storeys. Many of the features, ­particularly the hall

Figure 1.12   The House of the Knights Hospitaller, Linlithgow.

Medieval Towns   31

fireplace on the west side of the range, and the oriel windows, bore a close resemblance to those of the palace.102 The Cornwalls of Bonhard, a distinguished local family, had a town house on the site of 57–61 High Street. Their coat of arms may still be seen on the wall above the back of the pend to no. 59. The Hamilton family was one of the most  influential in mid-sixteenth century Scotland and its home would have  been one of the most impressive in the town. The dwelling at 40–48 High  Street, Hamilton Lands, built for the Hamiltons of Pardovan, with its  stone oven to  the  rear of  the property (see p. 56), gives clues to the architectural influence of the nearby palace. The Spanish and French ambassadors reputedly resided in a property on the north side of High Street. It contained important architectural  features within and stood four storeys high. Along with other properties, it was  demolished to make way in the early 1960s for ugly, inappropriate flats (see pp. 269–70). One of the smaller buildings to be demolished was  the Golden Cross Café. Photographs taken at the time of demolition show the quality that was destroyed (see Figs 8.7 and 8.8). Across the road, Archbishop Hamilton’s house stood at the site of the present Sheriff Court House. It was from here that James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh shot the Regent, James Stewart, earl of Moray, in 1570 and effected his escape through the backlands of the property.103 A close study of Pont’s depiction of Linlithgow reveals that this house was arcaded, as was the case in many other towns (see pp. 156–9).

IV.  Keeping order Who were the first burgesses in these new burghal creations? They were to be the foundation of the medieval community. Many were local people, probably already settled in the township. Toponymic surnames also show that there was considerable immigration into the new burghs. Native Scots and people from Northumbria, Cumbria and Scandinavia were amongst the first inhabitants. But by far the largest group of immigrants came from eastern England, northern France, the Rhineland and, in particular, Flanders. William Fleming, one of the earliest burgesses of Dumbarton, and Mainard and Peter Fleming in St Andrews were typical of Flemish immigrant families to arrive on Scottish soil, a few of whom soon found themselves in important roles in the new burghs.104 To encourage these first residents to the burgh, a period of time, called the ‘kirseth’, usually a year, was permitted when no burghal dues needed to be paid and the new burgess had time to build his house. Less attractive burghs were granted a longer period – Dumbarton, for example, had the concession of five years and the burgesses of little Dingwall were given ten years’ grace – clearly not desirable places to live! Founded in 1222 and 1227 respectively, their function was probably not to be one of mercantile centres but, rather, to act as ‘frontier ­plantations’.105

32   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

There was another further section of society, with few privileges and no say at all in the running of the town; these were the ‘indwellers’ who lived in the poorest hovels, labouring for the privileged. Probably many were the original settlers in the township. Closeness would bring into sharp relief the relative fortunes of the inhabitants. Rarely would these first towns have had more than a hundred or so of a population; intimacy, whether wished or not, was difficult to avoid.106 How did such a disparate group manage to keep law and order in their new burghs? It is difficult not to assume that human nature would nurture some resentment, at the very least, in the original settlers against the incomers who received burgage plots and privileges; but of this we have no evidence. Initially, the burgh superior, often the crown, controlled the burgh, with the king’s chamberlain visiting his burghs on the regular ‘chalmerlane ayre’ overseeing burghal matters, in particular finance. The chief officer in the burgh was called either the alderman or prepositus, later the provost, and in the early years of burgh life he was considered to be very much the official of the crown. As time went on, a degree of independence was gained by this official. He was supported by lesser officers called bailies, usually numbering two,107 and the burgh sergeand, who was responsible for ensuring that those summoned duly attended the burgh court. The Burgh Laws provided for the election of aldermen and bailies ‘thruch the consaile of the gud men of the toune’, but the bailies in some burghs, particularly ecclesiastical burghs with a bishop or abbot as superior, were the nominees of the burgh superior. In Dunfermline, it is unclear whether the alderman and bailies were elected totally freely or with the advice and consent of the burgh superior – the Abbot of Dunfermline. This may have been the case in Glasgow in the fifteenth century; in Arbroath, however, one bailie was the nominee of the abbot and the other that of the townspeople.108 Over the centuries, these officials became more representative of the burgh,109 which meant, more accurately, of the more privileged people who lived in it. From the early days of burgh life there probably existed a form of court to settle disputes within the burgh community, and burgesses were freed from the traditional ordeal of trial by combat. Similar exemptions from this trial were granted in various early burghs. London and Newcastle won their freedoms in the early twelfth century; Inverness gained its exemption in 1196–7, at much the same time as Dublin.110 This meant that land disputes could be settled by a more rational method, such as the ‘brieve of right’, where a pursuer could regain full rights to land he owned through the burgh courts.111 From the thirteenth century, certainly, there were law courts distinct from others in the realm which were to deal specifically with burghal matters. These burgh courts, meeting usually fortnightly as curiae legales, and the more frequent meetings of the court or assizes to deal with minor matters, were manned by burgesses under the leadership of the bailies. Their jurisdiction covered almost all cases that arose in the burgh. Indeed, any burgess had the right, if he was charged elsewhere, for example in

Medieval Towns   33

a sheriff or baronial court, to be ‘repledged’ and tried in his own burgh court, as long as the case was a specifically burghal matter. The four pleas of the crown were reserved and covered the most significant crimes, such as murder, serious robbery and rape; technically these were dealt with by the burgesses as suitors before the royal justiciar. The burgh court’s remit might clash on occasion with the shrieval court or, indeed, with the ecclesiastical court, as the Church took care to protect its legitimate jurisdiction over ecclesiastical matters. Three bailies and other citizens were, for example, excommunicated in 1510 for dealing in Glasgow burgh court with a matter that more correctly should have been brought to the ecclesiastical court.112 These formal, rather dry constitutional rulings suggest an organised, well-run, amenable town society. This was probably very far from the truth. One of the most reprehensible and punishable offences was abuse, verbal or otherwise, of a burgh official, as this struck at the very core of burgh life. The occurrence of punishments for such offences in the records implies that ‘constitutional order’ could be shambolic. David Spanky of Dundee paid dearly with a heavy fine for his comment in front of one of the bailies that ‘thare wes na justice done in the tolbouth’.113 The tensions between public authority and personal attitude are visible in the comment of an Aberdeen inhabitant in 1545 against Thomas Menzies of Pitfodels, a landed gentleman and frequently provost of the town, to the effect that the protestor ‘did not care for all his power or his stane house’.114 Catherine Lyne, who lived in Old Aberdeen, miscalled one of the bailies by addressing him as ‘swetie hatt, clepit brecis and blottit hippis’ (sweaty hat, short trousers and bloated hips). She was banished from the town for her scurrility.115 Social control was very much a public affair. Sanctions were imposed in the name of the community at large and deviant behaviour within the town was not tolerated; this threatened the economic and social stability – the status quo of burgh life.116 In effect, conformity within a close-knit society, while it might prove stifling to particular individuals, was essential to the preservation of traditional values; significantly, it would be readily noticed by neighbours who might bear a grudge. Offences that fell within the jurisdiction of the burgh court were basically temporal, anti-social activities such as regrate, forestalling and other abuses of market privileges (see p. 51), or threats to the peace and security of the town. Slander, verbal abuse and fighting were the most common disturbances of the peace; the burgh records are littered with these trials. Punishments for damage to property and theft feature often in the burgh records. Two Dundee residents, Alexander Clerke and Elesebeth Stevinsone, were both banished from the town for various misdemeanours including theft and ‘gryt sumptuous spending by nygcht continuandly’.117 This second offence probably concealed two problems common to medieval towns: drunkenness and ‘nightwalking’. ‘Nightwalking’ meant wandering the town under the cloak of darkness, possibly up to no good as a thief or prostitute. Most burghs imposed curfews, when the town gates were

34   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

to be closed to all outsiders, and forbade movement around the town after dark, other than by those carrying lanterns and on legitimate business.118 The purpose of punishment was to control. This often meant the offender being displayed to public ridicule. Minor offences might receive a spell in the stocks or at the gowe – a type of pillory, often attached to the tolbooth wall. Women were sometimes punished by being placed in the ‘cuk stuyll’ and dunked into the waters of a handy pool.119 In Stirling they were carted through the town to be an example to all. Miscreants were also displayed to the town at the tron – nailed to it by the ear, which would inflict even greater pain if the culprit flinched from any missiles such as rotten eggs.120 Some towns also had a ‘lear stane’ where transgressors were publicly named and humiliated. The records do not always make it totally clear what misdemeanours were being punished, but they were probably some form of lying or dissembling.121 Fines were also imposed; these could be put to the common good, as donations to the poor or as a contribution to candles for the parish church. Public apologies were also made at the church, often with accompanying humiliation such as crawling through the town with a rosary round the feet, asking forgiveness ‘in sark and gown barfut and barheid’ or in ‘lynning claiths barfut and barleg’.122 Greater misdeeds warranted imprisonment in the tolbooth. So open and intimate was community life that culprits might be given the key to the prison and expected to ward themselves. The most severe cases of misbehaviour merited banishment from the town for a period of time, or for ever. If this ruling was disobeyed the offender was branded on the cheek so that all other towns would recognise the defaulter and eject him or her.123 This seemingly harsh punishment had much in common with the practice of the ‘democratic’ government of ancient Athens, where a convicted man could be expelled from society – ‘ostracised’. In effect, for the town dweller in medieval Scotland, this meant the loss of all privileges and the means of livelihood. Although as the centuries passed a larger degree of self-determination was achieved by the burgh, there was no question of burgh rule being democratic. Only burgesses, the privileged members of burgh society as opposed to mere ‘indwellers’, had the right to attend the burgh head courts. These courts were held usually three times a year – at Michaelmas, Christmas/Epiphany and Easter. Major legislative policy decisions, as well as some judicial ones, were taken at the head courts under the leadership of the alderman or prepositus. A further legislative and advisory body developed, possibly out of an informal grouping of townspeople – the burgh council. The members of council were also always burgesses.124 Three factors indicate the growing sophistication of the burgess community. Evidence of the use of burgh seals from the thirteenth century suggests that there was a growing sense of ‘corporateness’, although if the burgh seal, the symbol of the ‘corporation’, was not available a bailie’s seal might serve in its place. Mistrust

Medieval Towns   35

of one’s neighbours might be revealed, however: in some towns the burgh seal was kept in two separate halves by different individuals to ensure against misuse. On 23 February 1296 certain burghs participated in the treaty with Philip IV of France, which was sealed at Dunfermline by a number of Scots representatives, including six communitates villarum.125 Of great significance, not merely nationally and constitutionally, but at the local, burghal level as well were: burgh representation in the reign of Robert I; the burghs’ financial contributions to central funds from 1341; and the co-operation of the ‘third estate’ in the reign of David II (1329–71). It is clear that by 1366 the presence of burgess representatives at parliament was becoming accepted, if not commonplace.126 Burgesses, as well as prelates, earls, barons and freeholders, were summoned to attend parliament in the ‘accustomed manner’. Equally clear is that the attraction of the burgess representation was the taxable capacity of burghs.127 The financial requirements of the crown gave the burghs a voice in national deliberations. Although burghs were growing in significance within the nation, it is doubtful if this was comprehended by the ordinary town dweller; their lives would have been preoccupied with the daily routine of work, provision of food and rearing of children. The medieval town was still simple and unsophisticated. A further element that probably passed by the average man and woman but which had an impact on a burgh’s corporate life was the achievement of feu-ferme status. There appears to be no evidence of this before the reign of Robert I, and whether it was an importation with Edward I of England is now difficult to prove;128 but for Scotland this was seemingly an innovation, although it may merely have been formalising an already existing practice. In 1319, Robert I transferred to the community of Aberdeen the revenues of the burgh (apart from the Great Customs); in return, the community, as tenant-in-chief of the crown, was to pay a fixed annual ferme in perpetuity. Aberdeen was the first of many burghs to achieve this.129 While the constitution of burgh courts and councils and burghal legislative and judicial decisions held much in common with the laws and practice throughout the rest of the land, medieval urban communities, or at least the burgess body, were potentially endowed with considerable power to control their own lives. Through their own counsel and with their own officers, the alderman or prepositus, bailies and lesser officials monitored all aspects of town life.130 The common clerk recorded all burgh proceedings, the dempsters pronounced the sentence of the court, where order was maintained by the sergeands, and the birlawmen ensured that byelaws were obeyed. Liners controlled planning matters within the town (see p. 36) and the ‘gangand assize’ probably kept a check on potential encroachments on the burgh boundaries.131 Wine and ale tasters (see p. 51),132 and appreciatores carnium who monitored the quality of meat (see p. 51), ensured food quality control at the market. Liners, although lesser officers, played a striking role in burghs throughout the Middle Ages. To them fell the task of ensuring that plot boundaries

36   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 1.13   A typical backland scene. The backlands were busy places; initially marked out from each other by little gulleys or small fences, they were used to grow food and house livestock, wells, bread ovens, midden heaps and workshops.

were respected and that, along with other burgh officials, transference of land was open and legal. The inheritor of the land was to dig a spadeful of ‘erde and stane’ (earth and stone) as public evidence that this was now his toft. The burgh  court  records show that liners faced a difficult task in an age when burgage plots were delineated by markers as insignificant and transient as small gullies, primitive fencing, washing line posts, midden piles or little wooden crosses pushed into the ground (see Fig. 1.13).133 Clearly this could be open to abuse and markers were often moved, particularly under cover of night, according to contemporary records. However, the preoccupation with lining disputes by burgh courts is clear indication that liners were a match for such tricks.134 The attention of liners extended to precise siting of gables, windows, stairs and chimneys. The concern for the minutiae of the built fabric could be highly intrusive. In Dundee a burgess laid a sewer to remove effluence from his land. But he did not have a licence for a ‘conduit throu the kingis calsay [roadway]’ and was ordered to close it. Another broke into the public highway with a sewer to empty a closet. The authorities insisted that the roadway be restored to its original state or they would do so and charge the costs.135 The liners might even decide on the alteration of a roof if it dripped water into a neighbour’s land,136 or insist on the siting of windows so that they could not overlook the next property.137 This last measure, which was becoming noted by the early sixteenth century, shows a heightened sense of privacy at a time when there was increasing demand for rooms to sleep being separate from living areas.

Medieval Towns   37

To gain a certain consistency of practice, to ensure collective security and to act as a court of appeal from burgh courts, a Court of the Four Burghs was established. It originally consisted of Roxburgh, Berwick, Edinburgh and Stirling, four early, well-established burghs; on the loss of the two former to English hands, it was decided that Linlithgow and Lanark should be included in 1369.138 Throughout the medieval records there is evidence of requests from one burgh to another for guidance on particular issues, so reinforcing one of the Court’s roles, as a monitor of consistent practice.139 The ‘Leges Burgorum’ were  often referred to, and not merely in the early years of burghal life.140 All of these are clear indication of a genuine attempt on the part of burgh communities to nurture their legislative and judicial authority; and when in due course some burghs were granted shrieval authority, the power of that community and its chief officer were even further enhanced.141 A further body that safeguarded the rights of royal burghs in particular was the Convention of Royal Burghs. It has been argued that it was a development from the Court of the Four Burghs, or from the meetings of burgesses summoned to parliament. Whatever its origins, it was an important body by the sixteenth century, regulating the amount of tax paid to parliament, granting loans, demanding financial help from more wealthy burghs for those in financial straits, settling disputes between burghs, enforcing regulations of parliament and privy council and, in general, assuring uniformity within burghs. The net result was that urban government became largely plutocratic – ­government by the more wealthy with an element of wider, although not popular, support. There was no notion that the majority could, or should, participate in government, or even express an opinion. In effect, power was held by only the privileged members of society – theoretically the burgesses but in practice probably only a select few of their number. It is not known, for example, whether decisions made at the head courts, which all burgesses but not indwellers, were supposed to attend but often did not, were truly open or whether the group merely rubber-stamped a foregone decision of their superiors. An analysis (see Fig. 1.14) of urban society – the dominant families, the gild members who were the elite of the burgess class, the burgesses and the indwellers – in a small town at the end of the fifteenth century shows how tightly the control of power was confined to a tiny elite.142 The medieval interpretation of the use of power has much in common with the Aristotelian notion of ‘aristocracy’ – the best and the wisest should rule for the good of all, that is according to the political theory of ‘oligarchy’,143 but without the pejorative overtone of corruption or selfishness often now associated with the term. There was little or no objection to this – the wealthiest and, therefore, the ‘best’ were expected to govern. This was evidenced in larger towns like Aberdeen and smaller ones such as Dunfermline.144 Outright opposition to  a largely merchant-controlled burgh government was rare. It did break out  in Perth in

38   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Power in the Medieval Town 9%

5%

0%

Indwellers Burgesses Guild members Elite

86%

Figure 1.14   The control of power in the medieval burgh.

the mid-1550s, but this was a town with unusually sharp social  divisions.145 Elsewhere, disputes, as with the baxters and fleshers of Edinburgh  in  1551 and 1555 respectively and the baxters in Dundee in 1561,  were  not aimed at the system of government, nor even at the notion of rulers within that system, but at the perceived injustice of the economic regulations imposed by them.146 As far as we know, social unrest was never of such a magnitude or nature tha it seriously threatened the working of the medieval town.

Notes

1. G. Cant, ‘The development of the burgh of St Andrews in the middle ages’, in R. G. Cant (ed.), Three Decades of Historical Notes (St Andrews, 1991), 44; A. C. Lawrie (ed.), Early Scottish Charters Prior to 1153 (Glasgow, 1905), no. clxix; for a discussion of the pre-burghal nucleus of St Andrews, see N. P. Brooks and G. Whittington, ‘Planning and growth in the medieval burgh: the example of St Andrews’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, new ser. 2 (1977), 291–2. 2. M. Hammond, ‘The bishop, the prior and the founding of the burgh of St Andrews’, Innes Review, lxvi (2015), 88. 3. Dunf. Reg., no. 26. Although this charter is undated, it was a grant of David I, who succeeded in 1124, and one of the witnesses was Robert, bishop elect of St Andrews, consecrated in 1127; ibid., no. 1; Chron. Fordun, Liber v, xv, 213; Fordun was, however, writing much later than the eleventh century and his terminology might need to be questioned; A. O. Anderson (ed.), Early Sources of Scottish History, 500 to 1286 (Edinburgh, 1922), ii, 25.

Medieval Towns   39



4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

RRS, i, no. 80. Ibid., ii, no. 153. Ibid., i, no. 243. Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis, ed. C. Innes (Bannatyne Club, 1837), 18. G. Bain, History of Nairnshire, 1st edn (Nairn, 1893), 119. L. Shaw, History of the Province of Moray, 3 vols (Glasgow, 1882), iii, 88. J. Fraser, ‘Polichronicon Seu Policratica Temporum’, in W. MacKay (ed.), Chronicles of the Frasers, 916–1674 (SHS, 1928), 358. P. Ottaway, ‘Review article: “Perth High Street, Archaeological Excavations, ­1975–77”, published by Tayside and Fife Archaeological Committee’, PSAS, 143 (2013), 1–8. S. Stronach, ‘The archaeological evidence from the parliament site’, in Holyrood Archaeology Project Team (eds), Scotland’s Parliament Site and the Canongate: Archaeology and History (Society of Antiquaries, 2008), 18–19. P. Holdsworth, ‘Dunbar: a multi-period settlement on the Lothian coast’, in Medieval Europe: A Conference on Medieval Archaeology in Europe, 8 vols (York, 1992), viii, 44; E. P. Dennison, S. Stronach and R. Coleman, Historic Dunbar: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2006), 16. A. Williamson, Dunbar and District (Aberdeen, 1907), 3; Dennison et al., Historic Dunbar, 18. J. Miller, The History of Dunbar from the Earliest Records to the Present Time (Dunbar, 1859), 196, 220; A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland: the Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975), 505. The town appears to have gained burgh status some time during the thirteenth century but possibly lost this privilege during the Wars of Independence. Dunbar was probably forfeited to the crown in 1434 but became a royal burgh by charter two years later; this was confirmed in 1555 and again in 1603; G. S. Pryde (ed.), The Burghs of Scotland: a Critical List (London, 1965), no. 95; RMS, iv, no. 999; vi, no. 1418. Dunf. Reg., no. 417. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Musselburgh: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1996), 16. J. Wilkie, Historic Musselburgh (Edinburgh, 1919), 27–8. Dunf. Reg., no. 239. RMS, iii, no. 112; E. P. Dennison, D. Gallacher and G. Ewart, Historic Maybole: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2005), 22. E. P. Dennison, D. Gallacher and G. Ewart, Historic Mauchline: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2006), 15; E. P. D. Torrie and R. Coleman, Historic Cumnock: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1995), 13. W. F. H. Nicolaisen, Scottish Place-names: Their Study and Significance (London, 1976), 77; D. Brooke, ‘The Northumbrian settlements in Galloway and Carrick: an historical assessment’, PSAS, 121 (1991), 318; Dennison et al., Historic Maybole, 18.

40   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

23. W. Macfarlane, Geographical Collections Relating to Scotland, 3 vols, ed. A. Mitchell (SHS, 1906–8), ii, 4. 24. Pryde, Burghs, nos 1–6. 25. Ibid., nos 1–15, 17, 18, 83, 84.; A. A. M. Duncan, in P. G. B. McNeill and H.  L. MacQueen (eds), Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 (Edinburgh, 1996), 196. 26. Duncan, in Atlas, 197; Pryde, Burghs, nos 1–32, 32–49. 27. G. W. S. Barrow, Kingship and Unity: Scotland 1000–1306 (London, 1981), 87. 28. I. Blanchard, ‘Lothian and beyond: the economy of the “English empire” of David I’, in R. H. Britnell and J. Hatcher (eds), Progress and Problems in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1996), 23–43. 29. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Melrose: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1998), 30–1. 30. RRS, ii, nos 213, 224. 31. RRS, ii, no. 475; H. L. MacQueen and W. J. Windram, ‘Laws and courts in the burghs’, in M. Lynch, M. Spearman and G. Stell (eds), The Scottish Medieval Town (Edinburgh, 1988), 208–9. 32. ‘Leges Burgorum’ and the less frequently quoted ‘Constitutiones Regis Willelmi’ offer an early insight into burghal rights and customs, NRS, PA5/1. MacQueen and Windram, ‘Laws and courts in the burghs’, 209–10 discuss provenance and dating of these laws; BL, Add.MS 18111; Fragmenta Quaedam Veterum Legum et Consuetudinum Scotiae Undique Collecta in APS, vol. i. 33. D. Ditchburn, ‘Towns and trade in Middle Britain’ (forthcoming), quoting RRS, i, no. 216, and G. W. S. Barrow, ‘Land routes: the medieval evidence’, in A. Fenton and G. Stell (eds), Loads and Roads in Scotland and Beyond: Land Transport over 6,000 Years (Edinburgh, 1984), 49–66. I am indebted to Dr David Ditchburn for a view of his pre-publication article. 34. RMS, v, 214. 35. C. Innes et al. (eds), Origines Parochiales Scotiae, 2 vols (Bannatyne Club, 1850–5), i, 26. 36. Barrow, Kingship and Unity, 83. 37. W. C. Dickinson, ‘Burgh life from burgh records’, Aberdeen University Review (1945–6), 224; F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge, 1897), 193. 38. A. Ballard, ‘The theory of the Scottish Burgh’, SHR, xiii (1916), 16. 39. ‘Leges Burgorum’, c. xciv; ‘Assise Regis Willelmi’, c. xxxix, in C. Innes (ed.), Ancient Laws and Customs of the Burghs of Scotland, 1124–1424 (SBRS, 1868). The two volumes of C. Gross, The Gild Merchant (Oxford, 1890) give an interesting, if dated, background to the history of the Scottish gilds merchant. 40. E. P. Dennison, ‘Burghs with gilds merchant by 1550’, in Atlas, 215. 41. E. P. Dennison, ‘Power to the people? The myth of the medieval burgh community’, in S. Foster, A. Macinnes and R. MacInnes (eds), Scottish Power Centres from the Early Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century (Glasgow, 1998), 104–5.

Medieval Towns   41

42. Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, 475. 43. MS Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, fo. 104v; E. P. Dennison Torrie (ed.), The Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, 1433–1597 (SRS, 1986), 165; Dunf. Reg., no. 424. 44. APS, iv, 39. 45. DARC, MS CC1, no. 16. 46. E. P. D. Torrie, Medieval Dundee: a Town and its People (Dundee, 1990), 33. 47. Angus Archives, MS M/W1/1/1. 48. Brechin Reg., 172. 49. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Forfar: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2000), 15–16. 50. A. Reid, The Royal Burgh of Forfar: a Local History (Paisley, 1902). 51. RRS, vi, no. 121; DARC, CC1, no. 17; E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Coupar Angus: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1997), 21. 52. Muniments of the Royal Burgh of Irvine (Edinburgh, 1890–1), i, no. 4. 53. W. Stephen, A History of Inverkeithing and Rosyth (Aberdeen, 1921), 8–10. 54. Charters and Other Muniments Belonging to the Royal Burgh of Cupar, trans. G. Home (Cupar, 1882), no. 3. 55. E. Ewan, ‘Burgh trading liberties’, in Atlas, 234. 56. For example, ‘Leges Burgorum’, c. 99 in Ancient Burgh Laws. 57. Articuli Inquirendi in Itinere Camerarii, c. xxxvi, c. lxiii. In practice, laws were, and are, reinterpreted to suit differing circumstances and some burgesses were in due course able to exhibit an adept ability in alienating their land, largely because of the attractiveness of rental revenues. See E. Ewan, Townlife in Fourteenth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1990), 99–101. 58. Burgage tenure eventually encompassed a number of variants. Ewan, Townlife, 105–6. 59. S. J. Stevenson and E. P. D. Torrie, Historic Dundee; the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1988), i, 89. 60. E. P. Dennison and S. Stronach, Historic Dunfermline: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2007), 15–16. 61. J. Masterton, ‘A study of growth patterns and the changing cultural landscape of a Scottish town’ (1962; unpublished typescript available in Dunfermline Carnegie Library). 62. E. P. D. Torrie, ‘The early urban site of New Aberdeen: a reappraisal of the evidence’, Northern Scotland, xii (1992), 1–18; A. S. Cameron and J. A. Stones (eds), Aberdeen: an In-depth View of the City’s Past (Society of Antiquaries of Scotland), 122. 63. NLS, Pont Maps of Scotland, c. 1583–1614, Pont 5, Pont 8 (Pont maps as listed by NLS). 64. M. Rorke, E. P. Dennison, S. Stronach and R. Coleman, Historic Kirkintilloch: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2009), 17; J. Horne, ‘General expansion’, in J. Horne (ed.), Kirkintilloch (Kirkintilloch, 1910; reprinted 1993), 18.

42   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

65. Barrow, Kingship and Unity, 89. 66. Pryde, Burghs, no. 82. 67. APS, ii, 59; Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis (Bannatyne and Maitland Clubs, 1843), i, 282, no. 310. This is discussed in further detail in D. Pringle, ‘Cadzow Castle and the castle of Hamilton: an archaeological and historical conundrum’, Chateau Gaillard, xv (1992), 279; and in E. P. D. Torrie and R. Coleman, Historic Hamilton: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1996), 14. Excavations by GUARD in 2015–16, off the M74 near Junction 6 where the Nethertoun Cross once stood before being removed in the early twentieth century to Hamilton Old Parish Church, uncovered various finds – pottery, coins, clay pipes and possibly the founds of two stone structures. These have been provisionally dated to the tenth to eleventh century and are thought to be from the site of early Cadzow (The Scotsman, 9 March 2016). 68. A. Gibb, Glasgow: the Making of a City (London, 1983), 12. 69. Pont 8 (Pont maps as listed by NLS). 70. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Nairn: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1999), 14. 71. Dumbarton Common Good Account, ed. F. Roberts and I. M. M. MacPhail (Dumbarton, 1972), p. iii. 72. J. Irving, The History of Dunbartonshire (Dumbarton, 1860), 334. 73. NRS, GD 124/1/424. 74. Torrie, Medieval Dundee, 53. 75. G. G. Simpson, Scotland’s Medieval Burghs: an Archaeological Heritage in Danger (Edinburgh, 1972), 16. 76. E. P. D. Torrie and R. Coleman, Historic Kirkcaldy: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1995), 7–8; E. P. Dennison, ‘The Scottish Burgh Survey and the Centre for Scottish Urban History’, in E. P. Dennison (ed.), Conservation and Change in Historic Towns (CBA, 1999), 78. 77. Lawrie, Charters, no. 169; Glas. Chrs, i, pt ii, 5; Hammond, ‘The bishop, the prior’, 74. 78. J. C. Murray (ed.), Excavations in the Medieval Burgh of Aberdeen, 1973–81 (Edinburgh, 1982), 25, 78. 79. J. Schofield, ‘Excavations south of Edinburgh High Street, 1973–74’, PSAS, 107 (1975–6), 168; M. Spearman, ‘The medieval townscape of Perth’, in Lynch et al., Scottish Medieval Town, 55–6; R. J. D. Torrie, ‘Central Dunfermline: an analysis of the 1988 road network and the geographical factors that determined its layout’ (unpublished typescript, 1988), 40–1; E. P. D. Torrie, Medieval Dundee, A Town and its People (Dundee, 1990), 52–3. 80. F. H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: a Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, 6 vols (Edinburgh, 1882–5), iii, 36. 81. Chronicon de Lanercost (Maitland Club, 1839), 185; Ghillebert de Lannoy, Oeuvre,

Medieval Towns   43

82.

83. 84. 85. 86.

87.

88. 89. 90.

91.

92.

93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

ed. C. Potvin (Louvain, 1878), 168; D. Ditchburn, Scotland and England, The Medieval Kingdom and its Contacts with Christendom, 1214–1560 (East Linton, 2001), i, 273. P. Hume Brown (ed.), Early Travellers in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1891), 47, 67. The view of John Major in 1521 that Perth was ‘the only walled town in Scotland’ is difficult to comprehend. When he wrote this is unknown. After attending university he went directly to Paris, returning only in 1518, and he was perhaps expressing his views while out of touch with his homeland. Ditchburn, Scotland and England, i, 270–1. I am indebted to Professor Thomas Riis for this information. I. C. Cunningham, The Nation Survey’d: Timothy Pont’s Maps of Scotland (East Linton, 2001), passim. NLS, Pont Maps of Scotland, c. 1583–1614, Pont 32, Pont 26 (Pont maps as listed by NLS); RCAHMS, Stirlingshire: An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1963), i, 304. NLS, Pont 35 [Gordon 20]; a list of the Pont MS maps made in 1907 attributed certain maps to Robert Gordon. [Gordon 20] and [Gordon 23] were in fact worked by Pont. CDS, iv, 459. [Gordon 23]. S. Stevenson and E. P. D. Torrie, Historic Glasgow: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1996), ii, 20; E. P. Dennison, ‘The medieval town in Scotland: planned or unplanned?’, in A. Pettruccioli, M. Stella and G. Strappa (eds), The Planned City, 3 vols (Bari, 2003), i, 75–6. Cameron and Stones, Aberdeen, 30, 40, 305–6; H. K. Murray, ‘The buildings from High Street, Perth’ (Scottish Development Department, unpublished report); P. Holdsworth (ed.), Excavations in the Medieval Burgh of Perth, 1979–81 (Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1982), passim; Murray, Excavations in Aberdeen, passim; see also J. Wordsworth, ‘Excavations of the settlement at 113–21 Castle Street, Inverness 1979’, PSAS, cxii (1982), i, 116. J. Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, Spain, Portugal, Scotland, Brittany, Flanders and the Adjoining Countries, transcribed by J. Bouchier, Lord Berners. Reprinted from Pynson’s edition of 1523 and 1525, 2 vols (1812), ii, 7. Froissart does not specify that this was the urban experience; he may have been commenting on more rural housing, but the homes of the poorer members of a town probably had much in common with their rural cousins. Charters of the Royal Burgh of Ayr, ed. W. S. Cooper (Ayr and Wigton Archaeological Association, 1883), no. 5. I am indebted to Dr David Ditchburn for this reference. Dunf. Recs, 317, 8, 80, 113, 154, 298, 172, 276, 278, for example. Dunf. Recs, 113; Dennison Torrie, Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, fo. 99v. J. A. Stones (ed.), A Tale of Two Burghs (Aberdeen, 1987), 12. For example, DARC, MS Dundee Burgh and Head Court Book, 22 January 1522/3;

44   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

98. 99. 100. 101. 102.

103. 104.

105. 106.

107. 108.

109. 110.

111. 112.

113.

Dunf. Recs, 13; RMS, iv, no. 884; Aberdeen City Archives, MS Aberdeen Council Register, i, 17. J. Gordon, Abredoniae Utriusque Descriptio 1660, ed. C. Innes (Spalding Club, 1842), 9; G. M. Fraser, Historical Aberdeen (Aberdeen, 1905), 113. Abdn. Recs, i, 14; E. P. Dennison and J. Stones, Historic Aberdeen: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1997), 23. Ewan, Townlife, 15. F. Wyness, City by the Grey North Sea (Aberdeen, 1972), 67. I. B. Cowan, P. H. H. Mackay and A. Macquarrie (eds), The Knights of St  John of Jerusalem in Scotland (SHS, 1983), 24, 86, 151–2; D. MacGibbon and T. Ross, The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1887), i,  512; G. Stell, ‘Urban buildings’, in Lynch et al., Scottish Medieval Town, 70; E.  P.  Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Linlithgow: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2000), 20, 24. CSP Scot., iii, 71–2; M. N. Powell, Linlithgow. A Brief Architectural and Historical Guide (Linlithgow Civic Trust, 1990), 18. I. M. M. MacPhail, Dumbarton Through the Centuries (Dumbarton, 1972), 5; E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Dumbarton: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1999), 12; Barrow, Kingship and Unity, 92. E. P. Dennison, ‘Burghs and burgesses: a time of consolidation’, in R. Oram (ed.), The Reign of Alexander II, 1214–49 (Leiden, 2005), 274. The smallness of the populations in Scottish towns is in sharp contrast to those in England, where a town was not deemed to be such if it had a population of fewer than 2,000. Possibly even Edinburgh would be excluded by such a marker. Edinburgh and Stirling had three bailies until Edinburgh gained a fourth in 1492 (Edin. Recs, i, 18, 269; Stirling Recs, 5). Aberdeen had four bailies (Abdn Recs, 1). A. Ballard, ‘The theory of the Scottish burgh’, SHR, xiii, 21; D. Murray, Early Burgh Organisation in Scotland as Illustrated in the History of Glasgow and of Some Neighbouring Burghs, 2 vols (Glasgow, 1924–32), i, 172; G. Hay, The History of Arbroath, to the Present Time, with Notices of the Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs of the Neighbouring District (Arbroath, 1876), 115. W. M. Mackenzie, The Scottish Burgh (Edinburgh, 1949), 98. According possibly to a grant of liberties by William I to Inverness and certainly to ‘Leges Burgorum’, RRS, ii, no. 388; ‘Leges Burgorum’, cc. 12 and 13. See also R. Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water. The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford, 1986), 53–9, 120. I am indebted to Dr David Ditchburn for his advice. H. L. MacQueen, Common Law and Feudal Society (Edinburgh, 1993), 110, 155–6. N. Shead, ‘Glasgow: an Ecclesiastical Burgh’, in Lynch et al., Scottish Medieval Town, 127. The Rental Book of Diocese of Glasgow (Grampian Club, 1875), nos 498, 503, 504. DARC, MS Dundee Burgh and Head Court Book, 29 July 1551.

Medieval Towns   45

114. J. Robertson, The Book of Bon Accord: A Guide to the City of Aberdeen (Aberdeen, 1839), 105. 115. G. G. Simpson, Old Aberdeen in the Early Seventeenth Century: a Community Study (Aberdeen, 1975), 7. 116. P. S. M. Symms, ‘Social control in a sixteenth-century burgh: a study of the burgh court book of Selkirk, 1503–1545’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1986) contains a detailed discussion of burghal attempts to deal with anti-social activities. 117. DARC, DBHCB, 14 October 1550. 118. Edin. Recs, i, 75, 190. 119. Dunf. Recs, 32, 62, 157; DBHCB, 6 November 1553. 120. DBHCB, 14 October 1550. 121. Dunf. Recs, 106. 122. DBHCB, 26 August 1521; 9 September 1521; 15 September 1523. 123. DBHCB, 11 February 1521; 4 April 1521; 20 April 1523. 124. In some towns, such as Selkirk, the council may have developed out of the court or assize. According to ‘Leges Burgorum’, the council was to be constituted of twenty-four members. In practice this number varied, and was specifically ratified by law in 1469, when it was decided that a council should be constituted ‘in sic noumyr as acordis to the toune’, Ewan, Townlife, 51; E. P. Dennison Torrie, ‘The gild of Dunfermline in the fifteenth century’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1984), 80–1; APS, ii, 95. 125. APS, i, 453. The use of the word ‘villarum’ rather than ‘burgorum’ might suggest an emphasis on the geographic support for the treaty rather than any legal rights of burghs. 126. APS, i, 498a, 507b. 127. A. A. M. Duncan, ‘The early parliaments of Scotland’, SHR, xlv, 51. 128. By the twelfth century a number of English towns were gaining the concession of answering for their own ferme, London and Lincoln being the first before 1130. S. Reynolds, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (Oxford, 1977), 104. 129. Abdn Recs, lxxiii–lxxiv. 130. Matters dealt with ranged from decisions to close the town gates to outsiders in the time of plague to the imposing of a fine on a cheating tax gatherer and attempts to stop sheep-worrying by dogs (Abdn Recs, 211; DBHCB, 9 September 1521; Dunf. Recs, 74). 131. Possibly their task was to perambulate the burgh marches, probably the ‘walkyn of bawkis’ referred to in the Lanark burgh records (Lanark Recs, xxxii, 22), although W. C. Dickinson argues that their purpose was to ratify the statutes of burghs (Abdn Recs, lxxxv). 132. For the work of burgh officers in a small town, see Dennison Torrie, ‘Gild of Dunfermline’, 67–89.

46   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

133. NRS, B20/10/1 MS ‘Burgh Court Book of Dunfermline’, 101, 112, 307, 363; DBHCB, 30 March 1523, gives evidence of liners staking land and markers being moved. 134. NRS, B20/10/1 MS ‘Burgh Court Book of Dunfermline’, 101, 112, 307, 365; DBHCB, 30 March 1523. 135. DBHCB, 11 July 1521; 24 July 1551. 136. NRS, B20/10/1 MS ‘Burgh Court Book of Dunfermline’, 99. 137. ECA, SL144/1 MS Dean of Gild Records, 1529–1557, ‘The Neighbourhood Book’, 6r (30 May 1532), 40r (14 Nov. 1554), 47r (5 May 1556), 49v (11 Dec. 1556), 53r (26 May 1557). 138. APS, i, 507. 139. ACA, MS Aberdeen Council Register, ix, 659; H. Booton, ‘Inland trade’, in Lynch et al., Scottish Medieval Town, 158. 140. They were partially copied by the Dunfermline townspeople into their new gild book in the 1430s and by an Inverness burgess as late as after the Reformation (although this latter may have been a later copying of an earlier annotation); Dennison Torrie, Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, fos 95–7; NLS, Acc. 1218, Fort Augustus Ms A1. I am indebted to Professor M. Lynch for drawing to my attention the latter reference and for the assistance of Andrew R. Nicoll, Keeper of the Scottish Catholic Archives, in locating this reference. 141. NRS, GD 79/5/5; See H. L. MacQueen in McNeill and MacQueen, Atlas, 192–4. 142. Information based on a small town, Dunfermline, in the last quarter of the fifteenth century; Dunf. Recs; Dennison Torrie, Gild Court Book of Dunfermline. 143. S. Reynolds, ‘The writing of medieval urban history in England’, Theoretische Geschiedenis, i (1992), 50–1; cf. S. Rigby, ‘Urban “oligarchy” in late medieval England’, in J. A. F. Thomson (ed.), Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1988), 63–4; J. Kermode, ‘Oligarchies in late medieval English towns’, in Thomson, Towns and Townspeople, 95–6. 144. A. White, ‘The impact of the Reformation on a burgh community: the case of Aberdeen’, in M. Lynch (ed.), The Early Modern Town in Scotland (London, 1987), 82; Dennison, ‘Power to the people?’, 118–21. 145. M. Verschur, ‘Merchants and craftsmen in sixteenth-century Perth’, in Lynch, Early Modern Town, 36–54. 146. M. Verschuur, ‘Merchants and craftsmen in sixteenth-century Perth’, in Lynch, Early Modern Town, 48; Ewan, Townlife, 60; Torrie, Medieval Dundee, 105; M. Lynch, ‘Whatever happened to the medieval burgh? Some guidelines for ­sixteenth- and seventeenth-century historians’, Scottish Economic and Social History, iv (1984), 16.

2

Daily Life in the Middle Ages

D

aily life in the medieval town was dominated by the need to produce or buy food and other essentials for the family, and to secure thereby the economic stability of the town. For the vast majority this was a tough life, with little light relief. Market days were the highlight of the week, when the townspeople could buy goods that they had not grown or produced themselves, and outsiders came into the town to sell and obtain their supplies. Control of the market usually fell to the gild merchant. There is evidence of burghs with gilds merchant from the late twelfth century.1 In early burghs, men of all backgrounds were permitted to join – weavers, dyers, cobblers, skinners, fleshers (butchers), baxters (bakers), ale-makers, tavern-keepers, masons and plumbers.2 Early burgh laws officially excluded weavers, fleshers and dyers from gild membership but in practice most craftsmen were accepted into the gild fraternity.

I.  Markets and merchants The pattern of the medieval economy was based on the export of the primary products of agriculture, fishing and mining, and the import of a wide range of manufactured goods, as well as raw materials such as timber and iron. The most prominent feature in this period was the increasing concentration of overseas trade in a few larger burghs, leaving the smaller and middling ones to concentrate on domestic and regional trade. With the permanent loss of Berwick to the English (see p. 11), the ‘four great towns of Scotland’ – Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and Perth – paid 58 per cent of customs revenues to the crown in the 1370s. Four other towns paid almost half of the remaining customs revenue – Haddington, Linlithgow, Montrose and Lanark. By the 1590s the four great towns paid a staggering 80 per cent. The composition of the four towns rated fifth to eighth were Haddington and Montrose, as in the 1370s, with Dumbarton and the clustering of Fife ports around Pittenweem taking the place of Linlithgow and Lanark. Their share had, however, fallen to under 10 per cent.3 Edinburgh’s

48   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

domination of the export trade was paramount: it paid almost 60 per cent of all customs by 1500 and 72 per cent by the 1590s.4 In larger towns, the half century after c. 1475 saw radical changes in the urban economic structure. A growing number of crafts obtained the formal status of incorporated craft gilds, which brought a measure of independence from the gild merchant. This gave the craft masters greater control over the quality of goods produced and also over their colleagues, their working practices, their journeymen and apprentices. There was inherent within the craft and gild systems an element of fraternity – care of those members who might fall destitute and, after death, a level of provision for widows and orphans. As these formal craft organisations emerged in the larger burghs in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a certain exclusiveness and stratification manifested itself in economic tension between these craft and merchant groups; in the smaller burghs, however, the gild merchant maintained its role as an organisation of men who dealt in merchandise, whether as merchants or craftsmen. It was the gild that traditionally held the monopoly of traffic in the staple goods: hides, furs, skins, wool and wool fells (skins with wool attached). Technically this was confined to the merchants of royal burghs, but there is ample evidence of other burghs, such as the abbatial burgh of Dunfermline, trading at home and overseas in these commodities just as freely. Not all townspeople were members of a craft gild. In ports, specialised occupations associated with the sea were, naturally, more common than they were inland. Rope makers, net menders, skippers, boatmen and fishermen plied their trade and were found in all coastal towns. Kirkcaldy and Dumbarton, along with other seafaring burghs, were the homes of shipbuilders.5 There were also many men and women, both in coastal and inland towns with lowlier occupations such as labourers, carters, servants, cleaners and beggars. A small number functioned as carriers of information and goods in overland communications. Large towns also served as a market for service skills, farming out the more menial tasks to an underclass, many of whom migrated from rural areas or smaller towns to the larger regional centres. The town’s weekly market was a noisy, crowded and sociable affair (see Fig.  2.1). Moveable sale-tables or trestles, rather like flat wheelbarrows, were transported into the market place. Congestion was increased by wooden booths attached to the front of houses where traders could display and sell their wares. Offering their own produce and manufactures were cobblers, ale-makers, bakers, dyers and local craftsmen. Country people brought in their own produce, such as eggs and butter, for sale to supplement the town’s own supplies. Fish was gutted at the market place, bones and waste being merely thrown aside. Children, dogs and pigs were free to roam, and the smell and bellowing of animals pervaded the air. Meat was usually brought to the market on the hoof – a more convenient method than heavy cartage, with the animals then slaughtered

Daily Life in the Middle Ages   49

Figure 2.1  A market scene.

on site. There was inevitable unpleasant mess but little wastage. The tanners and cordiners (leather-workers) used the skins for articles such as clothing and scabbards (see Fig. 2.2); bones were worked into needles, combs and pipes/recorders (see Fig. 2.3); fat was rendered down for soap; intestines could be converted into skins for sausages and haggis-type foods; blood was transformed into black puddings; tripe could be made from innards; and scavenging dogs and pigs would clear up much of what was left over. Amidst all this seeming chaos, it was the remit of the town authorities, whether the gild or the burgh officers, to keep control. Firstly, a strict check was kept that all outsiders paid their tolls to use the market and, ‘stallangers’, unless they were burgesses, had to pay a fee to set up their stalls. One of the first ­essentials was to ensure that there was an adequate supply of food and other necessities for the town, particularly in times of scarcity. It was obligatory that the first opportunity to purchase went to the townspeople. A man might be fined for the ‘wrangyss selling of a dak of hydis to outmen’ as this was a ‘failure to offer them to the neighbours for sale’.6 In Dundee in 1554, it was laid down that only

50   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 2.2  A leather scabbard, from Perth High Street.

Figure 2.3  A bone pipe/recorder, from Skinnergate, Perth.

as much coal as would supply a single house might be purchased by one person. For what period of time that supply was to cover is not specified in the records. It was presumably to last for one week, the market being a weekly event. Two years later, Dundee’s head court decided that, as there was ‘an inconvenient darthe of sclatis [slates]’ and the ‘transporting of the samyn till Leith Eddinbourche and all other placis [was] to the gryt hurt of the commone weill of this towne’, unfreemen were to be permitted to buy only enough slates for their own building.7 The prices of ale, meal, meat and wheat were laid down and quality control of all foodstuffs was paramount. Although some bread was made at home for private consumption, the baxters had a ready market. This was, however, subject to legislation. Being the basic staple of life, the quality and quantity of bread were monitored throughout western Europe. Some delineated quantity by length and breadth. There still remain on the walls of certain churches in Baden-Württemberg scratched shapes indicating the correct size of loaf for a specific price. Scotland preferred to measure quantity by weight. In Dundee in 1521, it was stipulated that a twopenny loaf should weigh twenty-two ounces and a penny loaf eleven; the following year, however, when there was a concern over the availability of wheat, it was decided that a twopenny loaf need weigh only sixteen ounces, with a penny loaf half that weight. Inflation and bad weather

Daily Life in the Middle Ages   51

took their toll. By 1550 a fourpenny loaf weighed a mere twenty ounces; the following year there was such a shortage of bread that the authorities warned that baxters might ‘lose thare lettre for wanting of breid’. The baxters argued in their own defence that they were not to blame; the fault lay with the ‘ewill weddir’.8 Foul weather meant inadequate home supplies of wheat; more had to be imported. This was only partially responsible for an increase in prices of more than 100 per cent in less than thirty years. In the sixteenth century, the country as a whole was suffering from a vast price inflation with Scots currency dropping markedly against foreign currencies. Luxury imported items, such as wine, were hit hard but equally so was the staple of the ordinary man. Ale was likewise monitored. In Dunfermline in 1500 the price was fixed at eight pence a gallon. In several towns, if the vendor was found to be cheating, his or her brewing vessels were taken to the market cross where, for all to witness, the bottoms were knocked out.9 The quality of the product was supervised by between three and five burgesses chosen as tasters of ale – gustatores cervisie, or ‘cwynnaris’ – and procedures were laid down in order to establish if the fault behind a substandard ale lay with the malt or the brewer. Five to nine men were charged as appreciators carnium, or ‘fles prissours’, with supervision of meat standards.10 In 1521, to ensure high standards of meat quality, Dundee ordained that fleshers who brought in to the market ‘ony demembret flesch blawyn or infectit with pokk or lung evyll to be convict thairfor’ and his goods were to be declared escheat.11 The burgh records show that, although this high degree of control was kept over market dealings, failure to conform was prevalent. The two worst punishable offences were regrate and forestalling. Regrate was the purchasing of goods to build up a supply in an attempt to monopolise the market; forestalling was the buying of food before it reached the market, for example the purchase of fish directly from the boat (see Fig. 2.4) rather than buying it in the open at the market cross. Both were surreptitious dealings, or shady practices, taking place in ‘myrk housis and quiet loftis’ and were deemed as offences as they worked against the common good of the burgh and its inhabitants.12 The chamberlain’s accounts for 1436 indicate a profit to the crown of £342 9s 0d from punishment of these misdemeanours in king’s burghs.13 Most burghs were also given the right to hold fairs – sometimes one annually but often two or three; these could last for several weeks. The normal customers and vendors at markets were supplemented by foreign traders and native merchants who travelled overseas, bringing home exotic spices, fine wines and luxurious textiles. Goods were imported from England and Ireland, the Netherlands and Rhineland, France, Spain and, from the late fourteenth century, from as far afield as the Baltic, in particular Danzig.14 Space for such important and ­well-attended events as fairs was often limited, and so they might be held in fields outside the town. Forfar’s was at the ‘mure of Forfar’.15 The traditional site

52   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 2.4  A port scene.

of the Lammas, or Scare Thursday, Fair of Melrose was at the foot of the Eildon Hills where the present golf course is sited.16 These were special days for the inhabitants of towns. Burgesses and indwellers could number only hundreds rather than thousands. The swelling of the population with exotic visitors bringing goods must have been a time of great excitement. Written sources reveal that specialisation gradually became the norm for many in urban life.17 There is evidence also that some towns concentrated on dealing in specific products. By the sixteenth century, three fairs were held in Dunblane. On 19 May 1502 two horses were purchased for King James IV (1488–1513); three years later, one of the court retainers, Martin Bailye, paid forty-four shillings to Riche Balzee for a ‘litil nag’ and a ‘furnist sadill’; and in 1506, according to the Treasurer’s Accounts, one Andrew Aytoun was despatched to Dunblane with £20 to buy four carthorses.18 In 1531, Dunblane again supplied horses for the royal retinue: £20 was given to one Robert Gib to buy horses at Dunblane fair.19 Eight years later, the royal hunting party at Glenfinlas required extra horses. Ten were hired from Stirling and seven from Dunblane, the rate being set at two shillings per day.20 If the crown looked to Dunblane for horses, so did lesser mortals.

Daily Life in the Middle Ages   53

Dunblane’s livestock market dealt in other animals. On 9 August 1513, one month before the battle of Flodden, the Treasurer’s Accounts show that £300 was earmarked to buy oxen at Dunblane fair. Four days later, 143 oxen were purchased by the royal Master of Works and the Master Flesher, at a cost of £208.21 It seems that here were active preparations for the war effort, as oxen could be used for pulling artillery as well as being a source of food. That Dunblane could supply so many oxen at one fair is clear indication that it was drawing supplies not only from the immediate hinterland but also from further afield in the Highlands. The attraction of the fairs at Dunblane was such that James, marquis of Hamilton, requested a change of date for Hamilton’s fair, which had become unprofitable as it clashed with those of Dunblane and Carnwarth (see p. 116).22 Border towns, such as Roxburgh and Berwick, profited from their close proximity to the sheep-rearing monastic estates of Kelso and Melrose. Berwick, in particular, before its loss to England served as a collection point for wool and wool fells. Wool from the Cistercian monastic holdings, the south-west of Scotland and northern Northumberland fed the Berwick market, largely purchased by overseas buyers. Not all of the wool went immediately abroad; a certain proportion passed to Boston in Lincolnshire, a thriving exporting port by the end of the thirteenth century. Wool found a ready market in Dublin, via entrepots such as Ayr.23 Renfrew, Rutherglen, Kirkcudbright, Irvine and Dumfries also had firm trading links with Dublin, which, in turn, imported wine from Gascony and cloth from the Low Countries.24 By the fourteenth century both Ayr and Rutherglen were successfully trading with Drogheda and Dublin in herring,25 a commodity more often associated with east-coast ports. Salt was an essential product for the development of the fish trade, both for home consumption and overseas export. Much of this came from the Forth and Solway regions. Three further minerals were extracted: coal had been mined in Dunfermline from at least 1291 and in Newbattle, both being monastic concessions; lead was extracted at Crawford in the mid-thirteenth century; and also mined was silver, an important commodity for the Scottish economy.26 Silver was used to exchange goods. Foreign silver came into the country from the purchase of fish, salt, wool, wool fells, hides and other home products; Scottish silver bought luxury materials, wines, exotic fruits and spices, timber and, at times, refined salt. By the twelfth century Scotland had a money-based economy, whether the silver was home-produced or imported. Foreign currency found in archaeological excavations reinforces our knowledge not only of the medieval money economy but also of the extent of foreign investment. Mints were soon established in major towns, Berwick and Roxburgh being the first, followed by several others throughout the country, such as Perth, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. This further enhanced the status of leading towns.

54   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

II.  Home life In the home there were few luxuries, as would be expected within the simple structures of early town dwellings (see pp. 27–9). Homes functioned without any subdivisions for living and sleeping accommodation, not only for the nuclear or extended family, but also often for animals. Gradually through the Middle Ages, sophistication crept in, particularly within elite town houses (see pp. 29–31). Only the bare essentials would be found within early homes. Floors were made of sand, clay or silt, probably scattered with litter such as heather, bracken or cereal straw, which could be swept up and changed to give a semblance of cleanliness. Doors were possibly made of straw mat or wattle and there is no evidence of windows. Many of the homes would have had a hearth for warmth and cooking. This was set on the floor as a clay-lined hollow or as a stone slab, with smoke percolating out of the dwelling through a small hole in the roof. Chimneys, constructed of plaster or stone, and even in iron to be transportable, gradually became part of the wooden house design. Wood was collected, peat dug, or coal might be quarried for fuel.27 The open fire could provide some light but candles and lamps were a necessary supplement. These were lit by oil from flax that might be either grown in the backlands or imported from abroad.28 In time, and with an increasing awareness of fire risk, clay ovens were sited outdoors (see Fig. 1.13). Beds were simple, often of the box-bed type, and in less privileged households bedding was usually of straw, although as the records become more fulsome in the later Middle Ages there are references to sheets, both single and double, blankets, bolsters and coverlets. By this time, the most prestigious members of society might even have had feather bolsters and feather beds, sometimes draped with curtains to control draughts, in rooms set aside for sleeping quarters.29 The table was an important feature in the home. This was usually of one of two types. The compter was a reckoning table, with squares delineated on the surface.30 This was probably used by those engaged in merchandising, although medieval paintings suggest that the counting squares might be provided by a checked tablecloth. More common was a trestle table – a board placed on trestles. This had the advantage that it could be dismantled after the meal and placed against a wall, so making space in a cramped room. Simple forms provided seating. Only the wealthiest houses had the luxury of chairs; and when they appear in the records they are often as specialised items passed on as inheritance objects.31 Essential in any home was storage space. The armry, or cupboard, was used to store plates and drinking vessels, which were occasionally made of pewter but more normally of wood or pottery (see Fig. 2.5). Metal pitchers, pans, cauldrons and spits were everyday items. Foodstuffs might also be kept in the armry. Wooden barrels could also be used to preserve salted meat and fish (see Figs 2.6

Daily Life in the Middle Ages   55

Figure 2.5  Pottery goods. These pieces of medieval pottery were excavated at Melrose. Probably belonging to the Abbey, they are of higher quality than those used by most of the townspeople.

Figure 2.6  Medieval wooden goods, from Perth High Street.

56   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

and 2.7). These were sometimes sunk into the ground, probably to assist a cooler preservation of the contents, or merely to store water.32 Kists were used to keep clothes as clean as possible and, in only the most substantial of households, a ‘towel burd’ kept linen fresh.33 Rarely in the records are luxury items such as silverware, candelabra and clocks mentioned; and archaeological evidence has confirmed that at this time forks were not an essential – knives, spoons and fingers proving perfectly efficient. Wealthier households would provide diners with an aquamanile, a vessel, usually made of pottery, which held water for washing hands at the table. Cereals, mainly barley and oats with some rye, and wheat particularly for the wealthy, were the staple of the diet. Some of this could be grown in the backlands but the majority came from the town’s hinterland. In times of dearth cereals were imported from overseas, in particular the Baltic. Oatcakes, or bannocks, were a common source of sustenance. Oats could also be eaten Figure 2.7  Medieval wooden dish and mixed with water as brose, or boiled with ale as pottage, barrel, from Skinnergate, Perth. or the hulls might be boiled into a paste called sowens.34 Any bread purchased at the market would have come from the grain sent to the town mill for grinding; this was then baked into bread by the baxters who sold it officially at the market cross (see pp. 50–1). Bread for home consumption was allowed to be made from grain ground on a domestic handmill and home-baked in private ovens, often sited in the backlands. The remains of an extant oven may still be seen to the rear of the early-sixteenthcentury lodgings of the Hamiltons of Pardovan and Humbie on the north side of East High Street, Linlithgow (see p. 31).35 Archaeological excavations36 have shown that cow, ox, pig, horse, sheep, deer, rabbit and goat were all butchered and eaten. Spiced meat was favoured in winter, the imported spices probably added to disguise the rancid taste of overwintered salted meat. Salting of the carcasses was an essential way to keep a winter supply of meat. Many animals were slaughtered in autumn as winter feeding was expensive but the essential breeding stock was maintained throughout the winter months. Older cattle were preferred for the superiority of their hides and so were spared and some sheep might survive long enough to provide at least one shearing of wool. Once culled, their value was in wool fells and meat.37 Chickens and geese were reared for the table and to supply eggs. There is evidence that wild birds were trapped to provide a food supplement. Wealthier households might also have dovecots where pigeons or doves were reared as a

Daily Life in the Middle Ages   57

delicacy.38 Swans were eaten by only the most prestigious of society. Fish and shellfish were favourites. The availability of fish depended on the success of the catch; archaeological evidence has shown that even inland towns benefited from a partial diet of fish, oysters, limpets, winkles, cockles, mussels and razor clams. All were available at the town market, as were dairy products and eggs. Vegetables featured in the diet, probably mostly grown in the backlands: leeks, spring onions, cabbage and kale. Weeds were collected from the hedgerows and were sometimes more nutritious than garden vegetables: ‘fat hen’ (Chenopodium album) has more iron, calcium, protein and vitamins B1 and B2 than either spinach or cabbage. These were supplemented by mushrooms and other fungi gathered outside the town, along with wild radish and fruit such as brambles, raspberries, wild cherries, elderberries, bilberries, sloes and rowans. Exotic produce, such as grapes, figs and spices, were imported to the town’s market and purchased by those who could afford such items.39 Even as early as the Middle Ages, in most towns water became polluted as a result of the intermingling of residential premises with occupations such as tanning and brewing. Tanning was a particularly noxious process; the scouring agents used were often animal and human excrement and urine, producing ammonia fumes. Waste after the defleshing process attracted vermin such as rats, and the stagnant liquid in the pits gave off vapours that enticed flies. Added to this, the practice of washing hides in the nearest burn or river to remove excrement and blood contaminated the water supply.40 ‘Even a tinker would not deign to drown his dog in it’41 – such was the damning comment on Glasgow’s water supply. The Molendinar Burn, in particular, was polluted by the tanners and fullers. Glasgow was not alone. The normal drink for the poorer members of society, including children, was therefore ale. It is quite possible, however, that many homes had water butts for the collection of clean rainwater, which could be safely drunk instead of ale. The wealthier classes favoured imported wine and, by the fifteenth century, beer.42 This was basically an adequately balanced diet, although variable according to the season. A poor harvest as a result of bad weather could bring disaster. As early as 1154 the Chronicle of Holyrood detailed ‘a very great famine and pestilence amongst animals’; a little over a hundred years later, in 1256, according to the Chronicle of Lanercost, famine struck again due to ‘a great corruption of the air and inundation of rain’. This was a pattern that would be repeated regularly and would seem to increase in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although this evidence may be the result of better records.43 For the majority of townspeople, clothing was simple and designed for warmth. Most clothes were made of wool and sewn into tunics. Men also wore hose and breeks and women gowns, petticoats and aprons. On their heads women had kerchiefs and men hoods or bonnets. Coarse linen cloth and fustian were also used for clothes, probably for warmer weather. Shoes were made of

58   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 2.8  A medieval leather shoe.

Figure 2.9  The sole of a shoe with pointed toe – a medieval ‘winkle-picker’ – from Horse Cross Wynd, Perth.

leather, and they survive in large number (see Fig. 2.8). They were valuable items and the archaeological evidence shows that they were often patched to prolong their lives. They were usually of turnshoe construction, being made inside out and then turned so that the grain was on the outside. The soles of some shoes reveal an early predilection for ‘winkle-pickers’ (see Fig. 2.9). For wet weather the townsperson might add wooden pattens, which raised the walker above the dirt and mud. Men’s jaks, or jackets, could also be made of leather as were armour, waterproof clothing, belts and fastenings. Fastenings were sometimes elaborate, made of intricate design and cast in copper or other metals (see Fig. 2.10). Luxury imported materials, such as furs, velvets, silks, taffetas and cloth of gold, along with silver belts and crosses, and gold rings  adorned  with rubies, garnets and sapphires, were solely for the very wealthy.44

Daily Life in the Middle Ages   59

Figure 2.10  An elaborate medieval buckle, from Kirkgate, Perth.

The role of women was theoretically one of subservience to male domination. Their main, but not sole, preoccupation was in the home and its attached land and the market, ensuring adequate food and clothing supplies for the family. Married women were specifically banned from using their husband’s money, apart from necessary purchases for the household.45 Spinning and weaving within the home could, however, supplement the family income. Women are found in the records running taverns and brewing ale;46 almost 25 per cent of the gild laws of Berwick regarding marketing were concerned with brewing and most assumed that brewers were female.47 There were variations in each town; in Peebles more women than men were bakers and market stalls could be manned by women, so releasing men for other occupations.48 Outwith the home, there is ample evidence of wives and widows substituting for their husbands in such positions as factors, ship owners and customs tax collectors, in spite of the cultural norms that set demarcations between typically male and female work.49 In Aberdeen, porters – the forerunners of the shore porters – not only employed women as well as men but even paid them the same wage: a sure comment on the women’s strength and stamina!50 Women held no place, however, within the higher echelons of the burgh hierarchy. Rarely did they enter the gild merchant,51 although at times they might be admitted as burgesses, the normal route being inheritance if a male heir was lacking. But within the ranks of burgesses, the holding of office was not an option for a woman. In 1507, Margaret Gilcrist of Dunfermline inherited burgess-ship but it was, significantly, stipulated that should her brother return from his travels elsewhere, she was to forgo this right. She would, however, be given the opportunity to buy herself a place on the burgess roll.52 A woman was entitled to pass on

60   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

the right to burgess-ship to a son or, if widowed, to a new husband.53 As a widow she was able to marry whom she chose and, if she brought property and possessions from a previous marriage, she became a desirable candidate for remarriage, as did heiresses and those with large dowries. A woman could thus enhance her own potential for social mobility within burgh society.54 It had been laid down as early as the ‘Leges Burgorum’ that a man might speak on behalf of his wife in a court of law;55 once married a woman was theoretically considered to have no legal persona. Her moveable property, including rentals of heritable property, annuities and interest on loans of money passed to her husband.56 She retained only her paraphernalia57 and peculium.58 The respective roles of a husband and wife is clearly evidenced throughout burgh records: a woman’s appearance in court might necessitate the ‘consent’ of the husband. There are, however, signs that the courts were aware of a woman’s vulnerability. Women appearing in court, usually at the resignation of land held in conjunct infeftment, were asked to assert that they were not ‘compellit and strenyeit be aw na dredour’ of their husbands, and often this affirmation was given after the husband had left the courtroom so that the woman was free to speak openly. There were occasionally attempts to reverse a decision if it was claimed that a wife had been ‘in awe of, or frightened by’ her husband.59 By the fifteenth century, however, women are recorded as being in burgh courts and using to their advantage a technically disadvantageous legal system,60 as well as adopting roles normally considered to be the masculine preserve.61 But the male domination of burgh administration had not yet been breached.62 Marriage brought women protection. Even if the husband had children by a previous marriage, the wife’s rights to property were usually protected throughout her lifetime and only on her death could his heirs lay claim to the inheritance.63 It was quite specifically stated in Aberdeen that the daughter of a first marriage should inherit before the son of a second.64 Where two sisters inherited in Dunfermline, property was divided equally, but the older was given the choice of which half she took.65 A husband on marriage inherited all the wife’s pre-marital debts, and was liable for her first husband’s funeral expenses and support of any of her illegitimate children.66 In the final resort, a woman’s actual position, particularly within her own household where she may have had authority over a number of servants, might well have been stronger than her legal position would suggest.67

III.  Health of the townspeople There is much in both documentary and archaeological records to suggest that attempts were made to counteract dirt in the medieval home. In wealthier houses the washing of kitchen utensils and personal hygiene were more prevalent than among the poorer members of society. Domestic assistance and articles such as aquamaniles are clear indication of this. But even in less fortunate ­households

Daily Life in the Middle Ages   61

there is firm evidence of attempts to keep clean. Analyses of floor surfaces in Perth suggest that efforts were made to counteract contamination from filth outside: it appears that some interior floors were deliberately raised above the level of the adjacent midden or path to aid drainage and assist a measure of cleanliness. Wattle rafts were also placed in the latrine area to compensate for sogginess, and in some homes closets were furnished with wooden seats and moss was used as lavatory paper (see Fig. 2.11).68 Those living in houses with straw as flooring could change the soiled straw; it seems that many did just that. The documentary sources give evidence of culverting and drainage, often initiated by the town council in attempts to remove effluence.69 Acts were passed to keep public wells and water untainted; midden piles were removed from the highways and placed in backlands and, if in a riverside or coastal town, filth was deposited in the river or sea. There may, on occasion, have been official cleaners appointed, rather like the rakers of London.70 Cobbling of streets and vennels also helped to prevent thoroughfares becoming soggy mires in wet weather. The need for consistent repetition of these sanitary rulings, however, suggests that they were often ignored. Cleanliness was, however, an uphill struggle. The slaughtering of animals on the main thoroughfare, the siting of middens – illegally – on the main streets, the intermingling of craft workshops and domestic properties all added to squalor. And even those middens placed correctly in the backlands were often too close to wells where contamination between these wattle-lined pits was inevitable. In most households cooking and eating utensils were probably inadequately cleaned; and the storage of food in wooden barrels and the use of cracked wooden plates was potentially dangerously unhygienic. Eating and cooking food with dirty hands added to the problem. Small children and the unborn were particularly vulnerable. From conception, existence was precarious. Many died before birth, as has been shown from foetal and ­perinatal Figure 2.11  A medieval latrine seat, from Kirk Close, Perth.

62   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

burials, the result of archaeological research at Linlithgow and elsewhere.71 Of those that were born alive, only a small proportion lived to the age of eighteen, the vast majority dying in infancy. Studies of enamel on the crowns of teeth have given an insight into infant health. Disturbance in the development of enamel in the first year of life was slight. It has been suggested that this lack of evidence results from very early infant death, the deficiencies inherited from the mother that promoted enamel defects being one of the factors that could prove lethal to a very young child in the Middle Ages. The majority of defects occurred at around eleven months, roughly the time at which a child was weaned, so youngsters were losing the immunities gained from the mother’s milk at the very stage that they were becoming mobile and able to investigate midden heaps and other unsavoury corners.72 This high mortality rate was most likely attributable to respiratory infections and gastroenteritis in an age when no antibiotics were available to fight infection. The harshness of life is highlighted in skeletal remains in Aberdeen. Male heights averaged five feet five inches and a little over (1.65–1.70 metres) and females’ between five feet one inch and five feet three inches (1.55–1.60 metres). Women’s stature is a little nearer to the current norm and may be a reflection that the female infant was not as susceptible to illness as the male child. All children faced health risks and only the tough or very lucky survived. Harris lines, or growth lines, on children’s bones reveal the number of times any one child sustained malnutrition, trauma or disease. Some argue that the marks show the arrestment of growth, others that it indicates the recovery time and rapid growth after a period of arrestment. Either way, these lines confirm the harshness of life for medieval children. Women suffered horrendously during the childbearing stage of their lives. With multiple and difficult births, and related obstetric problems, a woman was at her most vulnerable. One sample survey in Aberdeen suggests that as few as one-third of women survived this crucial stage of their lives.73 Adults who did live to middle or old age were probably those who had developed immunities to the epidemic diseases that were rife. Given the harshness of life, it is probably not surprising that middle age was considered to be the mid- to late thirties and forty-five was thought of as a ripe old age. Certain diseases were rife in the medieval town. Some were endemic and chronic. Leprosy was common throughout western Europe and knowledge of the disease was such that isolation was accepted, so many towns had a leper house sited outside the urban settlement. Glasgow’s was on the south side of the Clyde on the opposite bank to the main population; Aberdeen’s was placed midway on the route between Old Aberdeen and New Aberdeen – Spitalhill – at a safe ­distance away from the townsfolk (see Fig. 2.12). Edinburgh’s was outside the town to the north-east near to the Trinity College, now gone to make way for Waverley Station; and the lepers of Musselburgh were isolated west of Fisherrow at the hospital of St Mary Magdalene, well away from the healthy.74 The leper

Daily Life in the Middle Ages   63

Figure 2.12  A Description of New and Old Aberdeen, 1661 (detail), James Gordon of Rothiemay: Aberdeen’s leper house at a safe distance from the town.

64   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

house at Linlithgow was probably also dedicated to Mary Magdalene and being to the east of the town was considered adequately remote.75 The diagnosis of leprosy was indicative of many of the medieval problems of dealing with health. Decisions were often left to the burgh authorities, probably well-intentioned but rarely medical experts. They had the power to adjudicate on a number of matters, such as whether an heiress was a virgin or whether a bad case of acne was indeed leprosy. If these amateurs decided that leprosy was present the victim entered a living death. It is possible that Scotland followed a similar practice to that of the Scandinavian countries, where the sufferer was placed in front of an altar at the parish church, then covered with a mort cloth and declared dead to the living world.76 From that time the condemned had to live apart with other lepers, coming into the town in only small representative numbers to collect food supplies, waving their clappers and bells to alert the healthy of their presence and always keeping downwind of their more fortunate brethren. Disfiguration, pain, the loss of fingers and toes, and the twisting of limbs must have added to the sense of isolation and hopelessness. Whether leprous or not, they were condemned for ever to live apart from husband, wife, parents or children, and after death were buried well away from the able-bodied. Horrific as it was, more greatly feared than leprosy was plague or pestilence (‘pest’). Plague first hit Scotland seriously in 1349–50 and it came back at regular intervals until the last great epidemic in the 1640s. The fourteenth-century cartulary of the monastery of Kelso includes a translation in the Scots dialect of Sir John de Mandeville’s account of plague as ‘Ane Tretyse Agayne the Pestilens’, showing clearly how much it was dreaded.77 Recent research has shown that the sections of society more likely to succumb to infection were the poor and those in weak health. The fourteenth century brought the onset of cold, stormy weather and 1315 saw the beginning of intense wet summers. Famine followed, and the poorest and landless were the most likely to die. By 1348 the weather and human movement brought plague to Britain’s shores. Excavations at the East Smithfield burial pit in London suggest that many of the plague victims were aged thirty or over, that is, they were children during the famine years. Their deprivations in childhood, evidenced in their teeth, left a lasting impact on their health; they were victims in waiting. The unsettled debate and disagreement as to the exact nature of this ­fourteenth-century affliction, later called the Black Death, continues amongst historians, biologists and demographers.78 There is near-consensus that plague was in fact several diseases, the bubonic form being the most common.79 ‘Pest’, so-called in the documentary sources, due to lack of medical knowledge may have been many other illnesses, such as typhus, which hit when communities were in poor health, for example after a period of famine.80 Bubonic plague is fairly easy to identify in the written record as it hit in sudden virulent epidemics and was accompanied by swellings – ‘buboes’ – in the lymphatic glands with

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fever, headaches and vomiting. Eruptions of the skin might also break out – blisters, carbuncles and large spots in lurid colours from orange to black. For those mortally infected, excruciating pain gave way to coma and death. Some estimate that between 60 and 80 per cent of those infected died; few lasted over a month and half of the deaths occurred within eight days.81 Bubonic plague was kept alive by rodents, the most likely carrier being the black rat, Rattus rattus, a grain-eating animal, which preferred indoor to outdoor living, in close proximity to people in houses, granaries, mills and barns. With predominantly wooden housing, which could be easily gnawed, soiled straw on the floors and a generally poor level of hygiene, the vermin had ideal conditions in which to flourish. The rodent usually carried fleas which gorged on the blood of rats. Once the rats began to die in a particular house or village, the fleas, in desperate hunger, would turn on other animal hosts, including human beings, and so the disease was transferred.82 Pneumonic plague was another variant. The damp climate prevalent in parts of Scotland encouraged this strain. It could manifest itself as a secondary variety to the bubonic strain or be a primary disease in its own right. This form of plague was highly infectious, spreading as it did in Flügge droplets – moisture on the breath. It could travel two metres just through talking and up to three or four metres through sneezing or coughing.83 Death came rapidly. Some say that this is parodied in the centuries-old nursery rhyme ‘Ring, a ring o’ roses’; others dismiss the notion, insisting that the rhyme was first heard only as recently as 1881 in the recording of an American song. Septicaemic plague might also strike when the infested flea bit directly into a human vein, so injecting the plague bacteria directly into the bloodstream. This type would skip the buboes stage of infection. The inevitable lack of comment on buboes makes the presence of septicaemic plague difficult to detect in the documentary sources; it may have been more prevalent than has been thought. It was almost always fatal.84 Whatever disagreements there might be as to the true nature of the Black Death, there is consensus that it brought both social and demographic upheaval. All towns took strict measures to keep this dreaded disease at bay. The records are littered with details of the precautions taken. Burgh gates were closed and strangers were excluded. Possibly among the most vulnerable points were sea ports which might refuse harbour entry to foreign ships.85 Official legislation specifically banned attendance at busy markets and fairs in an attempt to control the spread of plague: in 1584 none was to go to ‘cryit fairis and mercattis’, especially the fairs of ‘Crief’ [sic], ‘Foullis’, Dunbar, Haddington, Ayr, Dunning, Leslie, St Andrews and others.86 Escape was a possibility for only the most privileged. Dalkeith Castle was considered a safe refuge for James V (1513–42) and his court when the threat of plague forced them out of Edinburgh in September 1519. The influx of so many of the royal household – probably more than 400 – into a small

66   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

burgh must have had a disruptive effect and probably did little to please the townspeople: restrictions were in place and some houses were shut up for fear of any harm coming to the king.87 Towards the end of the Middle Ages increasing travel to new destinations brought contact with other types of bacteria and viruses, many of which may be concealed in the records as ‘pest’. One such disease to hit Scotland in epidemic proportions by the 1490s was syphilis. In spite of claims that Columbus and his fellow travellers imported it from the Americas, venereal disease was already known. Early, apparently syphilitic bones had been found in Europe but diagnosis was unclear. More evidence is now emerging that syphilis was known two centuries before Columbus’s adventures. One of the more recent excavations at St Mary Spital in London confirmed the presence of syphilis in the thirteenth century by radio-carbon dating and coins and objects associated with the skeletons.88 Aberdeen burgh records reveal that on 24 April 1497 the ‘gore’ or ‘grangore’, as syphilis was then called, had become a major problem. Three days later the authorities decided they had a solution, albeit a somewhat misogynistic one. To rid the town of these ‘infirmities coming out of France and strange places’, all ‘light’ women were to desist from their sins, their booths and houses were to be destroyed and they were to find more gainful employment. Disobedience would result in branding on the cheek and banishment from the town.89 An outbreak in Edinburgh was serious enough for James IV to order that all those suffering from syphilis should be banished to the island of Inchkeith in the Forth.90 By the following year, such was the disease’s virulence that Linlithgow, Stirling and Glasgow had all been hit.91 These were the more dramatic of medieval diseases. There were many other afflictions affecting the quality of life, some of them still prevalent today. Cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, amoebic dysentery, osteoporosis, spina bifida with its related problems such as hydrocephale, and arthritic conditions were all commonplace.92 The excavated spine of a child who had suffered from tuberculosis is a harsh reminder of the dangers of ill-health in mediFigure 2.13  Spine of a child with healed eval times: the child was probably paralysed from tuberculosis; the child was probably paralysed the waist down due to damage to the spinal cord (see from the waist down as a result of damage to Fig. 2.13). Whether a thoughtful relative fabricated a the spinal column.

Daily Life in the Middle Ages   67

t­ rolley-type vehicle on which the child might pull itself along, or whether it was confined to a lonely, unstimulating existence at home is unknown. Caries, gingivitis and other dental problems have been evidenced from numerous skeletal remains. Added to this, medieval people were host to a number of parasites. Fleas and ticks were commonplace. More debilitating and nauseous were flukeworm, ringworm and parasitic worms, often passed on from animals. Two of these parasites, both roundworms, were Thichuris thichiura and  Ascaris  lumbricoides, both still in existence but no longer as virulent as in the Middle Ages. They developed in the small intestine and then travelled throughout the body, burying into the liver, heart, lungs and trachea.93 Apart from immediate discomfort, any parasitic infection reduced resistance to other illnesses, even something as slight as the common cold. Provision of care for the sick was minimal. Small ‘hospitals’, sometimes called maisons dieu, did exist but these were more in the nature of almshouses or retirement homes, usually for only the privileged few. An almshouse founded in Peebles in 1464 probably sums up the medieval attitude. Its purpose was ‘tyl harbry in it pur foulk for saull heile’.94 Spiritual healing was as important, if not more so, than physical attention. Many towns had friaries on their outskirts (see p. 24) and it is quite possible that they offered advice and medication to the sick, the main function of the mendicant orders being to minister to the urban poor. Medicine was probably not taught in Scottish universities until the appointment in around 1505 of James Cumming at King’s College, Aberdeen, on a salary of £12 6s. He also moonlighted as the town’s physician but little of his knowledge would percolate down to the townspeople.95 Self-help was essential. Archaeological evidence has shown the types of medication used. Seeds of the opium poppy suggest that it was used as a sedative. Figs were imported and probably served as a purgative. Hyoscyamus niger (henbane) which induced sleep and, if taken in large quantities, hallucinations, and Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), a muscle relaxant, were probably cultivated. Other species of plants could be collected from the countryside for their curative properties. Hemp, flax, witch hazel, mushrooms and many other wild plants could provide relief from pain and discomfort. Poppyhead tea may also have been given to children when teething.96 Gradually, over time, improved knowledge and natural resistance alleviated some of the trauma of illness, but many medieval diseases lingered on into the seventeenth century and beyond.

IV.  Relaxation Poorer members of society had little routine time for leisure, with a working day that began with the end of curfew in the morning, at 5 a.m. in summer and 6 a.m. in winter, and did not finish until darkness descended. But the harshness of life could be alleviated: drinking, storytelling and gossiping were probably

68   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

welcome diversions on a dark night. The practising of archery at the bow butts and the annual display of the town’s weapons (the wappinschaw), when all burgesses proved their readiness to defend their burgh in times of attack, could also be pleasing distractions from the working routine. 97 The real times for fun and laughter came on the many saints’ days that proliferated throughout the ecclesiastical calendar. Tableaux portraying biblical scenes accompanied the religious processions. These were intended to educate but were often the occasion for mockery and buffoonery. Accompanying the spectacles were strolling companies of players who travelled around the country adding to the festivities with tumblers, jesters, minstrels, drummers and pipers. Hunting, although technically forbidden to the average townsman, was clandestinely pursued; and we know that hawking, bowls, pennystanes and cardplaying were all features of medieval town life,98 with forms of golf and football played by, at the latest, the sixteenth century. Archaeological evidence has shown that bone counters and dice were a favourite and chessmen (see Fig. 2.14) have been discovered. In winter, the fit could enjoy ice-skating with skates made from the metatarsal of a horse. Others might prefer sledging on ice, by pushing the sledge along with a stout pole. Children had little toys such as pottery or wooden dolls and animals. All ages could enjoy the visits of travelling jesters, tumblers, pipers (see Fig. 2.3), drummers, minstrels and actors.99 The more privileged members of burgh society could make routine or even serious events more light-hearted and even occasions of fun. The regular business of the gild merchant of Dunfermline was sustained by alcoholic refreshments and eating on a large scale. Although ale might be considered

Figure 2.14  Stone discs, probably used as gaming counters, Horse Cross, Perth.

Daily Life in the Middle Ages   69

as merely an everyday drink, the quantities consumed while on duty went beyond ­necessary sustenance. The accounts for 1443 in the Gild Court Book, for example, show that nearly three-quarters of gild expenses for the year were apportioned to alcoholic drinks. By the end of the century an annual gild feast was the norm. In 1503, the necessities were enumerated: heating for the gild house was purchased for 6d; an essential at a feast was food – 18d; and to wash this down wine was purchased for 14d, ale for 3s and a barrel of beer for 30s.100 Priorities were obvious. The greater the social standing, the more likelihood there was of relaxing diversions. It is thought, however, that some local people may have participated in the Christmas revelries at Linlithgow Palace, when an Abbot of Unreason (see below) was appointed to lead the jollifications during ‘daft days’. On these and other occasions play-acting was favoured: ‘Patrik Johnson and the playaris of Lythgow’ were often summoned to the royal presence. James Robesoune, a burgess of Linlithgow, received payment in 1531 for entertaining the king.101 ‘Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estatis’ by Sir David Lindsay had its opening night in Linlithgow on 6 January 1540, but there is no question of ordinary townspeople being included in such proceedings although they might have enjoyed occasional glimpses of the royal menagerie kept at the palace. Highlights for many towns were the May revels. Traditionally, an ‘Abbot of Unreason’ took charge and the conventional order and rule of burgh society was turned upside down, with the lower orders supposedly taking control. The abbot appears in town records with varying titles: in Edinburgh he was the ‘Abbot of Narent’, ‘Abbat de na Rent’ or ‘Lord of Inobedience’; in Inverness he was the ‘Abbot of Unreason’ or the ‘Lord Abbot’; in Arbroath ‘ My Lord of Rason’; in Elgin ‘My Lord Abbot’; in Alloway, Arbuthnot, Fintray and Haddington the ‘Lord of Unreason’; and in Aberdeen, the ‘Abbot and Prior of Bonaccord’, ‘Lords of Bonaccord’ or ‘Domini Bonecordie (bonaconcardie)’, ‘Abbot and Prior of Concord’ in 1507 and ‘Abbotis out of Ressoun’ in 1528.102 It is clear that, by the fifteenth century, the cult of Robin Hood had become intermingled with the May Games. Both Robin Hood and the abbot were lords of the May Games by the sixteenth century and it is possible that the role of Robin Hood developed from that of the abbot. Contemporary records suggest that the two might be interchangeable. In Aberdeen, the council minutes of 17 November 1508 specifically state that ‘Robert Huyd and Litile Johne’ were in years past called ‘Abbot and priour of Bonaccord’, although the town soon reverted to the ‘Abbot and Prior’ in their celebrations.103 In Dumfries, Robin Hood and Little John were appointed at Easter, so the May Games must have been one of their first commitments.104 Closely tied to the performance was the ancient cult of bringing in summer. The wearing of green seems to have survived, at least in Aberdeen, into the sixteenth century.105 The cult association of archery with the practice of shooting at

70   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

the butts would have had a great appeal in towns. In Ayr the records suggest that guns and cannons also featured: 4s 6d was set aside for the buying of ‘powder’ in the treasurer’s accounts of 1553–4.106 Collecting greenery, cross-dressing, ­visiting healing wells and lighting bonfires all heralded the approach of summer and probably became associated with the Robin Hood rituals.107 Dancing and plays, music-making and minstrels were also associated with the Lord of Misrule.108 The Robin Hood celebrations in Dumbarton in 1547 seem to have been linked to minstrels.109 Doubtless drinking, rowdiness and horseplay accompanied the festivities. Interestingly, this period of upturned order was probably no such thing, for a close examination of the records shows that this occasion of misrule, whether led by the abbot or Robin Hood, had the backing of the burgh authorities. In Aberdeen and Haddington, the towns paid the abbots to fulfil their duties, and in Aberdeen there were precise instructions that their roles should suit the satisfaction of the town council.110 In Dunfermline and Edinburgh, the respective gilds merchant gave support to Robin Hood, as did the burgh council in Peebles. In Ayr, the records suggest that the payments of Robin Hood and Little John were the responsibility of the town’s treasurer and the gild merchant. In burghs where records have survived it becomes clear that functioning as Robin Hood was tantamount to a burgh ‘office’, bringing free burgess-ship, entrance to the gild merchant, remission of taxes or a lump sum.111 The choice of man to lead the common people is also equally telling. In Ayr it became the practice for the town treasurers to take the part of Robin Hood and Little John.112 At Dunfermline, the role of Robin Hood was sometimes filled by a member of the local gentry family – the Halketts of Pitfirrane.113 In 1518, the role of Little John in Edinburgh ‘for to mak sports and jocosities’ was even offered to Master Francis Bothwell, bailie in 1516, prominent within the burgh hierarchy and provost by1524. His plea of non-acceptance was reinforced at a town council meeting with a letter of dispensation from none less than the Earl of Arran.114 All of this suggests that, although good fun for the ordinary townspeople, the role of Robin Hood was controlled by the burgh authorities. The seeming days of ‘unrest’ were orchestrated and unrest was carefully controlled in a society which believed that the ‘best and wisest’, that is the wealthiest, should rule for the benefit of all.115 The May revels may have served to release tension within  burgh  society but they were carefully monitored by those who held power.

Notes

1. Roxburgh’s and Perth’s gilds date to pre-1189x1202; Aberdeen 1222; Stirling 1226; Elgin 1224; Ayr 1325; Dunfermline pre-1365x1399; Irvine 1372. E. P. Dennison,

Daily Life in the Middle Ages   71

2. 3.



4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

‘Burghs with gilds merchant by 1550’, in P. G. B. McNeill and H. L. Macqueen (eds), Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 (Edinburgh, 1996). See, for example, M. L. Stavert (ed.), The Perth Guildry Book, 1552­–1601 (SRS, 1993), passim. M. Lynch, ‘The social and economic structure of the larger towns, 1450–1600’, in M. Lynch, M. Spearman and G. Stell (eds), The Scottish Medieval Town (Edinburgh, 1988), 268. McNeill and MacQueen, Atlas, 250–60. TA, ii, 278, 279; iv, 97, 458. NRS, MS Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, fo. 11r. DBHCB, 14 January 1521/2; A. Maxwell, Old Dundee, Ecclesiastical, Burghal and Social, prior to the Reformation (Dundee, 1891), 220. DBHCB, 8 August 1521, 9 April 1522, 7 October 1550, 15 October 1551. Stirling Recs, 12; Dunf. Recs, 102; Edin. Recs, i, 12. Dunf. Recs, 7, 4, 86, 101, 104, for example; MS Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, fo. 14v; Peebles Chrs, 11. DBHCB, 4 October 1521. Edin. Recs, i, 53; Dunf. Recs, 104, 129. I. F. Grant, The Social and Economic Development of Scotland Before 1603 (London, 1930), 400. McNeill and MacQueen, Atlas, 238–40, 261–2, 264–5. RPC, xi, 428. This refers to the fair in 1618 but the location had probably changed little since the Middle Ages. According to a fragment of the last will and testament of Gibbie Hatley of Gattonside, dated 1547, the Scare Thursday Fair was already in existence in his time. It has traditionally been accepted locally as an ‘ancient’ fair. I am indebted to Mr T. Little of Melrose for showing me the transcript of this will and testament; F. H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: a Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, 6 vols (Edinburgh, 1882–5), v, 23; E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Melrose: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1998), 36. See E. P. Dennison, ‘The occupational structure of towns, c. 1100–1700’, in M. A. Mulhern, J. Beech and E. Thompson (eds), Scottish Life and Society, vol. 7 The Working Life of the Scots (Edinburgh, 2008), 15–17. TA, ii, 36; iii, 151, 197. TA, v, 427. A. Barty, The History of Dunblane (Stirling, 1944), 39. TA, iv, 446, 515. RPC, ix, 182–3. D. Ditchburn, ‘Towns and trade in Middle Britain’ (forthcoming), passim. D. Ditchburn, ‘Saints and silver: Scotland and Europe in the age of Alexander II’, in R. Oram (ed.), The Reign of Alexander II, 1214–49 (Leiden, 2005), 200.

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25. Calendar of the Justiciary Rolls or Proceedings in the Court of the Justiciar of Ireland, ed. J. Mills (Dublin, 1905–56), iii, 226–7. I am greatly indebted to Dr David Ditchburn for this reference, and for advice on Scotland’s overseas trade. 26. Dunf. Reg. no. 323; Registrum Sancti Marie de Neubotle, ed. C. Innes (Bannatyne Club, 1849), no. 66. 27. DBHCB, 13 Apr. 1521, 4 Feb. 1557, 28 Feb. 1521, 28 Oct. 1521. 28. P. Holdsworth (ed.), Excavations in the Medieval Burgh of Perth, 1979–81 (Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1987), 45. 29. For example, DBHCB, 4 June 1521, 13 July 1552, 19 Oct. 1554, 22 Dec. 1556; 13 July 1552; 4 Feb. 1557; Dunf. Recs, 64, 70, 84, 113, 114, 123, 134, 163. 30. Dunf. Recs, 120. 31. DBHCB, 4 Feb. 1557, 20 Nov. 1566, 13 July 1552; 4 Feb. 1557; Dunf. Recs, 103. 32. Holyrood Archaeology Project Team (eds), Scotland’s Parliament Site and the Canongate: Archaeology and History (Society of Antiquaries, 2008), 21. 33. Dunf. Recs, 44, 61, 84, 110, 120, 123, 163. 34. A. Fenton, Scottish Country Life (East Linton, 1999), 98–9, 104–6, 168, 176; M. Carver and J. Klapste (eds), The Archaeology of Medieval Europe (Aarhus, 2011), ii, 119. 35. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Linlithgow: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2000), 69. 36. A. S. Cameron and J. A. Stones (eds), Aberdeen: an In-depth View of the City’s Past (Society of Antiquaries, 2001), 107, 272. 37. Ibid., 273. 38. For example, Protocol Book of James Young, 1485–1515, ed. G. Donaldson (Scottish Record Society, 1952), no. 72. 39. Cameron and Stones, Aberdeen, 286, 65, 93, 292; Holdsworth, Excavations in the Medieval Burgh of Perth, 200–1. 40. Cameron and Stones, Aberdeen, 112. 41. MS Guild Court Records, Glasgow, 1507. 42. Ale was a beverage made from an infusion of malt, where the yeast fermented at the top of the liquid. It was simply and readily made at home, hence its popularity as an alternative to water. An important source of nutrition, it contained just enough alcohol to act as a preservative. It provided hydration without an intoxicating effect and was therefore suitable for children. Beer, likewise, was made by fermentation, often from malted barley flavoured with hops, in which the yeast settled at the bottom of the liquid to form an alcoholic beverage. It became increasingly the product of an industrialised process. 43. E. P. Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate: a Thousand Years of History (Edinburgh, 2005), 19; Liber Cartarum Sancte Crucis (Bannatyne Club, 1840), anno 1154; Chronicon de Lanercost, (Maitland Club, 1839), anno 1256. 44. The Compt Book of David Wedderburne, Merchant of Dundee, 1587–1630, ed. A. H. Millar (SHS, 1898), passim; The Ledger of Andrew Halyburton, 1492–1503,

Daily Life in the Middle Ages   73

45. 46.

47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

ed. C. Innes (Edinburgh, 1867), lxiii, cxiii, 328; DBHCB, 29 April 1521, 29 March 1522, 29 July 1523, 4 August 1523, 6 March 1550, 27 October 1556. For a fuller discussion of imported cloths, see D. Ditchburn, Scotland and Europe, the Medieval Kingdom and its Contacts with Christendom, 1214–1560 (East Linton, 2001), i, 181–3. ‘Leges Burgorum’, c. 118. N. Mayhew, ‘The status of women and the brewing of ale in medieval Aberdeen’, ROSC, 10 (1996–7), 16–21; T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, 1560–1830 (Edinburgh, 1969), 165. E. Ewan, ‘“For whatever ales ye”: women as consumers and producers in late medieval Scottish towns’, in E. Ewan and M. M. Meikle (eds), Women in Scotland, c.1000–c.1750 (East Linton, 1999), 125; ‘Statute Gilde’, in Ancient Burgh Laws. Peebles Chrs, 147, 150; Dunf. Recs, 59, 66, 81. E. P. Dennison, ‘Women to 1700’, in M. Lynch (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford, 2001), 645. Dennison, ‘The occupational structure of towns’, 17. Women were occasionally admitted to the gild of Edinburgh in the early fifteenth century (Edin. Recs, i, 2); Dickson argues that women were admitted to the Ayr Gild, but this does not seem to be proven. T. Dickson, ‘Proceedings of the gild court of Ayr, from the Ayr manuscript’, Archaeological and Historical Collections Relating to the Counties of Ayr and Wigton (Edinburgh 1878), i, 225. Dunf. Recs, 162. Dunf. Recs, 22, 38, for example. H. Booton, ‘Burgesses and landed men in north-east Scotland in the Late Middle Ages: a study in social interaction’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1987), 52–8. ‘Leges Burgorum’, c. xxxi. G. C. H. Paton, ‘Husband and wife. Property rights and relationships’, Introduction to Scottish Legal History, vol. 20 (Stair Society, 1958), 99–100. This originally referred to a married woman’s property  that was not part of her dowry, such as clothes and jewellery. A gift to the wife if the husband sold part of his lands in which she had an interest as a tercer. Dunf. Recs, 49, 317, 48, for example. E. Ewan, ‘Scottish Portias: women in the courts in mediaeval Scotland’, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 3 (1992), 27–43. J. Finlay, ‘Women and legal representation in early fifteenth-century Scotland’, in Ewan and Meikle, Women in Scotland, 173. This compares perhaps unfavourably with the role of women in rural society; there is evidence of women participating in the election of the clerk of the parish church of Killearn (NRS, GD 86/97, Fraser Charters, 29 August 1531). I am indebted to Dr E. Ewan for drawing this to my attention.

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63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81.

For example, Dunf. Recs, 2. Abdn Recs, 26–7. Dunf. Recs, 282. Paton, ‘Husband and wife’, 101. W. K. Coutts, ‘Social and economic history of the commissariat of Dumfries from 1600 to 1665 as disclosed by the Registers of Testaments’ (unpublished MLitt thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1982), 153. L. Blanchard, ‘The excavated buildings’, in Holdsworth, Excavations in the Medieval Burgh of Perth, 87. DBHCB, 11 July 1521, 24 July 1551, 15 March 1552, 8 April 1552, 23 October 1556, 21 November 1552; Dunf. Recs, 62, 113. Abdn Council, i, 81; ACA, CR, viii, 651; DBHCB, 8 April 1552. J. A. Stones (ed.), Three Scottish Carmelite Friaries: Excavations at Aberdeen, Linlithgow and Perth, 1980–86 (Edinburgh, 1989), 120. Ibid., 134. Some have argued for a weaning time as late as three years old. Ibid., 122. For example, E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Musselburgh: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1996), 24. Dennison and Coleman, Historic Linlithgow, 16. P. Richards, The Medieval Leper (Cambridge, 2000), 68. Liber Sancte Marie de Calchou (Bannatyne Club, 1826), ii, 448, no. 559. There is considerable disagreement as to the exact nature of the Black Death. The notion that medieval plague was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis; the view that septicaemic and pneumonic plague are found in only tropical and Arctic conditions in the twentieth century; the validity of DNA testing in Montpellier showing Yersinia pestis in the fourteenth-century dental pulp of skeletons; anthrax as the etiologic agent; the timing of death; the efficacy of Flügge droplets; and several other issues are still debated. See J. F. D. Shrewsbury, A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1970); G. Twigg, The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal (London, 1984); R. S. Gottfried, The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe (New York, 1983); S. K. Cohn Jr, ‘The Black Death: end of a paradigm’, American Historical Review (June 2002), 703–38; O. Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346–1353: a Complete History (Woodbridge, 2004); and A. Noymer, ‘Contesting the cause and severity of the Black Death: a review essay’, Population and Development Review (September 2007), 616–27. J. M. W. Bean, ‘Plague, population and economic decline in England in the later Middle Ages’, Economic History Review, xv (1963), 423–37. D. Hamilton, The Healers: A History of Medicine in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1982), 9. P. Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1985), 7–8; A. B. Appleby, ‘The disappearance of plague: a continuing puzzle’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 33 (1980), 163–4; M. Flinn (ed.), Scottish Population History from the Seventeenth Century to the 1930s (Cambridge, 1977), 133–4.

Daily Life in the Middle Ages   75

82. Benedictow, Black Death, 12–13; H. H. Scott, A History of Tropical Medicine, 2 vols (London, 1939), ii, 735; Bean, ‘Plague, population and economic decline’, 424; Shrewsbury, History of Bubonic Plague, 1–6. 83. A. B. Fitch, ‘Assumptions about plague in late medieval Scotland’, Scotia, xi (1987), 31–2. This distance is also disputed. 84. Noymer, ‘Review essay’. 85. J. McDonald, Burgh Register and Guide to Dunbar: Descriptive History of the Burgh, Castle and Battle (Haddington, 1897), 4. 86. RPC, iii, 690. 87. J. C. Carrick, Around Dalkeith and Camp Meg (Leicester, 1984), 11–13; ADCP, 147. 88. The Times, 25 October 2010. 89. Abdn Council, 177; ACA, MS Council Register, vii, 797. The affliction has been ­variously described as the ‘French’, ‘Spanish’ or ‘Italian’ disease. 90. Edin. Recs, i, 71–2. 91. TA, i, 361, 378. 92. C. Platt, The English Medieval Town (London, 1976), 101; J. A. Stones (ed.), A Tale of Two Burghs (Aberdeen, 1987), 36–7. 93. A. K. G. Jones, ‘Parasite remains from Oslogate 7’, in De Arkeologiske Utgravinger (Oslo, 1979); Stones, Tale of Two Burghs, 37. 94. Peebles Recs, i, 151. 95. MS Aberdeen Council Register, viii, 278. D. Ditchburn, ‘Educating the elite. Aberdeen and its universities’, in E. P. Dennison, D. Ditchburn and M. Lynch (eds), Aberdeen before 1800: a New History (East Linton, 2002), 327, 334–5. 96. Holdsworth, Excavations in the Medieval Burgh of Perth, 206–7; J. C. Murray (ed.), Excavations in the Medieval Burgh of Aberdeen, 1973–81 (Edinburgh, 1982), 206–7. 97. DBHCB, 4 April, 1521; Dun. Reg., no. 443. 98. Maxwell, Old Dundee, 387, 388. 99. Stones, Tale of Two Burghs, 32, 34. 100. E. P. Dennison Torrie (ed.), The Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, 1433–1597, fo. 24v. 101. ER, xvi, 61. 102. E. P. Dennison, ‘Robin Hood in Scotland’, in J. Goodare and A. A. MacDonald (eds), Sixteenth-Century Scotland (Leiden, 2008), 173–4; A. J. Mill, Mediaeval Plays in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1927), 21. 103. ACA, MS NRS/1/1/8, Council Register: vol. 8 (4 October 1501 to 13 November 1509), 17; MS NRS 1/1/8, Abdn Council, vol. 8 (22 May 1509), 962. 104. Dumfries and Galloway Libraries, Information and Archives, Dumfries Archive Centre, MS WC4/8, Dumfries Burgh Court Book, 1506–37, fo. 142. 105. Abdn Council, i, 150. 106. Ayr Accts, 120. 107. E. Williamson, ‘Calendar celebrations in early seventeenth-century Scotland’, Cosmos, 16 (2000), 195–205, at 197, 199; MS Selkirk (later Melrose) Presbytery

76   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

108. 109. 110. 111.

112. 113. 114. 115.

Records, fo. 7; NRS, MS Saltoun (later Bolton and Saltoun) Kirk Session Records, fo. 25; Williamson, ‘Calendar celebrations’, 199; Selections from the Records of the Kirk Session, Presbytery and Synod of Aberdeen, ed. J. Stuart (Spalding Club, 1846), 16 (24 April 1574), 47 (4 August 1605) and 61 (3 July 1608); APS, iii, 212. Elgin Recs, 12 May 1549. TA, ix, 73; E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Dumbarton: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1999), 15. Mill, Mediaeval Plays, 24–5, 26. Dennison Torrie, Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, fo. 49; Mill, Mediaeval Plays, 166, 167; Ayr Accts, 84, 100, 111; Dumfries Archive Centre, MS WC4/8, Dumfries Burgh Court Book, fo.188; NRS, MS B58/14/1, Peebles Burgh Records, Account Book, fo. 5; Peebles Chrs, 212; ‘Dunfermline Gild Court Book, 1433–1597: missing folios’ ed. E. P. Dennison, SHS, Miscellany xiii (2004), 45–6, 53; E. Williamson ‘Drama and entertainment in Peebles in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’, Medieval English Theatre, 22 (2002),127–44, at 130, 135; APS, ii, 500; NRS, MS B58/8/3, Peebles Court and Council Book, fo. 3r; DBHCB, fo. 21; Roll of the Edinburgh Burgesses and Gild Brethren, 1406–1700, ed. C. B. B. Watson (SRS, 1929), 16. Mill, Mediaeval Plays, 29. Dunf. Recs, 152, 224; Dennison Torrie, Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, fo. 49. Edin. Recs, i, 176, 163, 212, 219. Dennison, ‘Power to the people?’, 121.

3

Medieval Faith and the Church

U

rban society and the Church were so closely entwined as to be almost inseparable. The Church’s influence dominated the lives of everyone, from birth and baptism through handfasting (an agreement to wed) and marriage, to death and burial. The routine of life, the daily and annual cycles, all revolved around the Church, its teachings and beliefs, its good works and its calendar.

I.  The Church routine Urban life was regulated by the Church. The liturgical cycle timetabled the yearly secular life of the town, with the meetings of the burgh head courts coinciding with Michaelmas, Christmas and Easter (see p. 34). Days for relaxation were determined by the multitude of holy or saints’ days. These were days for veneration of Christ and the saints, with splendid street processions. They afforded an opportunity for the elite to be seen parading through the town in order of status: the provost or alderman nearest to the statue of the saint or holy relic and the clergy, followed by the town hierarchy – burgh council, gild merchant and the crafts, holding their banners aloft, in order of importance. But these occasions were also days of rest from routine: religious processions and plays brought not only the opportunity for reverence but also time for a bit of fun and merrymaking. A list in the Dundee burgh records of pertinents loaned by Edinburgh to Dundee to perform its Corpus Christi procession gives a flavour of what must have been a serious but happy occasion: sixte of crownis, six pair of angel reynis [wings], three myteris, cristis cott [coat] of lethyr with the hoses and glufis, cristis hed, thirtie one suerdis, thre lang corsis of tre [wood], sanc Thomas sper, a cors til sanc blasis, sanc johnis coit, a credil and thre barnis maid of clath, twentie hedis of hayr, the four evengellistis, sanc katernis wheil . . . sanc androwis cros, a saw, a ax, a rassour, a guly [large] knyff, a worm [serpent] of tre, the haly lam of tre, sanc barbaras castel, abraamis hat and thre hedis of hayr.1

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These props would be used to display important sacred scenes: Christ ministering to the people; Adam and Eve and the tempting serpent; St Catherine’s horrendous death on the wheel; and other Biblical events. This, it was thought, would assist the teachings of the Church and the paintings the friars used in their special ministry to the urban poor. The daily routine of work was marked by the sounding of the church bell at dawn; the hard grind ended at curfew, again with the pealing of the bell. The church bell was one of the very few ways that time was monitored accurately: there is little evidence of primitive sundials, and clocks appeared in the later Middle Ages only in the most wealthy of households. One of the earliest cases where time was cited in a burgh court case involved Esabell Bull and Margret Gybsone in 1502. Apart from revealing that the early rising of monks in an abbey necessitated an equally prompt start, during the hours of curfew, for lay workers in the precincts, the case has a greater significance. Margret Gybsone was struck twice by her colleague. At Dunfermline Burgh Court she gave evidence that the first offence took place on Trinity evening and the second on Martinmas eve, while she was working in the abbey bakehouse. More importantly, thanks to the church bell, she was able to specify that the second assault took place between three and four in the morning. She received the handsome compensation of two shillings.2

II.  The parish and its people Unlike English towns and many others in Europe, Scotland’s towns did not have multiple parishes, merely a single parish church. The one anomaly was the establishment of St Maria ad Nives in Old Aberdeen. This had resulted from a supplication to the pope, authorised by James IV, requesting the restructuring of the parish boundaries of Kirkton of Seaton, the parish attached to St Machar Cathedral, and the erection of a new parish of Old Aberdeen. The new parish would exclude the cathedral and chanonry, which would remain within the old parish boundaries, but include the Spital, the main routeway between Old and New Aberdeen, and the nearby market region, the area where William Elphinstone was to establish a university in the 1490s (see Fig. 2.12).3 A single parish embraced all the town dwellers and their worshipping together fostered a sense of community. Many parish churches, however, were sited outside the main urban settlement. St Nicholas Church, New Aberdeen, stood to the west of the medieval core; the parish church of St Mary in Dundee was set originally ‘in the fields’ to the west of the town; the parish church of St Bryce at Kirkcaldy, somewhat apart from settlement, was to the north of the town; Forfar’s parish church was around a mile and a half to the east at Restenneth; Dunbar’s parish church stood south of the town, away from the busy burgh but highly visible on the skyline (see Fig. 3.1); Kilsyth’s parish church of Monyabroch

Medieval Faith and the Church   79

Figure 3.1   Dunbar’s parish church stands prominently on the skyline, at a distance from settlement (Dunbar, Haddingtonshire, 1822, William Daniell). ‘Cromwell Harbour’.

was to the south of where the town developed; and Kirkintilloch’s twelfth-­ century parish church was outwith the town. There were a number of reasons for this ‘apartness’: St Nicholas of Aberdeen may have been carved out of the older parish of Old Aberdeen and St Mary’s of Dundee was deliberately founded on a greenfield site, set apart from the old St Clement’s Church beside the castle in the town, supposedly as thanks for the safe return of David, earl of Huntingdon, from the Holy Lands; St Bryce’s Church, Kirkcaldy, was placed away from the main focus of the town, probably because of the geological nature of the terrain – the raised beach that initially curbed built development (see pp. 21–3). The main determining factor was that the parish system was mostly established before burghs were founded. It was only later that many of these churches came to be absorbed within urban settlement as towns expanded. Conversely, the dominance of a town over a sometimes extensive geographical region (see p. 14) was enhanced wherever urban parishes extended beyond the burgh limits and covered a wide rural area. Dunfermline, with a parish stretching twenty square miles, Hamilton with twenty-five square miles, Melrose with thirty-five square miles and Haddington with thirty-six square miles accommodated 8,552, 3,815, 2,332 and 3,975 parishioners respectively, according to a 1755 census.4 Not only would such an extensive landward parish play a major

80   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

role in the urban balance of power over its hinterland but it drew even more tightly the close links between town and country. A number of parishes, however, were merely co-extensive with the burgh. This was the case with Pittenweem, Anstruther Wester and Anstruther Easter. Their parishioners numbered only 385, 1,100 and 939 respectively in 1755.5 The church had a physical impact on the town, with the parish church, monasteries and friaries prominent landmarks, their presence reinforced by the processional displays on saints’ days (see p. 17). There were also intellectual and emotional ties. Education fell within the remit of the church until the sixteenth century, when small lay schools began to open. Friars explained the scriptures to the people through pictures and talking. Most towns had a ‘sang schule’ (song school) and a grammar school. These were open to very few of the townspeople, although there is evidence that a few poor boys entered university after completing their education in the town as paupers and graduated as such; this suggests that they received financial assistance from a benefactor, which in many cases would be the Church.6 Little is known of the song schools, other than that they were maintained by clerics, whose main concern was to raise boys as potential choristers for church services. The purpose of the grammar school was largely to fulfil the Church’s need for educated clerics. This was reflected in a typical curriculum as laid down by Edinburgh town council in 1520: ‘grace buke, prymer and plane donatt’,7 a book containing the graces for before and after meals, a primer to teach the alphabet and rudiments of Latin, and the ‘donat’, a grammar based on the works of the fourth-century Aelius Donatus, which was more popular in Scotland than other classical grammars. By the sixteenth century a number of burgesses were able to read, a skill learned more easily than that of writing. Merchants, particularly those travelling overseas, would have had to be numerate at least and, in many cases, would merely have signed official documents with their merchant marks (see Fig. 3.2). The ability to sign one’s name is a very crude index of a basic level of literacy. But even by the later years of the century, whether learned from the church’s teachings or from a lay school, literacy was at a significantly low level. In 1588, sixty baxters in Dundee were required to sign their names. Twenty-eight achieved what might seem a relatively easy task; the rest needed their hands guided by the notary public. There seems to have been only a little improvement in Dundee over the following years. By 1635, of twenty-five wrights, seventeen were able to sign; sixty years later, in the same trade, out of fourteen men nine needed the assistance of the notary.8 In Dunfermline only 50 per cent of the prestigious gild merchant could sign their names unaided in 1594.9 This suggests, however, that significant progress had been made since 1433, when all those in the town who were literate were to convene as witnesses. The schoolroom was large enough to hold them all so they could not have been numerous.10 In 1493, Catherine Bra witnessed with her signature in the Dunfermline Gild Court Book – one of the earliest examples of a

Medieval Faith and the Church   81

Figure 3.2   Folio 59r of the Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, still in the possession of the Guildry of Dunfermline, contains the merchant marks of six members of the gild and the initials of the notary who guided the hands of four of the six who could not sign unaided. They are subscribing, on 30 November 1559, their receipt of silverware divided amongst themselves in order to protect their precious religious artefacts from the Lords of the Congregation (see p. 90).

82   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

non-aristocratic woman able to sign her name. Her father and, later, her brother both held the position of town clerk, so she came from an educated family and was possibly taught at home.11 Poor literacy levels are confirmed elsewhere. By 1599 in Stirling, ten out of nineteen gild members could not write their names.12 In 1561, all Perth burgesses were required to sign: two members of the town council, three deacons of crafts and a further 215 could not do so. Only forty-nine managed unaided.13 The Church played a crucial role throughout life. Death without baptism would mean an unblessed end to life; stillborn babies, who could not receive the sacrament, were often buried outwith consecrated ground. Handfasting and marriage took place at the church door or within, a priest usually officiating; and annulment was an option open only occasionally to the very well-to-do. For medieval people the belief in life after death was a certainty. It is not possible now to know the attitude to death of the ordinary townsperson; it must have held less fear for those more privileged members of society who could afford to pay for masses, or even establish chaplainries, to reduce the time spent by souls in purgatory. Poverty magnified the prospect of purgatory. For this reason an important element of gild and fraternity life was the foundation of co-operative chaplainries. People who as individuals could not afford to pay for masses to save their own souls combined together to form what were, in effect, funeral clubs. It was the duty of all members of a gild or craft fraternity to assist any of their members through the journey to the afterlife, through attendance at funerals and the support of widows and orphans, as much as it was to support them in their days on earth. There must, however, have been many poor burgesses and indwellers who were exempt from such solace. What cannot be assessed is whether, for them, worldly existence was so intolerable that the afterlife held no threat, or whether the prospect of purgatory was yet another burden in a seemingly hopeless life. Contemporary records make it clear that the townspeople held their parish church in great affection, which was often shown in practical ways. The interior of St Mary’s, Dundee, one of the largest burgh churches in Scotland, was lavishly maintained by the burgesses. The Spalding family, in particular, was noted for its generosity. George Spalding made many donations, including a bell for the tower in 1495.14 Between thirty-six and forty-eight altars lined the walls of the church.15 Some were maintained by the gild merchant, others by individual crafts or by the burgh itself. The Holy Blood Altar was supported by the gild merchant from 1515, as was the practice in several other towns in the east of Scotland, so underlying their trading links with Bruges, where the cult of the Holy Blood was established;16 the altar of St Severus or St Serf was maintained by the weavers; St Duthac’s altar was maintained by the skinners, as was St Cuthbert’s by the baxters and the altar of St Mark by the fullers. Wealthy families supported their own altars: St John’s was supported by the Earls of Crawford; the altars of

Medieval Faith and the Church   83

St Margaret the Virgin and St Thomas the Apostle by the Spalding family; and the altar of St James the Apostle by the Scrymgeour family.17 The town also cared for the church furbishments, such as stone and wood carvings, paintings and rich vestments, bejewelled crosses and candelabra. Rentals were set aside to maintain the church and considerable effort went into ensuring adequate funds for lighting the church candles through the collection of ‘licht sylver’.18 The parish church of St Nicholas in Aberdeen was, like St Mary’s, Dundee, not only one of the largest burgh churches in Scotland but also one of the most prestigious, and by 1540 had achieved collegiate status.19 As in Dundee, there is ample evidence of support from local townspeople in the form of lands or rents, bells, chalices and the like. William Leth donated two bells and Ralph Voket repainted the image of St Nicholas. From the fifteenth century at least, money was raised by the town authorities for the ‘kirk wark’; funds were assigned from the town fishings to pay for choir fittings in 1477; £35 was raised in 1500 for the cost of lead for the church and its transportation from Berwick upon Tweed; and, again, in 1513 a further £74 was donated for improvements to the church fabric.20 Towns, such as St Andrews, Glasgow and Dunfermline, whose churches housed the relics of a saint could benefit financially from the visits of pilgrims. Pilgrimage brought a ready market, particularly for food supplies and accommodation. How far the local townspeople benefited from any inflated prices at these times or, indeed, if they did at all, does not come through the records clearly. The numbers of pilgrims, with one significant exception, also remain elusive. Fashions in pilgrimage fluctuated wildly over the generations. In the reign of James IV (1488–1513), who was something of a pilgrim enthusiast, the shrine of Our Lady of the Hamer at Whitekirk in East Lothian, founded in the late thirteenth century, gained renewed popularity. Yet, a century earlier, in 1413, more than 15,000 pilgrims were recorded as visiting it. By the 1520s, the ‘thre hede pilgrimages’ of Scotland were firmly established as Tain and Whithorn, both regular haunts of James IV, and St Andrews.21 It seems indisputable that St Andrews was the most popular of the three, both for native Scots and for foreigners, especially from England and Flanders. Piety was not the only inducement for pilgrims. The courts of Flemish cities used pilgrimage as a penalty for criminal offences; St Andrews appeared as a venue on no fewer than nine of the lists of places to visit rather than incur a fine. In the Oudenarde tariff, the alternative to a voyage across the North Sea to St Andrews was a fine of eight Flemish pounds. Other pilgrim centres which merited the equivalent fine included St Gilles of Provence and Our Lady of Rocamadour and, significantly, placed St Andrews as a pilgrimage destination of more importance than St Thomas of Canterbury (six pounds) and Our Lady at Salisbury (also six pounds).22 St Andrews also benefited by the fact that little overland travel would be required from Flanders; a sea crossing to Scotland with minimal travel on foot meant that

84   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

the budget for the pilgrimage would not be greatly dispersed in towns en route. This must have helped underpin the local economy to a significant degree. The Church afforded a profound civilising influence on the town. Of whatever medical knowledge there was available, much would have come from the works of monasteries and friaries. The sick and poor could receive a measure of support, although self-help was probably more important. Paisley’s recently excavated water provision and disposal, Melrose Abbey’s harnessing of their supply and the strikingly sophisticated channelling of water through Dunfermline to power the town’s mills must surely have been guided by the expertise of the Church. To the north of Dunfermline the burgesses built the Abbey Mill Dam, served by water from the Town Loch, sometimes called Moncur. They then harnessed the water by a series of connecting channels to give a cheap and efficient source of power. A mill lade brought the water from the dam to a mill at the top of Collier Row. At this point the supply was flagged and supplemented by water and effluence from the conduits and drains of three small routeways. Still flagged, the supply then passed into the abbey lands.23 As the town used this as its main source of water, it is possible that so did the abbey. A drainage system of lead pipes in the abbey complex probably connected to the town system.24 The channelled water then emerged from the abbey lands in a lade and fed a further mill. The lade and mill can be clearly seen on Slezer’s late-seventeenth-century view of Dunfermline (see Fig. 3.3). This impressive water system then passed along the east bank of the Tower Burn to feed yet another mill – the Lady Mill at the bottom of the town.25 Thomas Pennant, visiting in 1772, admired this excellent use of water power: The town wants the advantage of a river but has a small steam for economical uses which is conducted through the streets in a flagged channel. At its discharge it joins another rivulet then, arriving at a fall into a wooded dell of a hundred feet in depth, becomes again useful in turning five mills, placed one below the other with room for as many more.26

Towns were thus closely bound, physically and emotionally, with their church. This was a particular feature of those towns whose inhabitants worshipped within the naves of cathedrals or abbeys, such as Dunblane, Dunfermline and Melrose. The Church was an essential feature of urban life. A town without a parish church, whatever its extent, was inconceivable. It could be argued that, by coming together, the notion of ‘community’ was given physical expression; the people embodied the corpus christianum. This was both a reality and a myth: how far the underclass perceived themselves as an equal part of the whole must be questioned. ‘We’re all in it together’ may well have sounded as hollow in the Middle Ages as it does in the twenty-first century.

Medieval Faith and the Church   85

Figure 3.3   Prospect of the Abbey of Dunfermline, Theatrum Scotiae, 1693, J. Slezer; the mill lade can be seen emerging from the abbey walls, travelling downhill, to run the mill wheel.

III.  Reformation For many, 1560 is a profoundly important date in Scotland’s history – it was the year of the Reformation; the old Catholic faith was overthrown and the new Protestant ideals triumphed. This is an exaggerated and condensed version of what did and did not happen. Dundee had long been a conduit for reforming thinking. There were various influences at work: they included the Protestant preachings of George Wishart and Paul Methven; the reforming ideas that infiltrated from continental Europe, funnelling through Dundee and other east-coast ports, even though they were prohibited by the crown in 1525 and again a decade later;27 and the works of James Wedderburn, brother of Robert Wedderburn vicar of Dundee, which were anti-clerical rather than heretical, in particular his anti-papist plays enacted on the burgh’s playfield.28 But there was no inevitability of a Protestant Reformation. Along with the Reforming tracts that flooded through the port of Dundee came Catholic literature reaffirming traditional ideas. There is little in the contemporary documentation to suggest a desire for change, apart from the iconoclastic attack on the Greyfriars friary, Dundee, in 1543, and this was probably very much politically influenced by the role of the Regent Arran.29 In December 1521, a decision had been taken to erect a new altar dedicated to St Michael in the parish church of St Mary; and as late as 1556 there

86   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

was an attempt to raise the status of St Mary’s to that of a collegiate church.30 Such civic initiatives do not suggest a congregation moving decisively towards outright Protestant reform. Tensions were rising during the 1550s with a new wave of heretical literature, underground Protestant ‘privy kirks’ being set up in Dundee, Angus and Edinburgh, and the final return from Geneva in 1559 of the fiery opponent of Catholicism, John Knox. By 1557 the establishment of the First Bond of the Congregation had been a firm indication that the Reformers were preparing for battle, metaphorical or otherwise. An apparent sign of real trouble came in September 1558, when the annual procession through the streets of Edinburgh to celebrate St Giles’ Day was disrupted by a Protestant mob, with the statue of St Giles being symbolically ‘drowned’ in the Nor’ Loch. The significance of the riot, however, has been exaggerated, both by Knox in his account written five years afterwards and by later historians. According to a pamphlet printed in Geneva in 1559, the rioters were numbered in ‘many dozens’ rather than hundreds. Edinburgh remained a largely Catholic town for some time to come.31 The summer of the following year was marked by a series of seemingly sudden reformations in towns throughout central Scotland. In early May, eight months after the St Giles’ riot, a deliberately inflammatory sermon by Knox in Perth’s parish church triggered a riot and a three-day explosion of iconoclasm, which saw the town’s friaries and Charterhouse looted and destroyed. This was a piece of calculated opportunism: Perth, unlike both Edinburgh and Dundee, had a history of serious social tensions for a quarter of a century before the Reformation crisis.32 The ‘Lords of the Congregation’, spurred on but also alarmed by the role of the ‘rascal multitude’ in Perth, nevertheless set about systematically ‘cleansing’ much of central Scotland of ‘idolatory’. The motives of this loose-knit coalition of nobles and lairds were mixed: a combination of self-interest, a dislike of the old Church as a rival landowner and a growing dislike of the regime of the Frenchborn Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, counted for many at least as much as did religious motivation.33 For urban establishments, the aftermath of the flashpoint in Perth widened and deepened into a full-blown civic crisis: faced by unprecedented challenges to both order and, even more seriously, to their own authority, burgh councils were understandably not of one mind. Reactions varied, ranging from outright acceptance to compromise or even rebuttal. St Andrews was one of the first to receive the Congregation’s attention in the aftermath of Perth. The Lords of the Congregation stripped the altars, removed the Catholic symbols and whitewashed the walls of the parish church of Holy Trinity overnight. It was said that the townspeople went to bed Catholic on Sunday, 11 June and woke up Protestant the next morning.34 In other towns, the change appears to have been almost as swift but, in almost every case, it was triggered by outside forces. Some two weeks after the purging of St Andrews,

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the Congregation burned the religious houses in and around Stirling. En route to Edinburgh, which they reached on 29 June, the Lords descended on Linlithgow.35 Both its Carmelite priory and its parish church were despoiled. The font that held the holy water with which the infant Queen Mary (1542–67) had been baptised, along with many statues and trappings of the altars, was smashed. The only saintly statue to survive, although damaged, was that of St Michael, possibly because he was the patron saint of the town.36 Much the same dilemma which confronted burgh establishments could also involve the abbots or commendators of religious houses. The Cistercian abbey of Coupar Angus appears to have been an active monastic community throughout the sixteenth century, with building work under way in the early 1500s.37 The abbey had twenty-eight monks in 1521 and still had twenty in 1558–9.38 This does not suggest an establishment ‘falling into decay’. On the other hand, the leadership of the abbey proved to be fatal to its continuing existence as a viable religious house. Its abbot was Donald Campbell, a great-uncle of the Earl of Argyll, one of the leading figures amongst the Protestant lords. Loyalty to kin proved stronger than his faith: Campbell readily agreed to the abolition of the services of his order as well as the burning of ‘all idolis and imagis’.39 This, however, was as much a land grab as a religious coup. Some of the abbey’s extensive land holdings had been dispersed to the abbot’s relatives immediately prior to the Reformation. More followed in its immediate aftermath: five large estates of the monastery – Keithock, Arthurstone, Denhead, Balgersho and Cronon – were given to Campbell’s sons.40 The unseemly scramble continued, with further grants of rentals, incomes, lands, mills, woods and the like.41 Precisely what damage was done to the abbey at the time of the Reformation is unclear, but by 1563 a catalogue of repairs was recorded. These included the stacking of slates in the cloister, repairs to stables and granaries – which were probably sited at the abbey grange – the blocking of doorways to keep out looters and protect timber from the church and steeple and renewing of the abbot’s windows which were ‘all broken’.42 Clearly, much damage had been done, but it should be questioned whether there was wholesale devastation as the abbey was considered a suitable abode for Queen Mary in 1562.43 By 1843, there was little left of the old abbey (Fig. 3.4). Time and neglect had clearly taken their toll. Central Scotland was not alone in encountering Protestant zeal. Ayrshire soon opted for the Reformed faith.44 Many of the new Reforming ideas probably came to the south-west of Scotland by sea from England. But outlying areas, away from the Central Belt, were, on the whole, less affected by the new ideas. There was little uptake of Protestantism beyond the Highland line. Significantly, the areas with fewer burghs were those that were less inclined to embrace the new faith. The move to a Protestant faith was sometimes a slow one, taking, in many cases, two or three generations. In Dalkeith it was not until 1590 that the choir of St Nicholas Church was sealed off and abandoned as a ‘monument of ­idolatory’;45

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Figure 3.4   Coupar Angus from the South, 1843, Anon. The ruins of the Cistercian abbey stand shrouded in trees to the centre-right of the picture; the parish church, to the right, was partially rebuilt in the 1780s using stones from the ruins of the abbey. The buildings to the west show vividly how the erstwhile lands of the abbey became colonised.

and the collegiate church still technically had a provost as late as 1593.46 The western part of the church continued to function as the parish church, as in many other burghs, the minister and congregation agreeing in 1591 to repair it as it was in a poor material state,47 along with a major transformation of the interior with lofts, or seats, for the incorporated trades to sit together for worship (Fig. 5.3).48 Aberdeen might appear to have been one town that had readily accepted the Reformed ideas by 1560. In the 1559 crisis, when the Lords of the Congregation were taking hold in the southern burghs, Aberdeen burgesses were determined that disorder would not erupt in their town. However, the town council joined ranks with the Lords of the Congregation somewhat belatedly, in the spring of 1560, when it sent representatives to the ‘Reformation parliament’ who, while there, appointed a Protestant minister to Aberdeen and bought him a Geneva gown to wear. But two years later, when Queen Mary visited with her Protestant privy council, it was found that a kirk session had not yet been appointed. This was quickly remedied and, as elsewhere, the session became very much the town council exercising religious discipline. But in Aberdeen the members of council were largely Catholic, still faithful to the old beliefs. A clear indication of thinking within the establishment was their decision to not enforce penalties against

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those, usually Catholic sympathisers, who consorted with excommunicates from the Kirk. Clearly, a rearguard action was being fought to preserve as much as possible of the old ways. This clause, however, was deleted in the manuscript of the kirk session register. Precisely when is unclear.49 Former Catholic religious, many of whom had ties of blood and patronage with the townspeople and council, were treated well, given shelter and pensions and even received Catholic books from the continent.50 As late as 1574, St Nicholas Church still retained its rood screen, reredos and choir stalls; necessary, it was claimed, to keep out draughts. The Protestant Reformation did not truly grip the town until as late as the 1580s or even the 1590s after the ruling Catholic Menzies faction had lost control. In spite of initial impressions, this was, again, far from an overnight Reformation.51 In many towns, the old faith existed alongside the Reformed ideas. The members of the old order in Melrose did not disappear overnight. Indeed, according to the Old Statistical Account, the statues in the abbey were destroyed as late as 1649.52 The monastic complex, as others, was extensive and dominated the town physically and spiritually (see Fig. 3.5). There are differing views of how many monks survived until the Reformation. Some argue that seventeen remained; others claim there were as few as twelve by 1556. Whatever the correct number, there was certainly a decline from 1536 when there was a signing of a

Figure 3.5   Melrose Abbey Complex, Alan Sorrell.

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charter by twenty-nine monks, including the abbot and sub-prior, although a further three were firmly identifiable at the time. 53 The surviving members of the convent became pensioners,54 a number of them continuing to live in Melrose and some perhaps in due course joining the new Protestant ministry, though usually as readers, unable to preach or administer the sacraments, rather than as ministers. The community of monks remained a recognisable group, supported by the townspeople and their church, until shortly after 1590 with the death of John Watson, pensioner of Melrose, although it is possible that a sole remaining monk lived on until 1609 when he was functioning as the bailie of the Melrose regality.55 There is no evidence of Dunfermline receiving the Reforming zealots with open arms. The sixteenth century had seen the control of the abbey passing into the hands of commendators, such as George Dury, who were probably for the most part non-resident,56 although the Benedictine monks remained in situ. The gild merchant included the most prestigious men of the town, many of whom formed the core of the town council; it is significant that they feared the approach of the Lords of the Congregation, who were in retreat through Fife, pursued by French troops in 1559.57 To counteract the impending danger, as in many other towns, such as Edinburgh, the pertinents of altars were taken into safekeeping for the duration of the crisis. The rich dressings and adornments of Dunfermline’s Holy Blood Altar, which was supported by the gild, were divided up amongst members for security as it was deemed that the townspeople lived in a ‘troublous world’.58 On 28 March 1560 ‘the wholl lordis and barones, that war on this syd of Forth, passed to Stirling and be the way kest doun the abbey of Dumfermling’.59 It has been assessed from a description a few years later that this casting down of the abbey church involved not only the stripping and destroying of altars, shrines, windows and royal tombs but also the choir being unroofed and reduced to ruin.60 But this may be an exaggeration of the case. Certainly, altars and their rich pertinents would have been desecrated, but some altars in the abbey church and also a number of monks survived well into the 1580s.61 The choir, or inner church, where the monks worshipped, suffered more than the outer or parish church. The inner church could not, however, have been ‘reduced to ruin’ as some of the monks were able to bar themselves inside in 1580 to keep watch over the shrines of St Margaret and the sepulchres of Kings David I and Robert Bruce.62 In the parish church the north-west tower was, indeed, damaged, taking with it part of the west gable, when the ‘baptised’ bells within it came under attack (and has since been replaced with a steeple).63 The records of the privy council in 1563 suggest that the physical damage dealt by the Reformers in Dunfermline in 1559–60 were compounded in the following three years by neglect.64 Repair work was required in 1564 and again from 1570, and a pension was provided for the abbey slater in 1572 suggesting that roofing had been repaired. It does seem that material harm to the church was not so severe as to prevent worship.65

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Figure 3.6   Prospect of the Town and Abbey of Dunfermline, Theatrum Scotiae, c. 1693, J. Slezer.

Once the Reformed Church was established many of the abbey’s lands were feued out to lay people and the temporalities of the abbey were largely transferred to the crown,66 but this did not mean an overlooking of the old order. The evidence suggests that the monks formed a cohesive group, negotiating for its portions in 1563–4 and again twenty years later; declining to sign the commendator’s documents in 1577; and disobeying the local minister a few years later.67 They were allowed to enjoy their pensions, livings and places of residence throughout their lifetimes.68 Documentary evidence indicates that some monks subsequently married, fathered children and left more than adequate finances for their widows.69 As late as 1605, some forty-five years after the Reformation, funds were still being set aside for monks and nuns.70 Dunblane had never been a particularly wealthy diocese and the dissipation of the cathedral’s assets to lay people during the sixteenth century further undermined its financial well-being. The Reformation seemed to have brought little malicious damage to the cathedral fabric, other than the removal and destruction of the trappings of Catholicism – images, adornments of altars and the like. As happened in other towns, traditional myths of damage to the cathedral building and the casting down of the market cross by the Reformers in the belief that it was a religious symbol are not based on hard evidence. The market cross continued in its accustomed role from 1565 to 1568; it was still standing in 1572,

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1575 and 1582; and it remained intact until at least 1594.71 Certainly, the cathedral deteriorated during the sixteenth century but this was largely due to neglect rather than vandalism. By 1586 it was reported that the kirkyard dykes were broken and that repairs were needed on the cathedral roof since it was no longer watertight. A measure of the affection of the townspeople for their traditional church was their offer to make the building watertight at their own expense if the bishop maintained it thereafter, as had been the custom.72 This offer was not accepted and around the turn of the century the roof of the nave collapsed and remained in this state until the nineteenth century, with the choir functioning as the parish church. Documentary evidence indicates clearly that the bishop’s palace, which archaeological evidence has shown to be a substantial vaulted building,73 became uninhabitable, as shown on Slezer’s late-seventeenth-century view of a palace derelict and roofless. Likewise, the manses and other cathedral property fell into decline (see Fig. 3.7). What did seem to survive the Reformation crisis in Dunblane was conservatism. There was little or no support for the Reformed ideas among the cathedral personnel, which might largely be explained by the strong support within the chapter, both before and for some time after the Reformation, for the conservative Chisholm bishops. This was true of the prebends, 25 per cent of whom were Chisholms, as also, significantly, were many from among the ranks of the lesser

Figure 3.7  Prospect of the Town of Dunblane, Theatrum Scotiae, J. Slezer. This view shows the nave of Dunblane cathedral roofless and the bishop’s palace in ruins. To the right can be seen the old ford, the essential crossing point before the bridge was built.

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clergy. Of the known cathedral establishment, it seems that only the dean conformed and somewhat belatedly became a Protestant clergyman.74 Friaries were invariably sited just outside towns. They were one of the prime targets of the Reformers, probably because friars were preaching orders which threatened a Protestant faith based on the sermon. Many friars were also the sons of local townspeople. Such a close link with the town might, however, prevent outright desecration. In Linlithgow, in spite of the speedy ‘cleansing’ of the parish church (see p. 87), the Carmelite priory was not treated over-harshly. This may have been as a result of a close working relationship between the burgh and the Carmelites, who were known as the ‘brethren abune the toun’.75 In 1531, for example, the prior was made a free burgess of the town, and  the convent was used by the burgh court to hold disputations and for judicial oaths.76 Provost Henry Forrest feued, for nineteen years, in 1544–5, two acres of Carmelite lands that abutted onto his burgage plot. Even after the ‘cleansing’, the friars continued to have a role in town life. In October 1559, Friar Hopper witnessed a sasine of one Alexander Livingston and in the following year the same friar confirmed Provost Forrest’s son in the two acres feued by the father, this being witnessed by another friar.77  When a further two acres was feued out in 1563, it is clear that the land was considered to belong to the friary. It was not, in fact, until some ten years after the Reformation that the Carmelite priory and lands, Carmelaws, passed into lay hands.78 However slow the process, medieval friaries did not survive intact. Only occasional remnants are reminders of their importance in burgh life. The Greyfriars church at Elgin may be seen on one of the earliest views of the town, drawn by Timothy Pont in the 1590s or early 1600s, so it was still upstanding at this date, although now long gone (see Fig. 1.11). Some friaries avoided total destruction as magistrates were instructed by the privy council in 1561–2 to uphold them for godly purposes such as schools or hospitals. The impressive hospitium of the Greyfriars at Inverkeithing still partially stands; it managed to outlive the Reformation crisis as it was handed over to the keeping of the town council and is still under the care of Fife Council. The choir and transept of the Carmelite priory at South Queensferry lived on in a truncated state, possibly as it was at one point used as the parish church. It is a beautiful small functioning Episcopalian church to this day.

IV.  The aftermath of Reformation Much damage was done to the ecclesiastical fabric of towns by the Reformation purges of 1559–60. Thereafter, there are many examples of misuse of church property, which further compounded these losses. But care should be taken to place the blame correctly. The case of Melrose is merely one example. The commendator, James Douglas,79 with Alexander Colville, commendator of

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Culross, as administrator and coadjutor during his minority, took action against Sir Walter Scott of Branxholm in February 1570 for ‘spuilze at the place of Melros’.80 Four months later, Scott was recalled for the removal of lead from ‘the place and kirk of Melrose’. He had, at least partially, dismantled the ‘inner quier,  uter kirk, the stepile, an croce kirk of the same’. His defence was that he  was saving them  from the English.81 Although this was possibly the most outrageous  assault on the church fabric, there were other culprits, many of them local, including Thomas Scot, a tailor from Jedburgh. They were accused in June 1570 by the commendator and ‘convent of our . . . abbey of Melrose’ of taking lead with the intention, amongst other things, of transporting it to Leith for export out of the realm.82 James Douglas himself, however, was perfectly happy to pillage the abbey for stones to build the commendator’s house in 1590.83 Such abuse was not novel. Melrose had suffered greatly in the 1540s from the ‘rough wooing’ conducted by Henry VIII of England (1509–47) to force a marriage of the infant Queen Mary to his son Edward and so unite the crown of Scotland with that of England. When negotiations stalled there followed seven years of devastation, mostly inflicted in the Borders region. In 1544, the abbey was burnt by the English under Sir Ralph Eure and the tombs of the Douglases, the erstwhile defenders of the abbey, were desecrated.84 The following year the abbey was ‘raced’ by the Earl of Hertford’s forces, who numbered, it is said, some 15,000 men.85 The abbey is known to have been in great and urgent need of money by 1549.86 Although peace was agreed in 1551, five years later the monks were warning that ‘without the kirk be repairit this instant sommer God service will ceise this winter’.87 Numerous charters from 1555 onwards indicated serious efforts on the part of the commendator and convent to restore some of the abbey’s ancient glory.88 But there were setbacks: in 1556 a complaint by the monks revealed that some of the funds were being diverted and lead from the abbey roof was being sold off.89 The case of Melrose is not unique. The misuse of church property by others, such as at Coupar Angus before the Reformation, has been noted (see p. 87). This highlights the difficulties of assessing the origins of material damage to ecclesiastical institutions. Neglect and harsh weather could take its toll on buildings (see p. 92). Wilful damage was perpetrated by war and by theft, as well as by the Lords of the Congregation. Dumbarton’s college church was largely ‘cassin doun be ye congregatioun in ye fiftie nyne zeir’.90 John, 5th Lord Fleming, governor of Dumbarton Castle and a staunch supporter of Queen Mary against the Regent, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, in 1569–70 compounded the damage by demolishing much of the parish church and that of Cardross across the river with the intention of using the stones and other materials to strengthen the fortifications of the castle and to build stables for the horses of the awaited French ­reinforcements, who were expected but never came.91

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Figure 3.8   The ruins of Cardross Parish Church in 1996.

A blame that may be placed clearly on the Protestant Reformation is the destruction of so much of value that was attached to the old faith. The apparent wealth and inordinate consumption of the old order may have been disliked by the Reformers but the unnecessary excesses of the purges brought irreversible damage. Little that smacked of the old order was spared. The statue of St Michael in Linlithgow may have survived through affection for the patron saint of the town (see p. 87); this sparing was unusual. Of more significance is the survival of the only pre-Reformation painting of a craft saint, that of St Bartholomew, patron saint of the glovers of Perth (see Fig. 3.9). The three-day ‘cleansing’ of the parish church of St John destroyed the images of all the other eight crafts’ altars. This artwork, depicting the saint in the red robes of a martyr, may have survived the vandalism because it was not in St John’s at the time, being away for repair.92 It was ‘saved’ for posterity by both chance and the calculated obliteration with paint of the very Catholic dedication at its foot. The news of this first overwhelming act of iconoclasm may have helped save religious artefacts in other towns from immediate destruction. In Inverness, Tain, Dunfermline, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, precious ornaments, relics and vestments were taken into protective custody, usually by the burgh council or gild merchant.93 In Edinburgh, which, with its collegiate church housing more than forty individual altars, had more valuables to lose than most towns, the

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Figure 3.9   St Bartholomew, Glovers’ Incorporation, Perth, 1557.

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burgh’s treasures were shared out among eleven members of the council and seven of the craft deacons, revealing that a number of these safe pairs of hands were Protestant in affiliation.94 Often, the desire to preserve a town’s investment in its religious heritage crossed ideological boundaries. Some transported their religious treasures to the continent for safekeeping. The statuette of the head of St Margaret was smuggled from Dunfermline, via the Low Countries, to France but later disappeared, probably during the Revolution. Equally valuable were books and records. The Archbishop of Glasgow fled to Paris with 400 original charters from the archdiocese’s charter chest, along with sixteen volumes of deeds and rentals.95 A few survivals apart, the loss of so much – the sumptuous church interiors and pertinents, the books and the music of the old order – is incalculable and irretrievable. Each generation considers the past and its heritage from a different standpoint. In 2017, with the knowledge of the wilful destruction of the material expressions of religious inheritance in the Middle East, perhaps the iconoclasm of the Protestant Reformers in Scotland might be viewed in a sharper light than that used by some of our forebears.96 The Reformation had an impact on the townscape in more subtle and not necessarily detrimental ways. In Dunbar, the layout of the town was radically different from the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries onwards. The most  significant change from the medieval topography was the lengthening of High Street, which ran from north to south on a natural ridge set above the Church Street/Castle Street axis. By using cartographic evidence to assess burgage plot sizes, it appears that the more southerly end of High Street was laid out in post-medieval times.97 Much of this was on land that was probably originally ecclesiastical.98 Place-names such as Abbey Lands, Temple Lands and St John’s Land, and the remains of the Trinitarian friary sited at the backlands of High Street, seem to support this theory and suggest secular encroachment on erstwhile church land. Indeed, Mary, Queen of Scots, granted a charter to the town specifically transferring possession to the burgh. The hints that cartographic evidence offers of burgage plots being post-medieval are given more substance on the ground (see Fig. 3.10). The width of the plots, for example that at nos 36–38 High Street, are exceptionally large – about 8.4 metres. It is, however, their lengths that suggest cannibalisation. This particular plot is some 70.4 metres deep, indicating a very probable assimilation of ecclesiastical land.99 A similar situation was to be found in Melrose. Within a few decades of the Reformation there was a significant development on the townscape. In 1589, James Douglas, commendator of Melrose, issued a tack to the town’s notary public, John Scott, and his son and heir, also John Scott. They were to be infeoffed of a ‘yard within the abbey walls sometime pertaining to the deceased dean Thomas Mein, monk’. Interestingly, the properties to the south-east, north

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Figure 3.10   Plan of Dunbar, 1830, John Wood. The elongated burgage plots to the west of the High Street strongly suggest cannibalisation of erstwhile ecclesiastical lands.

and west, standing adjacent, were already occupied by laymen.100 Another area, the bakehouse yard, which stood within the precinct, or ‘mantill wall’, near to the mill, and the mill itself were likewise set to tack.101 John Knox (nephew or greatnephew of the more famous Knox), the minister from 1584, was also given a tack of a dwelling and a garden in the north-east of the precinct. This stood close to the ‘roume’ of Dene John Watson, with ‘the auld ruinis wallis one the east syd of the closter on the vest’. Significantly, the commendator allocated the stones for his own purposes (see p. 94).102 The colonisation of the abbey precincts was well under way (see Fig. 3.4).

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In Coupar Angus in 1573 sasine was given on the outer yard of the monastery.103 It is probable that after the turmoil of the Reformation the people of the town had begun to use the abbey graveyard as their own burial ground. Skeletal remains thought to be those of children which were found during excavation might support this theory.104 The seventeenth-century Register of Baptisms for Coupar Angus reveals that settlements of small suburbs were extending out from the lay nucleus around the market place. One was called ‘the Precinct’. Clearly, with the destruction of much of the abbey complex, there had been a colonisation in the abbey precincts, probably near the present Precinct Street.105 An interesting addition to the townscape of Forfar was a church. The town’s parish church had been sited at Restenneth (see p. 78) approximately a mile and a half east of the town. Forfar’s new church was built in about 1568 on the site of the medieval chapel of St James, probably retaining portions of the chapel.106 The Book of the Universal Church in May 1586 cites Restenneth and Forfar as separate parishes, suggesting at the very least that there was an intention to separate the two. In 1591, it was agreed that the church at Forfar should replace that at Restenneth as the parish church.107 This was decided on the basis of ‘the great inconvenience and skaith sustained by the parishioners in attending the kirk in the wicked and evil days of winter, and of the want and deficiency of the said kirk for rest and refreshment for man and beast, and of the distance of many of [their] residences therefrom’.108 In 1643, the glebe was passed over to Forfar church, and the incumbent, Mr Thomas Pierson, exchanged this for a four-acre plot of land at Bread Croft near Forfar.109 But the name ‘Restenneth’ was not dropped from the parish name until 1652, when the town council purchased the patronage and tithes of the church of Forfar from Sir George Fletcher of Restenneth.110 This early date of about 1568 would make Forfar the first Protestant parish church to be built after the Reformation, superseding the usual claim of that in Burntisland, founded in 1595. Whether it was built following the design of a preaching box or hall, as Burntisland would be, with the pulpit as the focal point, is unclear (see p. 102). Subsequently, a new parish church was built in 1791 to a design by Samuel Bell, later to be burgh architect of Dundee; most of the obvious sixteenth-century remnants, apart from the tower, were removed and this in turn was replaced with the present steeple in 1815. It appears that successive phases of the church occupied the same site and incorporated remnants of earlier buildings within the new fabric. Structural elements may, therefore, survive within the present church and any further development might be carefully monitored to illuminate the early foundation. Evidence of deliberate destruction or neglect may be found in most towns in Scotland. Stones from ecclesiastical buildings were quarried and reused, many of Coupar Angus’s domestic buildings to this day being partially or entirely built of erstwhile abbey stone. Dundee’s new tolbooth, completed in 1562, took advantage of material from the Greyfriars friary and was roofed with timber

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taken from Lindores Abbey.111 Stone from the ruined Loreto Chapel became part of the building fabric of Musselburgh tolbooth. And Edinburgh’s town council purchased ashlar and ‘thack stanes’ of Inchcolm Abbey in 1581 for the rebuilding of its tolbooth.112 Some buildings might also be converted to perform new functions. What remained of the Greyfriars priory in Dundee became a weighhouse and, in 1564, Queen Mary granted to the burgesses of Dundee the right ‘to bury thair deid in that place and yardis qlk sumtyme wes occupyit be the Gray Cordelier freris’, still to be visited as a quiet oasis, the Howff, in central bustling Dundee.113 St Ninian’s Chapel on Castle Hill, Aberdeen, gained a novel role. In 1566, the east end was converted to a lighthouse. Standing in such an elevated position, it was furnished with a beacon and ‘three flaming lights’ to guide ships into Aberdeen harbour.114 What does come through very clearly from the burgh records is that the Reformation came swiftly and with some devastation. What did not come swiftly was a Reformation settlement. This is not surprising. Burghs were conservative and inward-looking, and lives revolved around the Church, which led to the townspeople feeling close ties to the old order and muted enthusiasm for the new. The Reformed Church was often reliant on the religious houses of the old to reinforce its clergy. Four of the monks of Dunfermline after 1567 were appointed as readers in the Reformed Church, and three of them continued to live in the monastery. Significantly, a 1580 Jesuit report claimed that these monks recited the offices of their order, as had been the practice for generations.115 In effect, they were Benedictine monks and part-time Calvinist clergy. This was not an isolated example.116 The ministry of the Reformed Church was reinforced by the personnel of the old, and their religious allegiance was not always clear-cut. Indeed, for many, the Reformation was not a permanent settlement. The feuar of Dunfermline Abbey’s almonry lands, for example, confirmed an agreement as late as 1598 that contained the proviso that in the event of the Reformation being overturned, alternative arrangements would be made. This might, of course, have been merely the copying of a legal phraseology which had been in vogue for some decades, but it serves to illustrate that the Reformed status quo was not necessarily secure in the minds of some.117 Although the experiences of individual burghs varied greatly, they had elements in common. This was very much a Reformation led from above, by the nobles, supported, it is true, by the ‘rascal multitude’ who might better be termed ‘looters’ or ‘vandals’. In the case of the nobility, even where conversion to the new faith was sincere, opportunism usually played a key role. The alienation of Church lands had begun some decades before 1559–60; the Reformation continued and accelerated the process and added religious conviction to it. Urban establishments, in contrast, were usually reactive and fearful rather than opportunistic. For them, the pickings from the break-up of the old Church were much thinner, limited to the meagre income of mendicant orders, such as

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the Black and Grey friars. Those burghs which had friaries had hoped for a swift takeover; instead, they had to wait until 1566–7 to lay hands on this modest inheritance. Ironically, the acquisitions came, not through Protestant action, but as a gift made by a Catholic queen. If burgh elites profited from the Reformation, they did so in an intangible but important form – their status and identity. Preand post-Reformation towns were linked by an umbilical cord of civic authority. The medieval town had been ruled by ‘the best’ and ‘most worthy’; and it was this small circle that played a pivotal role in the success of the Reformation, strengthened by their enhanced status as elders of the kirk session.118 Urban society remained as conservative as before. Outside Edinburgh, where the Reformation took the form of a purge,119 very few town councillors or magistrates were dismissed in the upheavals of 1559–60. On the contrary, most retained their positions. But the old burgh hierarchy became a new Calvinist magistracy. The hierarchical make-up of burgh society was faced with one major challenge. Saints’ days were abolished with the Reformation and, while these had been times for the veneration of the saints and jollification, they were also occasions for display of the great and the good, processing in order of importance through the streets (see pp. 77–8). Although many crafts clung to the cult of the saints for a generation after the Reformation, another method of public display of one’s worth had to be found. The provision within the parish church of seats, or lofts, set aside for the specific occupation by individual crafts and those of status within the burgh, achieved two purposes – it highlighted the oneness of the craft members and the apartness or exclusivity of certain elite sections from other members of society. The reaction of the fleshers to the baxters of Dundee when decorating their lofts in the new South Church carved out of St Mary’s probably sums up this divisiveness latent within medieval and early modern urban communities. The baxters painted above their pews ‘Bread is the Staff of Life’; their neighbours, the fleshers, countered, also above their pews, with ‘Man Shall Not Live by Bread Alone’.120 If dedicated pews for the burgh establishment and lofts for specific crafts were one symbol of the new order, the communion ticket was the other. The elite and the elect were physically separated from the rest of urban society – whether by seating arrangements or by a temporary picket fence barring the reprobate from the communion table.121 In Perth, the ungodly had to enter the church by a different door from those licensed to take communion.122 In the early years after 1560, and in some towns later than that, it is likely that the excluded often outnumbered the ‘faithful brethren’. Another form of exclusion was the inevitable product of circumstances. The growth in urban populations, in what is sometimes called the ‘long century’ between 1500 and 1650, produced a crisis of overcrowding. The failure to build new churches to house the growing populations of larger towns gave added momentum after 1560 to a development which had become apparent well

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before the Reformation. By the early sixteenth century, the old notion of the town worshipping as a single congregation had come under great strain. As early as 1521 and 1523 in Dundee, and elsewhere, the irritants of overcrowding and the irreverent behaviour of poorer sections of society crammed into the back of the burgh church, led to outright bans on attendance. The notion – or myth – of a single corpus christianum was in decay.123 The same problems intensified after 1560. Pre-Reformation churches were designed with the focus on the high altar. With the emphasis on the sermon in the Protestant church, acoustics became an awkward problem, even with a central preaching pulpit. One solution was to divide the larger burgh churches into a number of smaller congregations. This happened in Edinburgh’s St Giles’ as early as 1562. In Aberdeen, St Nicholas was divided into two in 1596, when a wall was built to create the East and West Churches.124 Greater divisiveness might also be created; in St Giles’, Edinburgh, a small fence or wall was placed within the church to exclude and to prevent the more common members of society mingling with the great and good. In 1565, moves were made to control the rabble and their noise by the appointment of officers both within and outside St Giles’.125 The bailies and council of Edinburgh had taken a greater and swifter divisive measure in December 1560, albeit in the name of banning the use of the church as a raucous meeting place. Private prayer and contemplation within the church were prevented other than at the set times for sermons and prayers – the total antithesis of the church at the heart of the community: The baillies and counsale . . . understanding that be the resort of pepill and barnys to  the kirk, the bynkis and saittis ar fylit be the saidis bairnyis and utheris ungodly pepill, and for eschewing thairof and sic uther ingodlynes as hes bene vsit in the said kirk be wikit pepill as saidis, ordains that the durris of the said kirk be lokit and keipit close all the day throuch, the appoynttit tymes of preaching and prayeris allanerlie except.126

There is one factor that does not come through the contemporary records clearly and that is how the ordinary townspeople regarded the Reformation in their own close-knit society. On occasion, their attitude can be extrapolated from the available evidence. Urban society was conservative and did not look for, nor like, change. The post-Reformation marriage service of the 1560s offered nothing to alter the status quo and the subservience of women. Indeed, it reinforced the accepted position of the Middle Ages with the words that a wife ‘is in subjection and governance of her husband, so long as they both continue alive’.127 The settled routine of life and habits revolving around the accustomed Church, where clergy often had a strong sense of local identity, was what the populace was used to, as well as religious holidays, which were days of freedom from work and

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included activities, such as the singing of carols at Christmas, the secular festivities of May Games and Robin Hood and the superstitious visiting of holy wells, against which the Kirk now inveighed. Significantly, days to celebrate the saints might have been abolished but the townspeople continued to worship in the same, albeit adapted, churches, the very places of worship which still remained dedicated to their revered saints. There is little to suggest that the Reformation was initially a movement from below, and, although material changes were wrought successfully, the minds of  the people were less mutable. It was not the people of St Andrews who went to  bed Catholic and woke up Protestant (see p. 86) but the ecclesiastical buildings that were transformed overnight. The people and their loyalties and routines were largely unchanged. Even the reading of the Bible in English rather than Latin, as prescribed by the new Protestant regime, could have only a limited impact: not all could read and those who could would find English an alien tongue. It is significant that, even in Edinburgh, where Knox held so much sway and argued so strongly for this new thinking, only 1,300 took communion by the new rite at Easter 1561 – that is less than one-fifth of the burgh’s adult population.128 The upheavals of 1559–60 may, in one limited sense, have seen a radical Reformation; but a Reformation settlement took much longer when reaching out to the conservative vast majority – the ordinary people of the towns.

Notes 1. DARC, ‘The Book of the Kirk’, in MS DBHCB. 2. Dunf. Recs, 126. 3. L. J. MacFarlane, William Elphinstone and the Kingdom of Scotland, 1431–1514 (Aberdeen, 1985), 134, 315; E. P. Dennison and J. Stones, Historic Aberdeen: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1997), 101. 4. J. G. Kyd (ed.), ‘Webster’s analysis of population 1755’, Scottish Population Statistics (SHS, 1952), 39, 30, 13. These areas are approximate only, calculated by multiplying the length and breadth of the parishes, as stated by Webster. The maps produced by the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies (Canterbury, 1982) indicating parish boundaries in Scotland, while not totally agreeing in detail, and perhaps more accurate, do, however, confirm the general hypothesis. 5. Ibid., 38, 41. 6. Acta Facultatis Artium Universitatis Sancti Andree, 1413–1588, ed. A. I. Dunlop (SHS, 1964), 91, 170, 180, 194, for example. 7. Edin. Recs, i, 194. 8. A. J. Warden, The Burgh Laws of Dundee (Edinburgh, 1872), 344, 586, 591. The research of the late Dr A. Smith into the Three United Trades confirm this picture of literacy in Dundee (pers. comm.).

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9. E. P. Dennison Torrie (ed.), The Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, 1433–1597 (SRS, 1986), fo. 88. 10. NLS, ‘Hutton Collections’, vi, fo. 113. 11. Dennison Torrie, The Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, fo. 45r. 12. Central Regional Archives, PD 6/1/1, fo.11. 13. Perth Archive, ‘Bound Book of Original Papers of the Convenor Court from 1365 to 1717’, Document 23a. 14. Brechin Reg., ii, 316. 15. DARC, ‘The Book of the Kirk’, cc1/43; A. Maxwell, Old Dundee, Ecclesiastical,  Burghal  and Social, Prior to the Reformation (Dundee, 1891), 13, 16; A. C. Lamb, Dundee. Its Quaint and Historic Buildings (Dundee, 1895), xxiv, argues for forty-eight altars and chaplainries, but an altar might serve more than one chaplainry. 16. D. McRoberts, ‘The Fetternear Banner’, Innes Review, vii (1956), 77. 17. Maxwell, Old Dundee, 20–30, 31, 33. 18. E. P. D. Torrie, Medieval Dundee: a Town and its People (Dundee, 1990), 89. 19. Cartularium Ecclesiae Sancti Nicholai Aberdonensis, ed. J. Cooper (Spalding Club, 1888–92), ii, 381. 20. Abdn Council, i, 83, 68, 85–7; Dennison and Stones, Historic Aberdeen, 62. 21. M. Lynch, ‘Religious life in medieval Scotland’, in S. Gilley and W. J. Shiels (eds), A History of Religion in Britain (Oxford, 1994), 121; D. McKay, ‘The four heid pilgrimages of Scotland’, Innes Review, xix (1968), 76­–7. 22. D. Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West (London, 2001), 55, 60–1, 225–6. 23. NAS, B20/1/1, ‘Protocol Book of John Cunninghame’, 104r; Dunf. Recs, 11, 297, 113, 360, 77 and 297. 24. T. M. Robertson, G. H. Williams, G. Haggarty and N. Reynolds, ‘Recent excavations at Dunfermline Abbey, Fife’, PSAS, 111 (1981), 391. 25. Dunf. Recs, 56. 26. B. Skinner, ‘The heugh mills of Dunfermline’, Scottish Studies, 19 (1966), 188; E. P. Dennison, ‘Living in medieval Dunfermline’, in R. Fawcett (ed.), Royal Dunfermline (Society of Antiquaries, 2005), 10–11. 27. Abdn Recs, 110–11; ADCP, i, 423. 28. Plays such as ‘The Beheading of John the Baptist’ and ‘The History of Dyonisius the Tyrane’; A. J. Mill, Mediaeval Plays in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1927), 88. 29. Hamilton Papers, 2 vols, ed. J. Bain (Edinburgh, 1890), ii, 38; D. McRoberts, ‘Material destruction’, in D. McRoberts (ed.), Essays on the Scottish Reformation (Glasgow, 1962), 419. 30. For example, DBHCB, 11 December 1521, 2 August 1553, 11 August 1553, 2 April 1554, 10 January 1554/5, January 1555/6. 31. M. Lynch, ‘John Knox, minister of Edinburgh and Commissioner of the Kirk’, in R.  A. Mason (ed.), John Knox and the British Reformations (Aldershot, 1998),

Medieval Faith and the Church   105

32.

33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51.

242–3, 263. Cf. W. C. Dickinson (ed.), John Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland, 2 vols (London, 1949), i, 127–9. T. Thomson (ed.), David Calderwood’s History of the Kirk in Scotland (Wodrow Society, 1842), i, 441–2; M. Verschuur, ‘Merchants and craftsmen in sixteenthcentury Perth’, in M. Lynch (ed.), The Early Modern Town in Scotland (London, 1987), 36, 38–9. G. Donaldson, All the Queen’s Men: Power and Politics in Mary Stewart’s Scotland (London, 1983), 31–44. J. E. A. Dawson, ‘“The face of ane perfyt reformed kyrk”: St Andrews and the early Scottish Reformation’, in J. Kirk (ed.), Humanism and Reform: the Church in Europe, England and Scotland, 1400–1643 (Oxford, 1991), 415. Thomson, David Calderwood’s History, i, 474; CSP Scot., i, 261. RCAHMS, Inventory of Monuments in West Lothian (RCAHMS, 1929), 213; E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Linlithgow: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2000), 27–8. I. B. Cowan and D. E. Easson, Medieval Religious Houses, Scotland (2nd edn, London, 1976),73. M. Dilworth, ‘Monks and ministers after 1560’, RSCHS, xviii (1974), 207. McRoberts, ‘Material destruction’, 432–3. A. J. Warden, ‘Parish of Coupar Angus’, in Angus or Forfarshire: the Land and People, 5 vols (Dundee, 1880–5), v, 132. RSS, v, nos 1199, 2229; for further details of the income of the abbey at the time of the Reformation see J. Kirk (ed.), The Books of Assumption of the Thirds of Benefices. Scottish Ecclesiastical Rentals at the Reformation (Oxford, 1995), 282, 303, 332, 352–64, 368–71, 409–12, 509. Rental Book of the Cistercian Abbey of Coupar-Angus, with the Breviary of the Register, ed. C. Rogers, 2 vols (Grampian Club, 1879–80), ii, 280. Edin. Recs, iii, 148–9. M. H. B. Sanderson, Ayrshire and the Reformation; People and Change, 1490–1600 (East Linton, 1997), passim. Robert Smith Memorial Committee, Robert Smith, 1722–1777, Dalkeith to Philadelphia (Edinburgh, 1982), 15. RMS, vi, no. 30. NRS, CH2/424/1 Register of the Presbytery of Dalkeith, 1582–1630, fo. 142r. D. Ferguson, The Collegiate Church of St Nicholas (n. p., 1963), 2. Selections from the Records of the Kirk Session, Presbytery and Synod of Aberdeen, ed. J. Stuart (Spalding Club, 1846), 17; A. White, ‘The impact of the Reformation on a burgh community: the case of Aberdeen’, in Lynch, Early Modern Town, 87, 96. White, ‘Impact of the Reformation’, 95–6. M. Lynch and G. DesBrisay, with M. Pittock, ‘The faith of the people’, in E. P. Dennison, D. Ditchburn and M. Lynch (eds), Aberdeen Before 1800: A New History (East Linton, 2002), 293–7.

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52. OSA, iii, 573. 53. Cowan and Easson, Religious Houses, 76; M. Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries in the Late Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1995), 49. 54. Melrose Recs, iii, 192. 55. John Watson is last found witnessing a charter in May 1590; RMS, v, no. 1796; Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries, 79. 56. D. E. R. Watt and N. Shead, The Heads of Religious Houses in Scotland from Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries (SRS, 2001), 71–3; for fuller details of the Pitcairn and Durie families and the Reformation, see M. Dilworth, ‘Dunfermline, Duries and the Reformation’, RSCHS, xxxi (2002), 37–67. 57. John Knox’s History, ed. W. C. Dickinson, i, 276. 58. Dennison Torrie, Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, fo. 59r. 59. McRoberts, ‘Material destruction’, 439. 60. Ibid., 439. 61. Dilworth, ‘Monks and ministers after 1560’, 216–20; RSS, viii, no. 2703. 62. P. Chalmers, Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1884), ii, 271. 63. E. Henderson, The Annals of Dunfermline and Vicinity (Glasgow, 1879), 205. 64. RPC, i, 246. 65. Henderson, Annals, 213, 216; Dunf. Reg., 476. 66. Dunf. Reg., appendix iii, 465–504; Henderson, Annals, 215, 262, 263, 264, for example; Chalmers, Account, i, 159. 67. Dilworth, ‘Dunfermline, Duries and the Reformation’, 44. 68. APS, iii, 438; see also RSS, iv, no. 1987, RSS, viii, nos 2384, 2434, 2514, 2533, 2538, 2553, 2703, 2736. 69. RSS, ii, no. 3037; NRS, B20/10/3, Records of Dunfermline Court and Council, 1606–13, 30 November 1609, 13 June 1611; RH11/27/7, Regality Register of Decreets, 1582–1595, 21 December 1588; CC8/32, Testament of Alexander Steven, 10 Nov. 1598. 70. RMS, vii, no. 1572. 71. TA, xi, 354; xii, 71, xiii, 20; RMS, iv, no. 2056; RPC, iii, 491, v, 138. 72. J. Kirk (ed.), Visitation of the Diocese of Dunblane, 1586–89 (SRS, 1984), 38–9. 73. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Dunblane: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1997), 24, 76. 74. Ibid., 23–4. 75. Mr Bruce Jamieson (pers. comm.). 76. M. Spearman, ‘Linlithgow Carmelite Friary. The documentary evidence’, in J.  A.  Stones (ed.), Three Scottish Carmelite Friaries: Aberdeen, Linlithgow and Perth, 1980–86 (Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1989), 54. 77. NLS, ‘Hutton Collections’ (Adv MS 29.4.2 (vi)), lease 11 January 1544/5, lease 25 February 1559/60, 5, 9. 78. Spearman, ’Linlithgow Carmelite Friary’, 54.

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79. Son of Sir William Douglas of Lochleven, later earl of Morton. 80. NRS, GD 150/1467, Morton Papers, 16 February 1569/70. 81. NRS, GD 150/1467, Morton Papers, 26 June 1570; C. A. Strang, The Borders and Berwick: an Illustrated Architectural Guide to the Scottish Borders and Tweed Valley (RIAS, 1994), 175. 82. NRS, GD 150/1467, Morton Papers, 26 June 1570. 83. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Melrose: the Archaeological Implications of Development (1998), 34. 84. Hamilton Papers, ii, 569. 85. D. Laing, ‘A contemporary account of the earl of Hertford’s second expedition to Scotland and of the ravages committed by the English forces in September 1545’, PSAS, 1 (1851–4), 277. 86. NRS, GD32/2/2 Elibank Papers, 20 July 1549. 87. J. S. Richardson and M. Wood, Melrose Abbey (Edinburgh, 1949), 34 (updated by Historic Scotland as C. Tabraham, Melrose Abbey (Historic Scotland, 1995)). 88. Laing Charters, 854–1837, ed. J. Anderson (Edinburgh, 1899), nos 642, 643, 668, for example; Melrose Recs, iii, 158; NRS, GD 111/vi/3, James Curle Writs, 3 February. 1557; ADCP, p. lvi. 89. Melrose Recs, iii, 158. 90. CSP Scot, iii, 455. 91. Ibid., iii, 383. 92. E. P. Dennison, E. Eydman, A. Lyell, M. Lynch and S. Stronach, Painting the Town: Scottish Urban History in Art (Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2013), 398–401. 93. D. H. Fleming, The Reformation in Scotland: Causes, Characteristics, Consequences (London, 1910), 318–21; Dennison Torrie, Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, fo. 95. 94. Edin. Recs, iii, 42–4; M. Lynch, Edinburgh and the Reformation (Edinburgh, 1981), 75, 231–2, 234. 95. Fleming, Reformation, 317. 96. In 1910 Hay Fleming could take the extreme view that ‘When immortal souls are in the balance with works of art, no Christian can hesitate as to which should be preferred’; and ‘It ought not to be forgotten that the ruthless destruction of altars and images, of relics and vestments, gave sincere satisfaction and pleasure to genuine Christian men’, as these were the ‘unholy symbols of . . . an anti-Christian power’, Fleming, Reformation, 315, 427. 97. John Wood’s plan of Dunbar, 1830; OS 1:10,000, Haddingtonshire, sheet 6, 1883. 98. I am indebted to Dr David Anderson of Dunbar for his thoughts on this point. E. P. Dennison, S. Stronach and R. Coleman, Historic Dunbar: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2006), 30. 99. I am grateful to Mrs Pauline Knox for allowing access to her property and deeds. Dennison et al., Historic Dunbar, 30. 100. NRS, GD1/452/1, 10 April 1589. 101. Melrose Recs, iii, 316–17, 354–5.

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102. Ibid., iii, 332–3. 103. NRS, 217, Moray Muniments, Box 32, Division iv, Bundle v, no. 104, instrument of sasine, February 1573. 104. J. O’Sullivan, ‘Abbey, market and cemetery: topographical notes on Coupar Angus in Perthshire, with a description of archaeological excavations on glebe land by the parish church’, PSAS, 125 (1995), 37. 105. NRS, CH2/395/1, Register of Baptisms, for example 12 April 1688. 106. W. S. McCulloch, Castle Hill, Forfar (Forfar, 1972). 107. Booke of the Universale Kirk of Scotland, ed. D. Laing (Bannatyne Club, 1840), ii, 674; R. W. Dill, Beauty Spots In and Around Forfar (Forfar, 1924), 104. 108. Warden, Angus or Forfarshire, iii, 284. 109. A. Reid, The Royal Burgh of Forfar (Paisley, 1902), 134; A. Jervise, Memorials of Angus and the Mearns, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1885), ii, 49. 110. NSA, xi, 695. 111. RCAHMS, Tolbooths and Town-houses: Civic Architecture in Scotland to 1833 (Edinburgh, 1996), 202. 112. McRoberts, ‘Material destruction’, 450. 113. RCAHMS, Tolbooths and Townhouses, 202; W. Hay, Charters, Writs and Public Documents of the Royal Burgh of Dundee, 1292–1880 (SBRS, 1880), 40. 114. J. Robertson, The Book of Bon Accord (Aberdeen, 1839), 219; Dennison and Stones, Historic Aberdeen, 54–5. 115. J. Reid Baxter, M. Lynch and E. P. Dennison, Jhone Angus, Monk of Dunfermline and Scottish Reformation Music (Dunfermline, 2011), 16. 116. M. Lynch, ‘Calvinism in Scotland, 1559–1638’, in M. Prestwich (ed.), International Calvinism, 1541–1715 (Oxford, 1985), 248–9. 117. NRS, RH11/27/16, Regality of Dunfermline Register of Decreets, 1596–1610, 68 (7 May 1598). 118. See M. Lynch, ‘From privy kirk to burgh church: an alternative view of the process of Protestantism’, in N. Macdougall, Church, Politics and Society: Scotland 1408–1929 (Edinburgh, 1983), 88. 119. Lynch, Edinburgh and the Reformation, 75–80, 86. 120. J. Maclaren, The History of Dundee (Dundee, 1874) (an enlarged edition of a work produced by James Thomson, 1847), 210–11. 121. As in Edinburgh in March 1561; CSP Scot, i, no. 967. 122. M. Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, CT and London, 2002), 107. 123. DBHCB, 30 September 1521; 30 March 1523; E. P. Dennison, ‘Power to the people? The myth of the medieval burgh community’, in S. Foster, A. Macinnes and R.  MacInnes (eds), Scottish Power Centres from the Early Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century (Glasgow, 1998), 116. 124. Lynch and DesBrisay with Pittock, ‘The faith of the people’, 293. 125. Edin. Recs, iii, 194.

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126. Ibid., iii, 97. 127. E. P. Dennison, ‘Women to 1700’, in Lynch, Oxford Companion to Scottish History, 645. 128. Lynch, ‘From privy kirk to burgh church’, 93.

4

Encroachment on Burgh Society, 1550–1750

T

hese two centuries could be categorised as the worst in the history of Scotland’s towns. The calm that might have been hoped for after the Reformation crisis did not come. Towns were to experience destabilising of their long-assured positions and privileges with the rise of new, upstart burghs and markets. For some urban settlements, change was even more profound – they were cleared off their traditional sites, producing for many townspeople fear, misery and resentment, often against the local lairds who had masterminded the relocations to suit their own purposes. The equilibrium of urban society was further traumatised by man-made and natural catastrophes. These will be considered in Chapter 5: religious and political wars brought material and emotional hardship, and the forces of nature also seemed determined to undermine the stability of urban society.

I.  New burghs, markets and shrinking hinterlands These two centuries would see a proliferation of new burghs, a trend evident from the fifteenth century. In the period 1450 to 1516 three or four new royal burghs were created, along with almost seventy burghs of barony.1 Between 1550 and 1700 over 200 burghs of barony or regality appeared on the scene, often as a result of the persuasions of an ambitious landowner.2 In the years between 1660 and 1707 alone, no fewer than 109 were created, with only two new royal burghs appearing, and both of these were already baronial burghs (see Fig. 4.1). Most of these new creations were given the right to have craftsmen, a market each week and one or more annual fairs, so trampling to a greater or lesser degree on the economic rights of the older burghs. The revenues for these new burghs that came from market tolls, petty customs and the like were intended for the financial improvement of the burgh but were often sidelined for the personal benefit of the burgh superior. Significantly, the complaint at the Convention of Royal  Burghs from Aberdeen about its provostship being monopolised by one

Encroachment on Burgh Society, 1550–1750   111

Figure 4.1   New burghs founded between 1660 and 1707.

family – the Menzies – likened its case to that of being ‘thrallit [oppressed] to serve ane raice of pepill, as it war ane burch of baronaye’.3 A group of new burghs emerged from townships or villages based on industrial activities, in particular the extraction of coal, salt and lead, or harbour facilities for their export. Culross was one such small town on the northern shore of the River Forth (see Fig. 4.2). The continuing dependence on water transport meant large-scale mining was concentrated near to the river. Allied to this, since salt manufacture relied on the waste from coal-mining, salt-panning developed along the shores of the Forth.4 Culross, under the control of Sir George Bruce, became

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Figure 4.2   Saltpans at Culross in the foreground of The Prospect of the House and Town of Colross, 1693, J. Slezer.

an important centre for coal-mining and salt manufacture, with some forty-four pans and a further twenty-three at Bonhardpans, near Borrowstouness (Bo’ness) on the other side of the Forth.5 The river became a veritable treasure trove for salt pans. Musselburgh, along with Prestonpans, had a high concentration of the salt industry, with thirty-one pans by the second half of the sixteenth century,6 Prestonpans itself becoming a burgh of barony in 1552.7 Methil in Fife was made a burgh as a result of mining activity and Borrowstouness gained this status as a harbour, as did Saltcoats in the west. Saltcoats achieved this status largely because of its position as a major exporter of coal to Ireland.8 Leadhills and Wanlockhead, high in the Southern Uplands, ultimately produced 80 per cent of Scotland’s lead, Leadhills becoming a burgh in 1661.9 The elevation to burghal status of the small, economically thriving settlement of Culross in 1592, along with Burntisland six years earlier, undermined Inverkeithing’s hold over its hinterland.10 The case of Bo’ness also shows clearly how a newcomer could damage an established, ancient burgh.11 Sir Robert Sibbald wrote that ‘there was a gentleman died since the yeare 1660, who remembered that ther was but one hous wher now ther is the town of Borrostonesse, Grangepans, Bridgenesse and Crues-about Pans’.12 When Bo’ness was about to become a burgh, Linlithgow town council sent a letter, still extant, to the Convention of Royal Burghs attempting to prevent the potentially disastrous recognition of this new rival on the grounds that Linlithgow had always

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played its full part in, and met its obligations to, the Convention, and that any further nearby burghs would be to its detriment.13 In spite of this, in 1672, along with other burghs of regality and barony, Bo’ness received the liberties of export, import and retail. Linlithgow’s monopoly of trade, through Blackness, was now threatened.14 Worse was to follow. The customs office was transferred from Blackness to Bo’ness.15 When the town council again wrote, this time to elicit the support of the provost of Edinburgh to reinstate Blackness, the response was even more depressing – Linlithgow would have to supply a ‘convenient office house’ for a year free of rent, as well as accommodation for merchants, officers and mariners, and the merchants were to be supplied with boats to unload their goods, horses to transport these and workmen to lift the loads into cellars. These extra services were to be provided at the same tariff as previously.16 Twenty years later, Linlithgow was struggling to maintain its economic stability, with debts amounting to £18,235 6s 8d. These it blamed on the fact that: within ther precinct and adjacent to them the burghs of baronies and regalities following viz., Borrowstounes, Grangepans, Kirklistowne, Torphichen and Bathgate, all which are highly prejudiciall to ther trade both outland and inland, particularly Borrowstounes and Grangepans whose houses are in a better conditione and sett at a higher rate than many of ther burgh, besides the great prejudice they have by a number of villages and kirktowns within ther precinct and adjacent to them, who wrong ther trade by venting [selling] aboundance of staple comodities to the countrey.17

There was to be a further encroachment on the traditional economic privileges of burghs – the accelerated increase in the number of non-burghal markets.18 These had been known for at least four centuries. King William I renewed by charter between 1165 and 1171 the rights of the céli Dé of Brechin to a weekly market on Sundays. This had originally been granted by David I when the privilege was to be enjoyed as freely as the Bishop of St Andrews did with his own right to a market. The reference to the market at St Andrews suggests that this grant was made before 1140, that is long before Brechin had been made a burgh.19 King William also made great concessions to the abbey’s ‘men dwelling at Kelso’ to buy fuel, timber and grain at Kelso at any time other than nearby Roxburgh’s market day. The privileges went further: they were permitted to sell ale, meat and bread ‘in their windows’; to bring fish by horse or cart from the ports to sell in the same manner; and even to travel around and sell. Clearly, the king was controlling a situation that may perhaps already have been in existence. Kelso men were being permitted to sell to all and sundry but the rights of the burgesses of Roxburgh were to be protected.20 In 1571, Bowden in Roxburghshire was granted a weekly market and two annual fairs, each lasting a day.21 Positioned near two major south-north routeways, its market would prove a ready magnet. This was clearly a threat

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to the nearby royal burgh of Melrose, only three miles further north. Over the next ninety years eleven sites of markets or fairs, or a combination of both, were established in non-burghs.22 Logie Durno, Aberdeenshire, was one such case. The ‘gentlemen’ and inhabitants of the parish approached the privy council in 1628 with the grievance that they were ‘distant from anie burgh and fra all publict mercats and faires saxtein myles or thairby, and that they can nocht be provydit with flesh, fish nor no otheris necessars for furnishing of thair households without extraordinary great charges and expenssis’. To remedy this it was suggested that a weekly market should be held at the chapel of Garioch until Martinmas. This was granted.23 After 1660, a proliferation of non-burghal markets was given legitimate status. Gordon of Rothiemay’s assessment of Aberdeen’s control of marketing in its hinterland in 1660 was probably nostalgic hindsight: ‘market tounes villedges and hamlets of the shyres and countrey nearest neighbouring to Aberdeine . . . are . . . subject to thame, that without the licence of Aberdeen they dare nather trade in merchandise ather by sea or land’.24 This new recognition of trading centres as legal markets might merely have been an acknowledgement of already existing situations. Local landowners could also have sensed opportunist profits in encouraging the legitimisation of unofficial places, where goods were exchanged, into official markets where they could charge tolls. At the village of Kennoway in Fife in 1681 the Beatons of Balfour were granted a weekly market and two annual fairs as the village lay: midway betuixt the burghs of Kirkcaldy and Coupar in Fife six miles distant from either of the said burghs. And so it [was] a very convenient and necessary place to have a weekly mercat to sell bread, flesh, fish, and other provisions and commodities needful for the accommodation of the inhabitants and strangers repairing thereto and the countrie about the same.25

The Beatons had argued that Kennoway was ‘of considerable resort, being seated upon the king’s highway that leads to the north and the south of the kingdoms’ and as a result received many travellers, who could benefit from their proposed market. They were here citing a new clientele, attracted to a transit market, at variance with the old established notion of the burgh market supplying both the burgh and its hinterland. It was perhaps predictable that there would be opposition to these new burghs and markets by those long established. At least any new royal burghs would contribute to national taxation but burghs of barony or regality and, especially, non-burghal markets and fairs reduced the scope of home trade, with no financial liability to central funds. Small burghs, probably the least vocal, suffered in particular. Nairn was not only small but also impoverished. In 1633, according to the tax rolls, Nairn’s assessment was, termly, £33 6s 8d.

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This reflected very poorly when compared with other towns in the north: Aberdeen £1,333 6s 8d, Inverness £333 6s 8d, Elgin £166 13s 4d and Forres £50. Only five towns in the whole of Scotland assessed for national taxation – Lochmaben, Sanquhar, Annan, Kilrennie and New Galloway, all in the distant, largely rural  south-west – were calculated to be less financially viable than Nairn.26 Its lack of prosperity was to receive a devastating setback by the foundation of nearby burghs of barony. All were within a six-mile radius of Nairn. Geddes was made a burgh of barony in 1600, Cawdor followed in 1623, and Moyness twelve years later. All received mercantile rights, the last two having weekly markets and annual fairs specified.27 By 1661, when the second ratification of Nairn as a royal burgh was granted, it was argued that the burgh’s two fairs were ‘very useless and unprofitable’ as the Laird of Kilravock had the right to two fairs within three miles of it. These were held on the same days as those of Nairn: whereunto all the country about doth frequently resort so that the burgh of Nairn . . . have not for the present any mercat or fair at all. Notwithstanding that they keep still all meetings of parliament and conventions of burghs and pay cess and all other duties according to their ability as any other burgh and have their tolbooth and prison to maintain and their bridge (which is very useful to passengers) to uphold, and have no other common good to maintain the said works but annually the custom of the mercats now unprofitable.

It was proposed to assist Nairn by specifying that the town should have its markets on a Friday and the two fairs be changed to Rude Day (8 February) and St Midian’s Day (12 July). Sir Hugh Campbell of Cawdor, however, succeeded in obtaining an Act of Parliament changing the new date of Nairn’s summer fair, as the burgh of barony of Cawdor held its own fair on 15 July, and he did not wish competition so closely timed. Nairn’s fair was changed again, to an unspecified date in June ‘so as not to prejudice any of the town’s neighbours’!28 Larger and more important burghs might be able to withstand competition to a certain extent, although the erosion of the almost exclusive overseas trading privileges of royal burghs escalated after the Restoration of 1660–2. The concern felt by established burghs was succinctly summed up when Stirling received a charter of confirmation of its rights and privileges in 1678. As well as a reiteration of long-standing rights, a further clause was added, the king binding himself and his successors ‘on the word of a prince’ to not promote any town or village into a burgh of barony or regality, nor to bestow the right to hold a fair or market, within two miles of Stirling.29 Even so, the general effect of the burgeoning of fairs, markets and newly created burghs was to reduce sharply the extent of the hinterlands of many royal burghs and to curb the monopoly they had held since their foundations.

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Dunblane is described in seventeenth-century documentation as either a ‘town’ or a ‘city’.30 It continued to have bailies which suggests that, at least to some extent, it still functioned constitutionally as a burgh as it had done from the Middle Ages.31 A 1656 account of the revenues and excise income of burghs in Scotland, however, does not mention Dunblane;32 and, more significantly, when a register of all burghs in the realm was compiled in 1692, Dunblane was not included.33 Whatever its exact legal status, it continued to hold markets and fairs, attracting people from the surrounding district sufficiently to incur the wrath of Stirling, which claimed that it was being financially harmed.34 Customers were attracted from as far as Edinburgh, although they were banned by their own authorities from attending in 1647 because ‘the plague of pestilence is informed to be ranging at the pleasour of God in thes quarteres’.35 Stirling continued to inveigh against what it considered an encroachment on the privileges of its merchants,36 with the support of the Convention of Royal Burghs.37 In spite of this, Dunblane was granted a fourth annual fair in the same year, 1669, for the benefit of the surrounding areas, since it was at some distance from the royal burghs of Perthshire to the north. It was also confirmed in its weekly market.38 Again, in 1697, the Convention complained, claiming that the tolls raised at the fair were to the detriment of nearby burghs.39 In spite of all this opposition, Dunblane was clearly a thriving, albeit very small, settlement, with weavers, bakers, carpenters, slaters, vintners, writers and masons appearing in the written sources, and farmers and shoemakers recognisable from their tombstones in the town.40 Perth also felt itself hard done by. In 1692, it bemoaned the establishment of twenty-four market centres in its vicinity;41 Perth’s position as a ‘craft town’ was being undermined. This was a recurring theme in the report to the Convention of Royal Burghs in 1692.42 But nearby markets and potential labour did not spell bad economic news for every town. In 1584, it was estimated that Perth’s population doubled during the harvest, producing alarm in the kirk session over the dangers of large numbers of migrant female workers in the town.43 Perth probably benefited from its location near the Highlands, where goat-keeping was more commonplace than in the Lowlands; its glovers, one of the most prominent crafts in the town, were able to readily source high-quality kid.44 Just as Edinburgh might import goods that it could have easily produced itself, as well as tapping into the workforce of labourers outside the burgh walls, and encouraging the setting-up of manufactories along the Water of Leith and mills at Dean, so could other burghs benefit from a local rural labour force and the raw materials of surrounding areas. Equally, many towns’ inhabitants obtained casual, temporary labour, especially at harvest time, from the neighbouring countryside. Aberdeen outsourced much of its plaiding manufacture to satellite towns. Musselburgh and Dalkeith, as well as the large number of weavers in the West Kirk parish of Edinburgh, all benefited from textile production which probably profited the dyers and tailors of the

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capital, and possibly Paisley had a similar relationship with Glasgow. Edinburgh’s ban in the 1690s on the slaughtering of animals in the capital had a knock-on effect on nearby towns. Dalkeith slaughtered not only local cattle but also those from the Border estates of the Scotts of Buccleuch. It then exported to the capital the by-product of tallow, so supporting the Dalkeith candlemakers. The contemporary evidence suggests that Musselburgh then took advantage of another large by-product for its leather workers.45 Baronial burghs were not always a threat; some flourished as satellites of long-established royal burghs. The concerted opposition that faced the suggestion that Stornoway might become a royal burgh is clear evidence of established power and the pressures that could be brought against change. In 1628, Colin Mackenzie, 1st Earl of Seaforth, received royal permission that Stornoway might receive the status of royal burgh. Reaction was fast. The disapproval of the Convention of Royal Burghs raised various issues, some more valid than others. On the one hand, it was argued that burghs in the north, particularly Inverness and Tain, would be damaged by competition from Stornoway; on the other, it was suggested that Stornoway was so distant that illegal goods might be imported there. A further specious caveat put forward was that, as Stornoway was not royal property, it could not become a royal burgh. It was also claimed that fishing burghs elsewhere, for example in Fife, would suffer if fish were to be traded directly with Stornoway. Furthermore, the rest of Scotland would be excluded from the fishing waters around Stornoway. Edinburgh entered the fray. The town council noted in September 1630 that in Stornoway ‘the work thair does proceed in the plantatioun of strangers’.46 This was a reference, as made also by the Convention, to ‘Hollanderis’, or Dutchmen, to whom Seaforth had given fishing rights in Lewis waters. The introduction of foreigners in fishing and trading, it was argued, was detrimental to the whole of Scotland.47 The provost and bailies explained to the town council that harm would be caused to the country, to burghs in general and, importantly, to Edinburgh in particular. So dire a prospect was the thought of Stornoway as a royal burgh that it was agreed that the objectors would themselves, instead of the Dutchmen, initiate a plantation and pay any expenses involved both in persuading the king to withdraw his signature and in obtaining a confirmation of the right of the Scottish burghs to take over the venture.48 The king withdrew his approval. In spite of the threat of new markets, many of the well-established burghs found themselves with their trades and markets steadily enhancing their economic stability. This was evidenced in the townscape. Buying and selling was a basic of life and, increasingly, booths which had been placed as temporary structures in front of houses became formalised and permanent. Timber posts supported timber beams which could then hold an upper wooden gallery. The purchaser would then benefit from a level of protection from the weather by a roof. In time, as in

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Edinburgh at Gladstone’s Land, the timber posts were replaced by stone pillars forming arcades. Evidence of such arcading can be found throughout Scotland. Dundee, Edinburgh and Aberdeen were probably at the forefront but when Glasgow was partially rebuilt after the 1652 fire (see pp. 156–7) it, too, arcaded the shopping areas. Daniel Defoe, visiting in 1725, described the lower storeys of houses as standing on ‘vast square dorick columns, not round pillars, and arches beneath’ which gave ‘passage to the shops’.49 Arcading has been found in smaller towns: Elgin, Portsoy, Dunfermline, Linlithgow, Dumfries and Dumbarton are probably not the only towns to have benefited from these structures (see p. 159). Larger towns began to experience market specialisation; the old market place could no longer cope with the increasing level of mercantile activity. Gradually, the various trades dispersed to their own areas to sell, sometimes imposed from the authorities for reasons of safety from dangerous activities such as candlemaking (see p. 157), sometimes for convenience and accessibility. Just as various trades’ families had previously clustered together through common interest and lifestyle, such as the fishers of Musselburgh in Fisher Row and the colliers of Dunfermline in Collier Row, so they now combined to form their own specialist markets. In several towns, street names such as ‘Fishmarket Close’, ‘Fleshmarket Close’ and ‘Haymarket’ are vivid reminders of their earlier functions. The seventeenth century also brought the rise of new manufactories, particularly in the larger towns, with encouragement from parliament to establish specialised industries, as well as fostering overseas trade. By the 1690s, there were colonies established in New Jersey and Carolina, and the West Indies was also a valuable trading partner. Such commercial contacts resulted first in sugar refining, particularly in Glasgow. The Wester Sugar House was established as early as 1667 and was extended in 1675. Two years later, a further process was added to sugar refining, rum being distilled from the waste molasses. By the end of the century three more houses had been set up to boil sugar, make candy and distil spirits.50 Alongside the traditional crafts, new woollen manufactories and glassworks were established and there is evidence of a new commodity appearing on the scene: tobacco.51 At the end of the seventeenth century manufacturing was still the mainstay of burgh life, whether an old burgh or a newly founded one. Half of the recorded male workers were so employed and both food and drink production were still essential urban occupations, usually accounting for between 15 and 20 per cent of the workforce of a town.52 In smaller burghs the medieval rural characteristics of town life lived on: where backlands had not been developed the traditional use of the land for growing food and housing animals continued. The medieval culture of self-sufficiency had not been totally eradicated, and the occupational structure for many towns in 1700 remained broadly similar to that of 1100.

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II.  New burghs: two test cases An ambitious landowner, David Lindsay, 11th Earl of Edzell, secured the erection of the village to the status of a burgh in 1588. Lindsay himself drew up a plan, which is still extant, of what he considered to be the essentials of his model burgh. The plan he named ‘Pourtraicte of ye new citie of Edzel’. The vital features of this ideal burgh are interesting. As a committed Protestant, he included a kirk and a manse. He also conceived the burgh as separate from the surrounding countryside with walling but with ready entrance and exit to the necessary hinterland by four ports. The tolbooth, as the symbol of lay authority, stood in the corner of the main square; and in pride of place, as in medieval times, in the centre of the burgh as the focal point of the community was the

Figure 4.3   Pourtraicte of ye new citie of Edzel, 4 Septb, 1592, David Lindsay of Edzell.

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market cross.53 Despite Lindsay’s elaborate plans, no new burgh settlement was established; Edzell remained a parchment burgh, like many others – a testament to landowners’ ambitions, but unviable. Ironically, Edzell became a planned burgh but of the Georgian era, when it was built under the auspices of the 8th Earl of Panmure. With greater success, Stranraer, a small settlement, achieved a more elevated status. It became a burgh of barony in the late sixteenth century and may be used as an example of many of the new breed of burghs which met with the opposition of neighbours, but nevertheless achieved success. The first firm documentary evidence for Stranraer comes in the early fourteenth century.54 But settlement in this region may have had a long past. In 1683, a boat was discovered lying transversely across a burn, a considerable distance from the shore and well above the level of spring tides. It was partially excavated and found to be not of seventeenth-century design: ‘the boards were not joyn’d together after the usual fashion of our present ships or barks, as also . . . it had nails of copper’, suggesting that it was of some antiquity. It was deemed not to be of Viking origin and the copper nails have led to the belief that the boat might even have dated to Roman times.55 A chequered ownership of the area ensued after the fourteenth century until the small settlement lying west of the burn that flowed into Loch Ryan passed to Ninian Adair in 1591 or 1592.56 The Adairs of Kinhilt were a family of Irish origin, having been in Scotland since the thirteenth century. With a policy of extending their lands in Wigtownshire, they gained possession in 1484 of the area to the east of the burn flowing into the loch. Here, a sister of Bishop Adair of Kinhilt founded, or possibly refounded, a chapel dedicated to St John. The land became known as the ‘Clachan of St John’ or ‘Chapel’ and it was here that the Adairs built an L-shaped tower house or castle – the Castle of St John – probably to function as a family home and administrative centre of the Adair estates. In the autumn of 1595 King James VI (1567–1625) gave Ninian Adair permission to create a burgh of barony on the land within his jurisdiction, with the right to have a provost, treasurer, dean of gild, bailies, councillors and other officers, along with burgesses and a burgh court. Further concessions followed: the burgesses were granted the right to ‘pak’ and ‘peill’ (buy and sell) and to erect a tolbooth and a market cross. They also might raise customs on both overland and sea-borne trade within their jurisdiction.57 This latter concession was reinforced the following March when Stranraer was granted the sole monopoly to trade within a radius of four miles, as the nearest royal burgh – Wigtown – was ‘twenty-four miles away’.58 (It was, in fact, twenty-six miles distant.) The threat posed to traditional mercantile monopolies enraged Wigtown and other royal burghs. By July 1596, the Wigtown representative to the Convention of Royal Burghs was complaining about the elevation of the ‘village’ of Stranraer.59 Three years later, such was the perceived threat from newly founded burghs of barony that the Convention forbade all free burghs and their

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Figure 4.4   Castle of St John, Stranraer, c. 1810, Anon. Built in the fifteenth century by the Adairs as their family home, it later served several functions including acting as the town prison. The poverty of parts of Stranraer in the nineteenth century is highlighted by the sturdiness of the castle.

burgesses to acknowledge new foundations. It was deemed that Stranraer and Maybole were encroaching on the liberties of Wigtown and Ayr respectively; trade with their inhabitants was forbidden on pain of a fine of £20 and they were to be treated at all times as unfree persons.60 Such efforts were not a stumbling block for Stranraer, according to its early burgh court book and first notaries’ protocol books.61 Ninian Adair was acting as provost, appointing other burghal officers and the burgh council as well as admitting burgesses. The tolbooth began functioning. The first reference is October 1597; a torn folio in the first burgh court book refers to the burgh court being held ‘in p . . .’ some time before October 1596. This would have read ‘in pretorio’ – in the tolbooth – so, within less than a year, the small burgh had a functioning burgh court book and its focal point, a tolbooth. It was also laid out on traditional lines with one main street and a back lane. Adair laid down rules and regulations for the smooth running of the burgh and set the burgh land, and sea and anchorage customs, to public roup. The commodities on which customs were raised show that Stranraer was dealing basically in raw agricultural produce – sheep, lambs, cows, oxen, horses, bacon, beef, wool, hemp, skins, butter and cheese, and oats and meal brought in by

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sea – as well as fish, in particular herring. Dressed and rough timber, some of it from Ireland, also passed through Stranraer’s market.62 The burgh court books also show clearly that craftsmen of varying trades brought stability to the town. It is significant that many of the regulations insisted upon by Adair were very much in line with traditional burgh practice. By October 1596, he decreed that the weights and measures were to be the same as those of Wigtown, but that was where conformity stopped – they were to bear his arms. Very much a reminder of the medieval fraternity practice of seeing a brother pass from this life to the next (see p. 82), it was laid down that if an indweller died all other inhabitants were to attend the funeral. A small proviso, however, stated that if the deceased was ‘of mein estait’ it would suffice merely to send a servant!63 Not all burgesses were resident when they received the privileges of burgessship; and it became clear that not all were taking up their responsibilities. Again, typical of medieval times, the council decreed in October 1598 that all burgesses must ‘cum and mak thair residence thairin’ or at least have their booths set up in the town before the next Whitsun on pain of loss of burgess-ship. Clearly, the order was not immediately successful as this was repeated in the December of the following year. In the event, there seems to have been only one deprived for failure to meet this stipulation, in October 1600.64 Evasion, however, continued to some extent. Gilbert Mure took an obligation in 1609, under the pain of a £100 fine (a huge amount, given that the annual income of a craftsman was about £40), that he would cease to practise ‘merchandrice’ unless he made himself ‘free’ – that is became a burgess and resided in the town.65 In spite of this successful setting-up of a burgh of barony, some time between 1603 and 1609 (the records are missing for these years) Ninian Adair demitted office as provost, and was replaced by his son William.66 Very soon the Adairs returned to their native Ireland; whether in disenchantment is unclear. But Stranraer continued in its small but viable way, being made a royal burgh in 1617, with all the rights it had as a baronial burgh confirmed and an enlarged territorial base. And, more importantly, it was established that since it was twenty-four miles (sic) from its nearest neighbouring burgh and as it was the port of Loch Ryan ‘for communication between Ireland and Scotland’ it was to be a free royal burgh, with the sole right to be a port on the loch.67 Wigtown remained adamant, continuing to object to Stranraer’s new status.68 As a result, Stranraer was not permitted to send a representative to the Convention of Royal Burghs until 1683, nor to parliament until 1685.69 But it had successfully, with persistence, established itself within the traditional burghal system in less than a hundred years.

III.  Urban clearances Just as new burghs began to proliferate, a number fell by the wayside, totally or partially. Roxburgh is the classic case of an ancient burgh that never truly

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recovered from the Wars of Independence; it lies beneath the ground – a prime archaeological resource. Rattray is one of the small burghs that declined, probably because it was not economically viable; and some early burghs disappeared because they were settled in the wrong places geographically (see p. 18). A further factor came in to play, however – the whim of the burgh superior. Standing archaeology on a walk in Dalkeith today gives immediate clues that there has been a tampering with the townscape. The old, medieval High Street, with its open market area, the remnants of the fourteenth-century collegiate church of St Nicholas, the seventeenth-century tolbooth and the nineteenth-century Corn Exchange are all reminders of the town’s historic past. But, continuing up the High Street, the road comes to an abrupt end. One is faced with gates set into a high stone wall – the so-called Duke’s Gate, now giving access to Dalkeith Park (see Fig. 4.5). There is no option but to veer to the right and follow the exaggerated curve of the wall down Musselburgh Road (see Fig. 4.6). The classic medieval town plan is lost. There are documentary clues to the reason for this bizarre layout. A 1556 reference to the resignation of a tenement on the south side of the High Street shows that this formality took place at the ‘green’ of Dalkeith and that the town green was ‘near the castle’.70 But the topography of Dalkeith is such that there is now no space for the town green near to the site of the castle; the only open space is between the Duke’s Gate and the palace, the site of the castle – the area behind the high wall, accessible only through the gates. When the lordship, barony and regality of Dalkeith was transferred to Francis, earl of Buccleuch, in 1642, it was described as: extensive lands, lordship, regality, town and burgh of barony and regality of Dalkeith with its liberties, with the castle, gardens, orchards, forests and parks, grain and cloth mills, fisheries, rabbit warrens, tenants, coal mines, prebendary and patronage of the collegiate church’.71

Figure 4.5   Dalkeith’s High Street comes to an abrupt end.

Figure 4.6   Musselburgh Road, veering south off High Street, Dalkeith.

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Twenty-two years later, when it passed to James, duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch, the lordship was similarly described but these policies around the castle were defined as ‘all the lands included within the stone dyke of the . . . park’.72 By 1664, at the latest, the castle and park were contained within a stone wall. Cartographic evidence is equally telling. Johann Blaeu’s mid-seventeenthcentury ‘Plan of Lothian and Linlitqvo’, based on Timothy Pont’s late-sixteenthcentury work, shows a route leading from Edinburgh, crossing the River North Esk and then passing to the South Esk, which is traversed by the Cow Bridge. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, the routeway is shown on plans as very much respecting the curving path of the current Musselburgh Road (see Fig. 4.7). Probably of most significance is the ‘Plan of Dalkeith’ executed by John Lesslie in 1770 (see Fig. 4.8). It highlights the abrupt end of the High Street, with Dalkeith Palace sitting in splendid isolation, surrounded by open space and formally laid-out gardens,

Figure 4.7   Plan of Dalkeith, 1822, John Wood.

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Figure 4.8   ‘Plan of Dalkeith, 1770’, John Lesslie.

and a small routeway emerging from this open space, leading to and crossing the South Esk by a bridge. If an imaginary line is drawn between the end of the High Street and this small routeway leading to the bridge, it suggests the logical continued line of the original High Street. But the street had been truncated to prevent access through the Dalkeith policies. Along with the High Street, the little bridge at the end and the ancient South Esk crossing – Cow Bridge – were no longer accessible. Neither was the town green. There is one piece of readily visible standing archaeological evidence that a part of old Dalkeith has been cleared away, and that is the blocked windows and doorways of houses set in the wall to the right of the Duke’s Gate – a poignant reminder that the homes of the townspeople were expendable when the privacy of the ducal policies was at stake? Proximity to the common people could cause irritation. The Duchess of Gordon in 1774 felt oppressed by the closeness of Fochabers, founded in 1559, and its townsfolk to Gordon Castle, even though a policy wall set a demarcation between the two. According to the duchess, this proved insufficient a barrier; she was even required to seek assistance to rid her environs of ‘three or four s[trumpet]s in Fochabers – who are notorious thieves and are become so impudent as to steal several things from the washing house and to skulk frequently about the castle’. The 4th Duke of Gordon instructed his architect, John Baxter of Edinburgh, to design a new town ‘square and compact’, the old being a straggling township stretching over three miles. On hearing of the intended ­relocation, many refused

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to leave their homes, but with no success.73 The old town was pulled down and the new was sited a mile further south, at a more seemly distance, with the first feus being taken up in 1776, leaving the Gordon palace in solitary splendour amidst 1,300 acres of deer park.74 Another ambitious aristocrat, the 3rd Duke of Argyll, began demolishing buildings set too close to his castle at Inveraray in the 1720s. By the 1740s, a ‘new town’ and a new castle, set well apart from each other, were planned. The process was more or less completed by the late 1770s, when the ancient burgh was relocated to a better harbour, at a seemly distance. 75 Other transplantations were equally brusque, if taking place a little later. It took the Earl of Seafield only a few years to resite the town of Cullen. It was a royal burgh which could trace its origins back to the late twelfth century but was deemed by Seafield to be a ‘swarm of worthless old houses’. On the basis of that opinion, it was shifted two miles to the shore to become a new settlement known as Seatown and Cullen in the early 1820s. This was to enable the earl to improve his estates. Only the burgh church remained in situ but, significantly and importantly for Seafield, his mansion, Cullen House, now stood in seemly isolation.76 Even when it was not possible physically to remove a township or part of it, other devices could be used to suit the whims of the elite. In effect, even though a settlement might exist, one could attempt to whitewash it from sight and thought. The old village of Edzell stood to the south of the tower house of Edzell. In the 1580s, at much the same time as David Lindsay, 11th Earl of Edzell, was planning a totally new town (see pp. 119–20), a quadrangle extension was erected to the north-east of his tower house. Apart from providing greatly enlarged accommodation, there was a further major advantage: the principal windows faced away from the irritant of the nearby populace.77 Although he had failed to relocate the village, he had succeeded in erasing it from his mind’s eye. Attempts to disengage physically and emotionally from a nearby populace would continue into the nineteenth century. In 1844, the island of Lewis was purchased by Mr James Matheson. His investment brought significant benefits  to the town of Stornoway. Extensive building works at the harbour on new quays, in particular the Big Quay and the New Quay, came at his expense. Water and gas companies were set up. Education was improved with a ‘ragged’ school for the poorer children of the town and with an Industrial Female School, still standing in Keith Street, which helped local employment. The islanders were greatly helped by Matheson during the initial years of famine which lasted from 1845 to 1850: tenants were employed on trenching and the building of roads, quays and dykes. Also offered was free transport on Matheson’s private boat, the Mary Jane, to the Lowlands for temporary employment. Oatmeal and potatoes were imported and sold at 25 per cent of the real cost, debited to rentals due and repayable later by cash or labour. Cheap labour did, of course, benefit Matheson.

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Figure 4.9   The Lews estate set at a distance from the town of Stornoway; Stornoway, 1819, William Daniell.

These good works did not extend to a close personal relationship between Matheson and his tenants and townspeople. This would have been quite acceptable to the nineteenth-century mind: everyone knew their position. From 1847 a new Matheson residence was under construction, using local workforce, on the site of the old Seaforth Lodge (see Fig. 4.9). This was a secluded site, set well away from the town. But to ensure further privacy and adequate policies around this new Lews Castle, any settlement in the vicinity was removed, and lands where the Stornoway people had been accustomed to over-winter their cattle were enclosed and afforested. To reach their new stately home from the harbour, the family took a route that encircled the town; it was later called Mathieson Road. To the west of this road there are the remnants of a high stone wall. This may have been built as a boundary wall at the end of feus. Many local people felt, rather, that this was a deliberate physical obstruction so that the Mathiesons might shield their eyes from the town and afford their drive a measure of privacy. Whatever the motive for the construction, it served to increase the sense of difference and apartness.78 Many other examples of manufactured privacy by the elite may be found throughout Scotland.

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IV.  A slow disappearance Some towns disappeared at a more subtle rate. This might result from natural wastage or more devious motives. Hamilton, which had already fallen foul of natural topography (see p. 18), was to experience both. The ‘lower town of Hamilton’ or ‘Nethertoun’ in the later sixteenth and seventeenth century housed 13.6 per cent of the residents in the town, but by the beginning of the eighteenth century this fell to a mere 1 per cent.79 Some of their dwellings remained  partially standing until the end of the eighteenth century, being referred to in  1787  as ‘the hovels in the four paddocks which lie upon the south side of the moat hill’80 – the motte where the original settlement of Hamilton, or Cadzow, had been established. Interestingly, an old man who had served the Duke of Hamilton as a boy in the early nineteenth century remembered houses still standing and was able in the autumn months to trace the lines of the old streets and property boundaries by the early fading of the grass over the foundations.81 This local  knowledge of the lost Nethertoun died with the old man. The precise reason for the demise of the Nethertoun of Hamilton is as yet unknown, but it is not insignificant that Anne, duchess of Hamilton, as part of her ‘great design’ to transform Hamilton Palace, which had begun in 1684, availed herself of sixty-three cartloads of stone from demolished houses in the old settlement.82 Hamilton Palace dominated the townscape, even before the major additions and expensive ornamentation of the great design. But one of the main factors for this dominance was its sheer visibility: the palace was sited on the High Street, in the middle of the upper Hamilton settlement called the Hietoun, on the main route from the tolbooth to the collegiate church, the school, the common green and the ferry crossing and ford across the Clyde. Indeed so close to the townspeople was the ducal family that, according to one local, unreliable legend, an old lady could lean out of her bedroom window and shake hands with the duchess in hers. Even allowing for exaggeration there is no doubt that palace and town were in close proximity. This was to change. The tolbooth with its exterior staircase, standing at the head of the Hietoun, acted as a minor obstruction to the comings and goings to and from the palace. The duchess requested the removal of the external staircase, which would make the first-floor entrance inaccessible and necessitate the construction of a new main entry which had to be of internal design. This was effected at the town’s expense.83 It was a sign of things to come. The common green, which the townspeople used for grazing, stood between the palace and the Clyde and there would have been regular animal and human traffic in front of the palace.84 It is perhaps not surprising to find recorded that the duchess and her husband ‘for enlarging of their yeards, and for other conveniences about the palace of Hamilton, had taken in the common green . . . extending to two acres

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or thereby’. Having already appropriated about one acre of the common muir north of the town into their Laigh Park, they offered recompense. The town council was given in exchange a tract of land, the Doucat Acre, on the banks of the Cadzow Burn as a new common green.85 To reach it, the townspeople would pass nowhere near the palace. The valuation roll of the burgh in 1705 is telling. Total valuation was assessed at £2,333; the duchess’s individual valuation ‘for houses and burgh acres purchased by her’ was £389 11s 2d.86 The duchess was clearly intent on expansion  of her demesne, a policy, the records make it clear, she continued to pursue. In 1707, for example, she exchanged property at a distance from the palace with the land and pertinents of one James Mack, nearer her place of residence.87 The duchess’s great design to extend and beautify her palace and policies went further. She entered into a deal with the town council that, on condition that she built another, she might demolish the school beside the church ‘for her conveniency’ as it was ‘near to her grace’s gardens’. This she had achieved by 1714.88 The new school was sited west of the tolbooth in an under-developed part of the town that became called New School Wynd and, later, Grammar School Square. The schoolchildren no longer passed in front of her palace and their noise was kept at a discreet distance (see Fig. 4.10). But she had further plans. She intended to

Figure 4.10   Hamilton School.

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build a new parish church beside the school and so end the townspeople using the collegiate church. In the event, her death left this latest clearance merely a plan. But she was ably followed by her grandson, the 5th Duke of Hamilton. He continued the removal of properties from around the palace. Rental rolls and the burgh records in 1734 and 1735 show that ground and houses were systematically being bought up at the east end of the town, along and near Hietoun.89 Two years earlier, in 1732, he fulfilled the dream of Duchess Anne and had a new church constructed to a design of William Adam (see Fig. 4.11). The old collegiate church was demolished apart from one transept, which, as it was the burial place of the Dukes of Hamilton, was left intact until it was replaced in the nineteenth century by the present mausoleum. The duke decided that the new church should be placed further up the hill than the new school, on the site of the former horse market. As such, it stood well outside settlement and was approached by a path only a yard wide. The records show that this was a part of the deliberate policy on the part of the duke to attract the population up the hill, away from the Hietoun. The plan was successful; land was set up to feu on the line of the path in 1751 and thus

Figure 4.11   The old Hamilton Parish Church, once isolated, now stands in the centre of town.

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began Church Street.90 A measure of this success may be seen on the ground today. The Adam church still stands, not in quiet isolation but in the centre of a throbbing town. The culmination of relocation was, however, slow in coming. Thomas Barns’ view of Hamilton, drawn in 1781, shows that some of the tofts on the north side of the road above the school had been taken up but were still at a distance from the church (see Fig. 4.12). As late as 1824, John Wood’s plan reveals how sparingly development had crept up the hill. But it does highlight dramatically the splendid isolation of the palace (see Fig. 4.13). The ducal schemes were not yet concluded. It suited them well that the Clyde  Bridge was built further downriver – the death knell of the old Hamilton ferry – and the last ferry boats were put up to public roup in 1781.91 John Burrell, the agriculturist, was responsible for the Hamilton estates and  soon organised a vast improvement scheme, not only in the field of land consolidation and crop rotation but also in the tenurial system.92 By the end of the eighteenth century, the policy of the Dukes of Hamilton of consolidating their estates and clearing the townspeople from their doorstep had proved highly successful. Paddocks surrounded the moat hill and were laid out at the Nethertoun, suggesting this was no longer remotely a residential area; Burrell’s manuscript Journal in 1788 speaks of ongoing ‘trenching, and digging out the founds of the old houses’; fencing and new plantations were springing up and by 1796 potatoes were being grown in the now disused boathouse yard. But most telling of all is the entry in Burrell’s manuscript Journal of 2 June 1797: posts, boards and lettering were obtained for three notices ‘against trespassing within the policy’.93 An assiduous policy of purchasing property by the ducal family had been difficult to resist. In spite of the disrepair of the Clyde Bridge and mismanagement by the family, the town was persuaded in 1812 to accept a new, improved,  but  longer route to the bridge. The 9th duke thus became proprietor  of the old public way to the ferry. The few remaining buildings left standing in Hietoun were demolished and a gate was erected, barring access. One small rump of the Hietoun was left standing – the tolbooth. When alternative accommodation was  found – conveniently further up the hill to the west – the tolbooth, apart from the steeple with its clock and bell, was sold to the 10th duke. For twelve years the steeple remained the property of the town council, until in 1846 this was also sold to the duke since the town and council had ‘always been desirous of accommodating his grace’. The frontages of the Hietoun houses still stood but with windows and doors blocked, forming a high wall between the town and the ducal policies. Only the gated entrance to Hietoun remained as a reminder of the old settlement. One morning, the townspeople woke to find that this too was walled up.94 The old town of Hamilton had gone (see Fig. 4.14).

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Figure 4.12   A Plan of Hamilton, 1781, by Thomas Barns, reveals the gradual removal of settlement from around the palace.

Figure 4.13   Hamilton Palace stands in splendid isolation: Plan of the Town of Hamilton, 1819, John Wood.

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Figure 4.14   The wall surrounding the Hamilton Palace policies, with the truncated remains of the tolbooth embedded. It too would be demolished. The Hietoun of Hamilton had disappeared.

Notes   1. A. Ballard, ‘The theory of the Scottish burgh’, SHR, xiii (1916), 22; G. S. Pryde (ed.), The Burghs of Scotland: a Critical List (London, 1965), nos 25–6, 51–7.   2. Pryde, Burghs, nos 59–79. Burghs of barony were those held of a lord, whether a layman or an ecclesiastic, as opposed to the crown; burghs of regality were held of a lord whose jurisdiction over his lands equalled that of the king, apart possibly from commercial rights.   3. W. M. Mackenzie, The Scottish Burgh (Edinburgh, 1949), 81; RCRBS, i, 32. The Convention of Royal Burghs was made up of representatives of the royal burghs, supplemented by members from the early ecclesiastical burghs of barony and from

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burghs that had certain royal privileges and contributed to burghal taxation. The purpose of this body was to protect the rights of its members from external encroachment, encourage uniformity amongst burghs, assess the level of taxation to be paid by each member and supervise merchandise and trade. See also the introduction to A. R. MacDonald and M. Verschuur (eds), Record of the Convention of Royal Burghs, 1555, 1631–48 (SHS, 2009), esp. 1–26.   4. I. H. Adams, ‘The salt industry of the Forth Basin’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 81, part 3 (1965), 153–62.   5. I. H. Adams, The Making of Urban Scotland (London, 1978), 53.   6. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Musselburgh: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey 1996), 35.   7. RSS, iv, no. 1744; RMS, iv, no. 720.   8. Pryde, Burghs, nos 357, 380 and 212.   9. RMS, xi, no. 123; Pryde, Burghs, no. 353. 10. RMS, v, no. 934; APS, iii, 584–6. 11. RMS, xi, no. 123; Pryde, Burghs, no. 380. 12. T. C. Smout, Scottish Trade on the Eve of Union, 1660–1707 (Edinburgh, 1963), 138. 13. NRS, B48/16/11, Letter from Linlithgow Council to Lord Lauderdale; RCRB, iii, 138. 14. Smout, Scottish Trade, 138; A. MacDonald, Linlithgow in Pictures (London, 1932), 17. 15. RCRB, iii, 572, 615; iv, 19, 254; Smout, Scottish Trade, 138. 16. NRS, B48/9/4, Linlithgow Town Council Minute Book, 1673–94, 1 November 1679. 17. ‘Register containeing the state and condition of every burgh within the kingdome of Scotland, in the year 1692’, in J. D. Marwick (ed.), Miscellany of the Scottish Burgh Records Society (Edinburgh, 1881), 68–9; E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Linlithgow: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2000), 36. 18. See I. D. Whyte, Scotland Before the Industrial Revolution (London, 1995), maps on pp. 180, 181. 19. Brechin Reg., i, no. 1; see also Pryde, Burghs, no. 87. The céli Dé, or Culdees, were introduced into Scotland in the ninth or tenth centuries and by the twelfth century formed sub-units within larger monasteries or lived in monasteries of their own. 20. RRS, no. 64; A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975), 470–1. 21. RMS, iv, no. 1988. The full extent of encroachment on royal burghs’ privileges has been underestimated, partly because mere grants of new fairs are not listed in Pryde, Burghs, only the establishment of burghs of barony or regality which typically enjoyed the right to hold one or more fairs. 22. Mackenzie, Scottish Burgh, 92. 23. RPC, 2nd series, ii, 409. 24. J. Gordon of Rothiemay, Abredoniae Utriusque Descriptio 1660, ed. C. Innes (Spalding Club, 1842), 5. 25. APS, viii, 439–40.

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26. W. Purves (ed.), Revenue of the Scottish Crown (Edinburgh, 1897), 200. 27. G. Bain, History of Nairnshire (Nairn, 1893), 247; E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Nairn: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1999), 21–2. 28. APS, vii, app. 96. 29. R. Renwick (ed.), Charters and other Documents relating to the Royal Burgh of Stirling (Glasgow, 1884), no. lviii. 30. APS, iv, 477; iv, 482; iv, 610; vii, 77; vii, 532, for example. 31. RPC, iii, 521. 32. ‘Report by Thomas Tucker upon the settlement of the revenues of excise and customs in Scotland, ad MDCLXVI’, in Miscellany of the Scottish Burgh Records Society, ed. D. Marwick (Scottish Burgh Records Society, 1881), 1–48. 33. Ibid., 51–157. 34. D. B. Morris, The Stirling Merchant Gild and Life of John Cowane (Stirling, 1919), 66. 35. M. Wood (ed.), Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1642–55 (Edinburgh, 1938), 124. 36. Stirling Recs, 248; W. B. Cook and D. B. Morris (eds), The Stirling Guildry Book: Extracts from the Records of the Merchant Guild of Stirling (Stirling, 1916), 72. 37. Cook and Morris, Stirling Guildry Book, 73. 38. APS, vii, 557–8. 39. RCRBS, iv, 241. 40. H. M. Paton et al. (eds), Accounts of the Masters of Works for Building and Repairing Royal Palaces and Castles, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1957–82), ii, 198, 446; RMS, iv, no. 2035; ix, no. 2035; A. Barty, The History of Dunblane (Stirling, 1944), 122, 125; D. Christison, ‘The carvings and inscriptions on the kirkyard monuments of the Scottish Lowlands’, PSAS, 361 (1901–2). 41. SBRS Miscellany, 59–60; M. Lynch, ‘Introduction’, in M. Lynch (ed.), The Early Modern Town in Scotland (London, 1987), 25. See I. D. Whyte, Agriculture and Society in Seventeenth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1979), map on p. 191. 42. ‘Register containeing the state and condition of every burgh within the kingdome of Scotland’, 56–156; I. D. Whyte, ‘The occupational structure of Scottish burghs in the late seventeenth century’, in Lynch, Early Modern Town, 220. 43. M. Lynch, ‘Perth’, in The Oxford Companion to Scottish History, ed. M. Lynch (Oxford, 2001), 476. 44. T. C. Smout, ‘Goat-keeping in the old Highland economy’, Scottish Studies, 9 (1965), 186–9. 45. Dennison and Coleman, Historic Musselburgh, 36; E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Dalkeith: the Archaeological Implications of Development (1998), 35; Whyte, ‘Occupational structure’, 231–2. 46. M. Wood (ed.), Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1626–41 (Edinburgh, 1936), 48.

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47. RCRBS, iii, 258; E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Stornoway: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1997), 22. 48. Dennison and Coleman, Historic Stornoway, 66. 49. D. Defoe, A Tour through Great Britain (1725) (reissued 1983), iii, 215–17. 50. T. C. Smout, ‘The early Scottish sugar houses, 1660– 1720’, Economic History Review, xiv (1961–2), 241–3. 51. J. D. Marwick, Edinburgh Crafts and Guilds (Edinburgh,1909), iii, 112, 173. 52. Whyte, ‘The occupational structure of Scottish burghs’, 227–8. 53. F. D. Bardgett, Scotland Reformed: The Reformation in Angus and the Mearns (Edinburgh, 1989), 152–3; E. P. Dennison, S. Eydman, A. Lyell, M. Lynch and S. Stronach, Painting the Town: Scottish Urban History in Art (Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2013), no. 36. 54. RMS, i, no. 551, appendix ii, Robert I, index A, no. 610. 55. A. Symson, ‘A history of Galloway’ (1684), printed in W. Mackenzie, The History of Galloway (Kirkcudbright, 1841), 83; E. P. D. Torrie and R. Coleman, Historic Stranraer: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1995), 49; 12–13 contains information on Roman presence in the Stranraer area. 56. Torrie and Coleman, Historic Stranraer, 15; ER, xiv, Appendix, Libri Responsionum, 537; Anon., The Castle of St John (Wigtown District Museum Service, n.d.), 4. 57. RMS, i, no. 366. 58. NRS, MS Stair Muniments, GD/135/1–2. 59. RCRBS, i, 483. 60. RCRBS, ii, 54. 61. Stranraer Museum, MS Stranraer Burgh Court Book, 1596–1672, ST/1/1/0; MS Protocol Book of John Glover, 1588–1618, ST/1/7/0; MS Protocol Book of William Gairdner, 1596–1617, ST/1/7/5. 62. MS ST/1/1/0, passim. 63. MS ST/1/1/0, 26 October 1596. 64. MS ST/1/1/0, October 1600. 65. RCRBS, ii, 280–1. 66. MS ST/1/1/0, 17 January 1609. 67. RMS, vii, no. 1665. 68. RCRBS, iii, 70; RPC, v, 594; RCRBS, iv, 39. 69. Pryde, Burghs, no. 71. 70. J. Anderson (ed.), Calendar of the Laing Charters, 854–1837 (Edinburgh, 1899), 170, no. 653. 71. RMS, ix, no. 1191; see also NRS, GD 150/644, Morton Papers. 72. RMS, xi, no. 673. 73. Adams, Making of Urban Scotland, 68; Gordon Castle Papers (NRS, GD44/52/39–40). 74. R. Gibson, The Scottish Countryside: its Changing Face, 1700–2000 (Edinburgh, 2007), 105–8.

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75. I. G. Lindsay and M. Cosh, Inveraray and the Dukes of Argyll (Edinburgh, 1973), 23, 28; B Harris and C. McKean, The Scottish Town in the Age of Enlightenment, 1740–1820 (Edinburgh, 2014), 43. 76. M. Lynch, ‘Introduction’, in Dennison et al., Painting the Town, 19; Adams, Making of Urban Scotland, 68, 70. 77. W. Douglas Simpson, ‘Edzell Castle’, PSAS, 65 (1930–1), 130–1, 134. 78. Dennison and Coleman, Historic Stornoway, 34–6. An alternative oral tradition is that the wall was erected to mark the boundary of the feus behind. 79. E. P. D. Torrie and R. Coleman, Historic Hamilton: the Archaeological Implications of Development (1996), 21; The Commissariot Record of Hamilton and Campsie: Register of Testaments, 1564–1800, ed. F. J. Grant (SRS, 1898), passim, 54. 80. OSA, vii, 377; Duchy of Hamilton Estate Papers on loan to Hamilton District Library, South Lanarkshire Council, Leisure and Culture, ‘Journal of John Burrell, 1787–90’ (631.1), 33. 81. A. G. Miller, Municipal Hamilton (n.p., n.d.), 8. 82. R. K. Marshall, The Days of Duchess Anne (East Linton, 2000), 192. 83. Millar, Municipal Hamilton, 33. 84. MS Charter, 23 October 1475, in keeping of Hamilton District Museum, South Lanarkshire Council, Leisure and Culture. 85. MS Hamilton Burgh Records, 1642–99 (Hamilton District Library, L.352.041.R783), 22 August 1695. 86. MS Hamilton Council Minute Book, 1701–1735 (Hamilton District Library, L.352{4143.HAM}), 28 April 1705. 87. MS Hamilton Burgh Records, 1700–1707 (Hamilton District Library, L.352.041. R784), 13 August 1307. 88. Typescript, Hamilton Burgh Records, by A. G. Miller (Hamilton District Library, R108.L352), 17–18. 89. MS Hamilton Town Council Minute Book, 1701–35 (Hamilton District Library, Valuation roll 1734, L.352{4143HAM}); MS Hamilton Burgh Records, 1700–1707 (Hamilton District Library, L.352.041.R784), 20 September 1735. 90. Miller, Municipal Hamilton, 79. 91. Ibid., 13. 92. T. M. Devine, The Transformation of Rural Scotland (Edinburgh, 1994), 105–6. 93. Duchy of Hamilton Estate Papers on Loan to Hamilton District Library: MS Journal of John Burrell, 1787–90 (631.1), 5; MS Journal of John Burrell, 1793–96 (631.1), 13; Journal, 1787–90, 125; Journal, 1793–96, 108; MS Journal of John Burrell, 1796–97 (631.1), 34; Journal 1796–97, 141. 94. Miller, Municipal Hamilton, 30–1.

5

Man-made and Natural Disasters, 1550–1750

T

he years from 1550 to 1750 were years of profound change. Towns were hit hard by both warfare and natural disasters. There were three reasons why they took the brunt of war. In the first instance, they were a taxable commodity, already paying a hugely disproportionate percentage of national taxation, a sixth, and in wartime, they were the readiest source of funds. Second, towns could provide manpower for the battlefield, most burgesses already having a rudimentary military training through regular wappinschaws (see p. 68). And third, towns could be forced to offer both quarter and supplies for troops – essential commodities in a prolonged but shifting war zone. While coping with the man-made disasters of war and occupation, towns had also to face a series of natural disasters which made life harsh in the good times but almost insuperable in the bad.

I.  War and occupation in the seventeenth century Taxation rose considerably from the 1620s and was throughout Scotland one of the main objections to royal policy. The underlying economic and financial disaffection was brought to a head by what were perceived to be the alarming religious and political manoeuvrings of Charles I (1625–49). The crown’s attempts to reintroduce a form of Episcopalian worship brought a lively response from the burghs. The first body to approve the National Covenant, opposing the king’s religious innovations, was the Convention of Royal Burghs at Stirling in August 1638. The consensus went further, decreeing that no one should be entered as a burgess or be a representative as a burgh commissioner to the Convention unless he subscribed the Covenant.1 Some burghs had already shown their disapproval of crown policy. Maybole parishioners as early as September 1637 set up a petition of objection to the purchase and use of the new prayer book imposed by the crown.2 Not all burghs, however, were so quick to express their grievances. Many initially played a waiting

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game to see how Edinburgh would react, although a few – Glasgow, Stirling, Ayr, Dumbarton, Irvine and Cupar – declared on their own initiative. Once Edinburgh defected from the crown, the floodgates opened and most burghs subscribed the Covenant. A few needed persuasion to sign, with Covenanting delegates visiting St Andrews, Inverness, Forres and Elgin. Aberdeen held firm against signing, with disastrous consequences. Scotland was at war. James Gordon, writing in 1661, summed up the hurt inflicted on urban society, but in particular on Old and New Aberdeen: ‘The civill warrs did overrun all’ but ‘there wes no citie in Scotland which did suffer more hurt then Aberdeen did, nor oftener’ (see Fig. 5.1).3 The crisis had come to a head in 1644. Brave attempts were made by the townspeople to protect their homes. The

Figure 5.1   A Description of New and Old Aberdeen, 1661 (detail): James Gordon of Rothiemay.

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town ports were strengthened, the small gates leading from the backlands to the burgh crofts beyond were sealed, and chains and iron rods – ‘catbands’  – were stretched across streets to repel horses. Stockpiling of gunpowder and grain was organised. And all – men, women and even children – took part in strengthening the town boundaries: planks were set up along the burgh marsh at the north-west of the town (New Aberdeen) to protect musketeers; and in the north-east, where it was felt that the defences were more vulnerable, everyone set to digging a perimeter ditch. Any men not digging were busy drilling in preparation for attack. One of the problems was that there were always both royalists and Covenanters in Aberdeen in sufficient numbers that the town could not commit to either side and, more importantly, neither side trusted the other. The net results were crippling demands for materials and money, and continued military occupations by both sides.4 By the time of the execution of Charles I in January 1649, the town’s losses were £1,582,910; many of those who had once paid taxes had fled abroad; high prices added to the shattered economy; the plaiding industry had hit rock bottom; and plague had struck in 1647–8, hand in hand with harvest failure. The exactions Aberdeen suffered were to be a harbinger of what many towns would experience over the years of civil war and their aftermath – occupation by rival forces, free quartering of troops, plundering or exaction of goods and money, destruction of property, loss of trade, conscription and flight from the town. Little Forfar stood firm for the king. It showed its sympathies clearly on 1 February 1639 when James Graham, 5th Earl of Montrose, as the Royalist colonel for Forfarshire and Perthshire, arrived in the town. All in the tolbooth refused to sign the Covenant. Forfar would later reaffirm its allegiance by claiming that the townspeople were not subject to any authority but that of the crown as ‘thay wer all the kingis men’.5 In spite of financial deprivation, the town remained largely for the royalist cause throughout the civil war. It was reported of Forfar that it had been ‘very famous for [its] loyaltie especiallie in that base transaction when King Charles the first of ever blessed memorie was delivered over by our Scots Parliament to the Inglish at Newcastle’.6 The stenting of towns for supply caused financial hardship for Forfar and others. In 1645 and the following year, Forfar’s quota was £54; its larger neighbours were assessed more highly: Arbroath £90, Brechin £180, Montrose £477 and Dundee £1,674. By 1647, however, these sums were reduced ‘because sundry shires, or parts thereof, [were] burnt, wasted or so ruined that they [were] not able to make real and ready payment’. Forfar was assessed at £27, Arbroath £81, Brechin £120, Montrose £324 and Dundee £1,200. The next year’s figures were the same, but because of ‘burnt and wasted lands’ some could not even meet these  reduced quotas and Forfar paid a mere £8. Along with these financial demands, there was the added pressure of quartering of troops. Irish militia were billeted in 1649 and Forfar appealed to parliament ‘craving Colonel Innes’s

Man-made and Natural Disasters, 1550–1750   141

Regiment be removed from the . . . town and that, in regard not only of the oppressions, plunderings, local and transient quarterings endured by the . . . town, but also the scarcity of both meat and fuel’.7 The burgh records of the 1640s reveal catalogues of disasters throughout the country. Kilsyth suffered, as many small towns, because of its strategic position; it was on the route between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Local place names, such as Bullet Knowe and Slaughter Howe, are grim reminders of the battle in August 1645 just to the east of Kilsyth between the royalist troops of the Earl of Montrose and those of the Covenanters under Lieutenant-General William Baillie. It was said that the bones of the fallen continued to be found on the site well into the nineteenth century (now disappeared under the reservoir for the Forth and Clyde Canal).8 The churchyard at Mauchline became renowned as the meeting place for the ‘Holy Fair’, a series of open-air services followed by a Protestant communion. Such gatherings involved hundreds of people, with services lasting from Saturday to Monday; in 1648 one was supported by eight ministers and 2,000 worshippers.9 The Engagement, a treaty concluded in clandestine circumstances in December 1647 between the king and the more moderate wing of Covenanting opinion, split loyalties.10 Throughout Ayrshire there was objection to this agreement which intended to send an army into England to defend the interests of Charles I against parliament, in return for introducing the Presbyterian form of church government into England. On 11 June 1648, a large communion was held at Mauchline Kirk, attended by hundreds who were either awaiting or avoiding enforced conscription into the Engagement army. To combat this gathering Colonel James Turner and Major-General John Middleton convened about 3,600 horse and foot at Paisley. The following day, the so-called Battle of Mauchline Muir took place. Accounts vary, but it does seem that, although many were wounded, deaths were probably in the tens rather than hundreds. The subsequent Engagement court-martial acted leniently in the hope of avoiding future resistance but this could not bring Mauchline into conformity. Indeed, the ‘slashing communicants’ formed the nucleus of the Whiggamore Raid, a coup of an ultra-Protestant minority who took control in Edinburgh the following September after the failure of the Engagement.11 Nairn suffered both financially and physically. By May 1648, Elgin, Nairn and Inverness south were supposed to furnish 1,500 foot and 120 horse for the militia, but in acknowledgement of its poverty-stricken state, Nairn was exempted two-thirds of its portion.12 The following year, the costs of maintenance for the month of February alone were: Nairn sheriffdom 315 merks, Nairn burgh 36 merks, Elgin shire 1,890 merks, Elgin burgh 135 merks, Aberdeenshire 6,543 merks and Aberdeen burgh 1,260 merks.13 It was subsequently decided that Nairn should be forgiven its share of maintenance since it had been ‘wasted and burned by James Graham [Earl of Montrose] and his adherents’ and the

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town was ­‘disabled to pay  their monthly maintenance’.14 Montrose, after the battle of Auldearn, had chased the Covenanters as far as Nairn, taking no prisoners, and the town was burned.15 In spite of its destitution and further exemptions from payment of maintenance, Nairn was again billeted with Irish officers in November 1649 for a month.16 In 1643 Linlithgow paid £12 13s 4d for the sustenance of the marquis of Argyll’s Covenanting regiment, and in the October of that year alone the accounts for quartering a horse regiment reached £368 6s 2d. June 1644 saw an overnight stay of only forty-five or so men of Argyll’s Life Guard of Horse but their quartering charges to the town amounted to £40 11s 4d. The town witnessed harsh treatment of the camp followers of Montrose after his defeat at the battle of Philiphaugh in 1645. Those who escaped the massacre were rounded up by the Covenanters and brought to Linlithgow where they were hurled off the bridge over the Avon. The survivors of the fifty-foot (16.5-metre) drop who  tried to swim to the banks were forced back by pikemen until they drowned.17 In January 1647, a further unit was billeted on the town, again at Linlithgow’s cost. These quarterings were merely a smidgeon of the pattern of billeting, which caused such severe financial and physical hardship for the townspeople.18 Even when a burgh played only a minor role in the Civil War it was not necessarily immune from retribution. Beyond paying its cash levy to parliament to support the Covenanting army, Tain took little part in the military effort. It was to pay for this financially. In September 1648, Hugh Rose of Kilravock, sheriff of Inverness and a keen Engager, landed in the town with a force of about hundred foot and thirty-five horse, accusing the burgh authorities of failing to support the Engagement forces in their unsuccessful move into England. His men were billeted on the town for four days and nights without any payment or damages for destroyed crops and grazings. On receiving complaints at this treatment, Kilravock merely issued a warrant that his men should receive maintenance from the town for three months.19 In straitened circumstances, the town appealed for support to the Convention of Royal Burghs in 1649 as it had done two years previously.20 In the spring of 1650 Tain was again supporting an army, on this occasion five troops of horse and 400 infantry, assembled to counter Montrose who had landed in Caithness and was proclaiming the new, exiled king, Charles II (1649–85). In the event, this army was victorious, Montrose was captured and lodged at Tain before his departure for Inverness and execution in Edinburgh.21 The prosperity of individual towns plummeted in diverse ways during this time. Kirkcaldy was the registration port for ships of all burghs between Aberdour and Crail (see Fig. 5.2). There is a tradition that Kirkcaldy itself lost ninety-four ships between 1644 and 1660. Whether or not this claim was an exaggeration, it is clear from the records that shipping and trade suffered. Between 1640 and

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Figure 5.2   Kirkcaldy from the North, 1838, Anon. This view shows the harbour recovered from its seventeenth-century desolate state. Linen was being established in the town and there was a reinvigorated sea trade in whaling and shipbuilding. Substantial houses can be seen beside the port and, interestingly, the townspeople had found a solution to their truncated plots by digging into the raised beach, giving themselves elongated tofts.

1644, approximately a hundred ships were registered at Kirkcaldy. By 1650, only twenty-six appear on the register and by 1656 this number had sunk to twelve. It seems that the government assessment of 1668 was correct: ‘almost all the ships and vessels belonging to HM subjects of Scotland were during the last usurpation taken, brunt or destroyed’.22 The 1650s brought for some a level of stability, but for many others further hardship and suffering. Dunbar was amongst those that took the brunt. Hearing of the approach of Oliver Cromwell with his forces, the town council sent their burgh’s records and the archive of many previous generations to the Bass Rock for safekeeping. The boat sank en route.23 David Leslie, the ablest of the Covenanting generals, forced Cromwell and his troops back from the welldefended capital to the east coast. In an attempt to gain a safe harbour to receive essential supplies, Cromwell descended on Dunbar, only to advance again and a month later be forced back. The town was occupied, Cromwell, according to local tradition, staying at the Old Ship Inn (later, the ‘Cuckoo Wrasse’) down beside the harbour (see Fig. 3.1).24 Leslie thus contained Cromwell’s starving army, hemmed in as it was by the Lammermuir Hills and the sea. But Leslie’s authority was undermined by a committee of zealot ministers, and he was disastrously persuaded to abandon his advantageous strategic position. On

144   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

3 September 1650, battle ensued with the death of 4,000 Scots and over 10,000 prisoners taken.25 Cromwell and his troops did little structural damage to the town but most of the town’s shipping was commandeered26 and the imposition of fighting men and horse for free quarter took a heavy toll on the town. Pillage and destruction of crops added to personal misery. A 1651 list of damages gave accounts of losses where private individuals were invited to place claims for compensation. Some of the claims highlight how even the poorest in the town were affected, although the value of the goods was doubtless exaggerated. Maus Ferguson noted £31 0s 0d for the loss of six hens, some sheets and meal; Janet Dunbar claimed £40 1s 0d for the theft of £3 and all her ‘wearing clothes’; Edward Muir demanded a little more for the theft of one pig. The financial loss of others was far higher. William Cockburn’s claim of £3,282 2s 0d and Thomas Purves’s staggering £12,020 are sure indication not only of the deprivations felt by the town, but also of men of some substance in Dunbar. The town authorities estimated that their total losses, quarterings and cess had cost them £134,638 2s 8d. Inflated or not, the impact was huge.27 After the cat-and-mouse manoeuvres which ended with his decisive victory at the battle of Dunbar, Cromwell and his troops occupied Musselburgh, totally overwhelming the local people. The Links and Stoneyhill were lined with the tents of the troops, the foot on the Links and the cavalry at Inveresk, horses were stabled at St Michael’s Church, officers resided at Newbigging and Cromwell himself took up residence at Inveresk House. A counter-attack by General David Leslie temporarily relieved Musselburgh, but the parish was left wasted and exhausted by impositions.28 By December 1650, the English army had control of Scotland south of the Forth, with Edinburgh and Leith occupied. One leading Covenanter, Sir John Hope of Craighall, felt matters were so dire that he advised that the south of Scotland should be abandoned permanently to the English. Dalkeith, being near the centre of the storm, was hit hard. St Nicholas Church was used for a barracks and stabling for horses (see Fig. 5.3). The area was suspected of harbouring royalists. Cromwell himself wrote to the governor of Borthwick Castle in 1650 that ‘one nest of mosstroopers, not far off in the Dalkeith region, ought specially to be abated’.29 The palace was plundered; the scale of damage is difficult to establish. One clue may lie in the 1654 lease of it and its surrounding parkland by the Cromwellian officer who was later to become Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, General Monck. This five-year lease stipulated a rental of £110 for the parkland and a mere 3d annually for the palace (see Fig. 4.7).30 Dalkeith was billeted with troops throughout the Protectorate and after, until 1669, and then intermittently over the next decade.31 It was claimed in the records of the Privy Council that the tenants of the Duke of Buccleuch had been ‘unequally quartered upon, any part of the country

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Figure 5.3   St Nicholas Parish Church, Dalkeith. A daughter of General Monck was buried here, during his occupation of Dalkeith Palace.

aside’.32 Quartering followed in 1684, 1685, 1688 and 1690.33 The draining of material and emotional resources was extreme, bequeathing to Dalkeith, as to many others, a potentially impoverished future. It was not solely the south of Scotland that succumbed to the Cromwellian forces. The battle of Inverkeithing in 1651 led the way north. Perth and Stirling fell, to be followed by Dundee and Aberdeen. Unparalleled ferocity seems to have accompanied the attack on Dundee. Monck permitted his New Model Army a reward of twenty-four hours to loot, perhaps because they had not been paid, but it was longer before they could be brought under control. Estimates of the deaths vary, a nineteenth-century account relating earlier information claiming ‘the number, be estimatioun of wyse men, wes about ten or eleven hundredth, beside four or five hundredth prissoneris . . . sevin scoir women and young chyldrene were also killed’.34 Others have argued for significantly fewer. In the ­following eight months, 159 babies were born, twenty-five of them to posthumous fathers, which is some indication of high mortality.35 Certainly, many of the precious goods of both Dundee and other towns, taken to this apparently impregnable burgh for safekeeping, were looted (see pp. 146, 147). The people of Dundee were ‘robbit evin to the sark’ (see Fig. 5.4).36

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Figure 5.4   Prospect of the Town of Dundee from the East, Theatrum Scotiae, 1693, J. Slezer. This view shows an active harbour, wharves and bulwarks, with the tall steeple of St Mary’s Church dominating the townscape. The fortified walls, significantly improved with double walling in sections and ditching in the 1640s, gave the town the accolade of being the most fortified in Scotland. There has been discussion as to whether the old East Port, or Seagate Port, had been demolished by this time. It can be seen clearly, tucked in behind the later defensive wall, still standing proudly but now useless as a route to the burgh lands to the east.

The occupations which followed the Cromwellian campaigns of 1650–1 compounded the drastic impact of more than a dozen years of war, both civil and religious. To keep control, strategic towns were cursed with major citadels, built by the Cromwellian regime from stone robbed from hospitals, houses, graveyards, churches and abbeys. They dominated the townscapes at Ayr, Leith, Inverlochy, Inverness and Perth (see Fig. 5.5). The citadels were also part of a systematic plan to reduce the Highlands to obedience.37 The effects of the Highland campaign had disastrous consequences for one small, newly established town – Stornoway. A number of Cromwellian troops under the leadership of Colonel Cobbett landed in 1653, with the intention, first, of preventing Lewis becoming a Dutch base and, second, reprimanding the 3rd Earl of Seaforth, Kenneth Mackenzie, for his royalist sympathies. It was said, somewhat laconically, that the local people fled to the hills but on the promise of leniency returned to the town.38 A little-known plan of the Cromwellian fort at Stornoway, made by a soldier garrisoned there at the time, however, gives another picture (see Fig. 5.6). The fort enclosed the church of St Lennan, which acted as a dormitory for 200 soldiers. The plan also shows a ‘manor house’, probably a feature related to

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Figure 5.5   Prospect of the Town of Air from the East, 1716, J. Slezer. This is a coloured, later copy by an unknown artist of the engraving of Ayr made by Slezer in 1693 for Theatrum Scotiae. As in the original, the copy shows Ayr from the north-west rather than the east as stated in the title. Four citadels, at Ayr, Inverness, Leith and Perth, along with smaller forts, aimed to ensure the pacification of the country. The Ayr citadel subsumed the parish church of St John and its tower may be seen on the right side of the view.

earlier fisheries, as were store houses ‘two or three loft high’; a brew house; and draw wells.39 The townspeople, in reality, had nowhere to which to return; the fort occupied the whole of the peninsula, the Point, on which the town was built. The Stornoway people were rendered homeless. To serve as an example of what so many towns suffered, the material damage sustained by Linlithgow might be evaluated. The fear of the arrival of Cromwell and his troops in 1650 was such that the town council fled to Blackness, where they crossed the Forth to the safety of Culross. The town acted in the same way as Dunbar, sending its important documents elsewhere for safekeeping. Dundee was chosen as it was considered the most secure walled town in the country (see pp. 145, 146).40 Cromwell occupied the palace and his men encamped on The Peel on which it stood. For security, The Peel, which also contained the church of St Michael, was enclosed with fortifications. The tolbooth, almshouse, school house and the houses in the Kirkgate41 leading up to the church and palace were all demolished to supply stone for these defences. The church was used to garrison troops and their horses, with the horses stabled in the nave and the men in the triforium (the gallery over the aisle). Part of the defences were still visible in the mid-nineteenth century, even though they had been largely removed

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Figure 5.6   ‘Plan of the Cromwellian Fort’, Stornoway, c. 1653.

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two ­centuries earlier (see below).42 There is nothing now upstanding of these defences, but aerial photography and geophysical survey suggest that features still lie buried beneath the present ground surface (see Fig. 5.7). Repair work necessitated by the Cromwellian occupation was costly. The church heritors estimated that £1,000 was needed to restore the windows and roof alone, although it is unlikely that all of the work required was the result solely of military occupation. St Michael’s Church had previously had a chequered career, being used as a wood store in 1620.43 In 1645, it had housed the University of Edinburgh when the plague-stricken capital was abandoned; the kirk session records for the following year make it very clear that restoration work was long overdue, the church having been emptied before the university arrived, with the intention of placing new pews in the interior.44 On the return of the council from Culross, permission had been gained from General Monck, commander of the government forces, that the parish church should be divided in two with a ‘mid-wall’, so the two warring religious parties, the ‘Protestors’ and the ‘Resolutioners’, might worship separately.45 This also had to be removed in 1660.46 The defences set up around the palace were to be demolished, under the supervision of George, 3rd Earl of Linlithgow, the hereditary keeper of the palace after the restoration of Charles II (1660–85). The townspeople and parishioners were not to be spared: they were instructed to nominate an efficiently equipped demolition gang which was to be ready whenever summoned.47 To assist with the costs, in 1662 the crown granted Linlithgow a free fair for three days and allowed the town to double the custom, ‘considering the great loss sustained by the burgh, and the destruction of all their public works by the attack of the usurper viz their church, hospital, school, market cross, tolbooth, well, four mills and store house or granarie at Blackness’.48 All of these important features in the town had to be paid for in cash or kind. The tolbooth, which housed the prison, was considered the most urgent priority by the townspeople. Sometime after 1661, the town council petitioned for assistance from the privy council as Linlithgow was destitute of a prison house . . . ever since the year 1651 at which tyme not only was the prison house destroyed by the Inglish usurpers bot their toune and inhabitants were harazed and undone so that they are not yet in a capacity to rebuild any prison house by themselves without supply.49

A new tolbooth – now more usually called the townhouse – was constructed between 1668 and 1670, to a design of John Milne, the king’s master mason, with a double staircase leading to the first floor and a spire added about 1673 (see Fig. 5.8).50 The town treasurer’s accounts reveal one expenditure that was very probably not grudged by the town: £1 13s 9d was spent on the building of gallows

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Figure 5.7   Aerial view of The Peel, Linlithgow. Earlier, destroyed structures are seen outlined on the ground.

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Figure 5.8   Linlithgow Townhouse.

to hang an effigy of Cromwell, and four loads of coal were purchased for £2 8s. A further £2 8s also went on a cart to drag the effigy through the town and the same sum went on the cost of a board. It is not documented, but without doubt there would have been a suitably salacious slogan on it. This was to be burned with the effigy after ceremonial hanging.51 The legacy of Cromwell was negative for many. After his death in 1658, power passed briefly to his son Richard, a man not endowed with his father’s abilities. Towns found themselves drained of funds; the herring fisheries were in a state of decline; trade was virtually dead; ships were destroyed; and economic policy had been founded on English rather than Scottish interests. With the restoration of the monarchy, Scotland was no longer under the rule of a dictatorship with an alien army. But it had been a dictatorship that had brought a level of law, order and freedom of religious expression. Dunbar, in spite of its hatred of the occupation a few years previously (see p. 144), was probably one of the very few towns that retained even a vestige of appreciation for the Cromwellian rule. After storm damage in 1655 the harbour was so seriously damaged that it could no longer function as a safe haven. Financial support from the government was such that to this day it is, for many, ‘Cromwell Harbour’ (see Fig. 3.1).52 The country as a whole, with probably unrealistic hopes, welcomed the return of their own Stuart king.

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II.  Continuing unrest and occupation For many towns the end of billeting and free quartering was not in sight. Impositions continued throughout the 1670s and 1680s and the eighteenth century brought no respite. There was further unrest, instigated by dissatisfaction with the Union of 1707 and mixed support for the Hanoverian regime, followed by Jacobite uprisings. The core of the support for the rebellion on behalf of the Jacobite Pretender to the throne in 1715 was in the north-eastern shires of Aberdeen, Forfar, Kincardine and Angus. A pre-emptive strike to take Edinburgh Castle in early September failed, although Perth was overcome by the Jacobite cavalry on 14 September and Inverness fell on the same day. The Pretender was proclaimed James VIII at Aberdeen’s market cross on 20 September. There had been little opposition to the rising and most burghs north of the Tay were in support, but the ’15 fizzled out.53 Despite the extent of support for the Jacobite cause in the north-east, little damage was done to the urban fabric or the townspeople. However, in a number of northern towns, in the aftermath of the rebellion, there was a purge of burgh magistrates who, it was felt, had favoured the Jacobite cause. The rising that began with the arrival of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the ‘Young Pretender’, at Eriskay in the Outer Isles in July 1745 found its initial core support, again, in the north and was very much a Highland affair. But it affected urban society to a greater extent than had the ’15. Cumberland Barracks in Coupar Angus was at the south end of two roads that forged routes through the country to deploy troops swiftly and to provide supplies for remote government garrisons. The main routeway led via Blairgowrie and Braemar to the Moray Firth, where Fort George would later, in 1769, be completed as the stronghold in the north. Coupar was, in consequence, the last stopping point in the Lowlands for many Hanoverian troops but also a strategic resting stage for Jacobites pushing their way south. Reactions against the Stuart cause increased. The kirk session register in September 1745 suggested that the Jacobite cause was a mere irritant: it complained that the ‘apprehending of delinquents [was] weakened by the landing of the Pretender’s eldest son and a great number of the Highland clans gathering to him, two hundred whereof came to Coupar’. By December, however, the session was bemoaning that the country was ‘in great confusion by continual harassing and ravagings of the rebel Highlanders’.54 Edinburgh became, for a few weeks in September, the headquarters of  the court and tartan army of the Young Pretender; lack of opposition suggested that the capital lay at his feet. Even here, however, he did not control the stronghold – the castle. The Palace of Holyroodhouse was occupied by the  prince, but the Great Apartment, set in state for the arrival of Charles II (who never came) some three-quarters of a century earlier, was showing its age. It was the queen’s apartments that the prince used. For five weeks, court was held

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‘with great ­magnificence’ and lavish balls were enjoyed by Edinburgh’s high society. The ambivalent attitude of the propertied classes was exemplified by the Royal Bank. Even though it was holed up in Edinburgh Castle under a Hanoverian commander, the bank exchanged gold reserves for its notes, so enabling the prince to pay his troops.55 Canongate became a veritable prisonerof-war camp. Hanoverian officers were warded in Queensberry House, but permitted parole; the ordinary soldiers, on the other hand, were kept under strict guard in the tolbooth and church. Once autumn arrived, the  Highland  soldiers, who had been camping in the open at Duddingston, were quartered in Canongate, Edinburgh and surrounding areas. The strain on the townspeople of acting as prison, billet and field hospital for rival armies began to take its toll; ordinary daily life deteriorated badly, the records claiming that most shops were ‘closed’. Added to this, the upper part of the capital, above Lawnmarket, was an armed camp, with Highlanders sniping at anyone attempting to supply provisions to the government forces in Edinburgh Castle. They, in turn, made armed sorties and bombardments on the town, and set light to and pillaged shops. The prince left the palace on Thursday, 31 October of the same year and all his fit men were out of the capital by the following day, en route to Derby and a disastrous defeat. It was said that the prince feared loss of morale and discipline amongst his forces if a winter of drinking and loose women, which Edinburgh and Canongate had aplenty, was permitted. It had been a mere five-week stay, but normal life did not resume after the Jacobites’ departure. Suffering was not quite over. The government troops poured out of the castle to raid and pillage the town on the excuse of looking for arms; Highlanders in the infirmary were tortured; townhouses were plundered; and Holyroodhouse was ransacked.56 Many other towns experienced the presence of Jacobite troops. Musselburgh had been instructed by ‘ane order from His Majesty’s Advocate’ to take measures against the rebels’ expected arrival. As a result, an embargo was placed on all boats in the harbour and bay, and a watch set up on them; there was little likelihood of their being put to illegal use as their oars, rudders and sails were all removed. Vagrants who could not account for themselves were apprehended; and a watch was kept by the townspeople working in rota.57 This was insufficient a deterrent. Prince Charles Edward Stuart took up residence in Pinkie House on two occasions and the long painted gallery in September 1745 was used as casualty station for Jacobite troops wounded in the battle of Prestonpans (see Fig. 5.9).58 There was clearly a level of support for the Jacobite cause; a number of councillors declined to take the oath of loyalty to the crown in 1746. They were forced to demit office and were replaced by others more sympathetic to the Hanoverian regime.59 Linlithgow, yet again, was visited on a number of occasions by the rival sides. On Sunday, 15 September 1745 the prince and his supporters arrived at the

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Figure 5.9   Pinkie House.

town’s West Port. The provost, John Bucknay, although known to have been a Jacobite sympathiser, felt it wise to depart for Edinburgh. His family and many other sympathisers caroused in the courtyard of the palace with the prince, with wine flowing from its fountain. Jacobite troops under Lord George Murray would be back the following January but it was government forces who were billeted in the palace under the command of General Hawley before and after the battle of Falkirk a few weeks later. The arrival of the Duke of Cumberland with reinforcements brought the numbers encamped at Linlithgow to a staggering 10,000. Although without doubt delighted to see the backs of the departing troops the next day, the townspeople inherited a bitter blow. Fires lit the night before in the palace were left burning.60 The palace went up in flames and has been roofless and ‘unoccupied’ ever since. In spite of this, the council minutes make it very clear where official sympathy lay: compensation was given to the townspeople who had, on threat of execution, supplied the rebels – the Jacobites. As the rebellion rolled towards its dénouement, Linlithgow showed itself unswervingly for the crown. In March 1746, a letter of congratulation was sent to the Duke of Cumberland; in April thirteen loads of coal were purchased for bonfires to celebrate the battle of Culloden; in May they despatched a congratulatory letter to the king; and in June when Cumberland again visited he was given the freedom of the burgh and the town rang with bells.61

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Nairn was typical of many towns which were seemingly small and insignificant but found themselves in the vortex of the Highland uprising. Given its geographical location, it was pulled into both of the Jacobite rebellions. It had experienced the presence of troops during the ’15, showing its allegiance to the crown after Inverness fell to the Jacobites, by opposing the ‘Highlanders’ who had ‘infested Inverness’.62 The town was billeted with government troops who showed their appreciation by accidentally burning the tolbooth.63 This would soon seem a small matter compared with later impositions. The year 1715 would see the start of decades of the continuous presence of over-wintering troops. It was no longer a small fishing town; Nairn had become a winter military camp. On 4 September 1745, Sir John Cope left base at Inverness and marched to Nairn where he and his government troops spent the night. This was the onset of the town’s reincarnation as a permanent transit camp. The council minutes of 13 January 1746 make it clear that the town felt under severe pressure, the situation not being aided by the reluctance of any volunteer to adopt the role of quartermaster. One of the town’s glovers, a James Taylor, had the honour – or misfortune – to have this position bestowed upon him. A small palliative was that the council decided that his property would be free from billeting and he would also be spared any taxation towards the troops’ upkeep.64 Prince Charles Edward Stuart was joined by Lord George Murray at Culloden House on 19 February. Murray had passed through Elgin and Nairn, garrisoning Nairn on the way. With the prince returning from a fortnight at Inverness to Culloden on 14 April, the Jacobite Balmerino regiment settled in Nairn for the night – ‘out of which [they] were next morning driven; the whole English army entering the town at one end, whilst [the Jacobites] marched out at the other’.65 It is very doubtful if the evacuation and occupation of troops was as smooth as this comment suggests. The Duke of Cumberland, commander of the government forces, having marched from Aberdeen with his troops, on entering Nairn stayed in the house of the Roses of Kilravock in the High Street. Possibly in the knowledge that Cumberland would be celebrating his twenty-fifth birthday, the Jacobite forces set off on a night march to surprise the government troops at Nairn. Unnecessary delays found the prince’s supporters still three miles from Nairn at dawn. The attack was aborted. The weary troops marched back to Culloden, with only 5,000 of the 8,000 Jacobites able to make the field at Culloden.66 They were no match for the government’s men. The victors showed no mercy, Cumberland’s vicious orders being to harry, burn and kill men, women and children alike. The Jacobite rising was over. That was not so for Nairn. The battle of Culloden would not see the end of billeting, impositions and demands for cess.67 The following August, the town council was again preparing for the arrival of four companies for winter quartering. Officers and private soldiers had to be given accommodation; there were

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to be suitable premises for a hospital; and the townspeople were to be stented for coal and candles for the military.68 The troops arrived on 2 September and  the  demands continued. Peat was needed as well as coal and candles; there was a number of sick men so more coal and candles for the hospital were required, and more blankets were to be provided. The council bravely stood up to this last demand, saying that all available beds and blankets were already requisitioned.69 The following winter the troops were back again.70 This would continue until at least 1769, when the purpose-built fortress, Fort George, was completed some ten miles to the west under the command of General Hawley – the culmination of the Hanoverian regime’s policy after the ’15 to make the Highlands an armed camp, with strategic strongholds in towns at its edge. Fort William and Nairn were amongst its most hard-hit victims. For almost fiftyfour years – some two generations – Nairn suffered as a garrison town, with its own male population outnumbered by troops and their support services. Overwhelmed by these demands, there were insupportable social tensions. Nairn was expendable.

III.  Lifestyles War, occupation, relocation, economic upheaval and competition, and more faced townspeople during these two centuries. But these were not the only challenges. Always lurking in wooden settlement was the old enemy – fire. And the lifestyle of early modern man fanned the threatening flames even stronger. An increasing number of stone houses were appearing on the townscape in the later sixteenth century but the vast majority were still constructed of timber. During this time there also became, in many towns, an elbowing for room, particularly in the most desirable area, the central market space. So extreme was this pressure that many towns resorted to solving the problem by inserting a line of buildings within the market space – a process now called ‘market repletion’. With housing cheek by jowl, the chances of fire spreading was heightened. This was also a time when new manufactories were being established. There was no notion that industrial premises, even those that were potentially highly inflammable, should be kept at a distance from domestic buildings. Until towards the end of the seventeenth century, moreover, there appeared to be little realisation that regulations should be in place to monitor good building practice. The seventeenth-century town was a ticking time bomb. Slowly, there crept into the corporate awareness a realisation of the risks to which towns were exposed. The response to a fire set off by a smith and his servants in Glasgow in 1601 was probably that of any town: the conflagration was not due to negligence; rather, it was ‘the providence of God’. ‘Providence’ would be increasingly challenged. A number of outbreaks of fire hit Glasgow after this but in 1652 eighty closes were consumed by fire and about a thousand

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people were made homeless. This was a huge proportion of the population in a town that was expanding in numbers along with its increasing industries. The reaction of the council was much more realistic. In future, all dwellings were to ‘conform to a straicht lyne and none to come farder out then another’, in the hope that conformity of frontages would assist the control of fire risk, as well as preserving the roadway for passing trade. A more constructive measure was  taken two years later: the candlemakers, who were involved in a notoriously  high fire-risk trade,  were removed from the central, built-up area of Glasgow to ‘outplaces an hundrethe yeards aff any dwelling houssis’. This safer, outlying area became known as the Candleriggs. Inevitably, fires still persisted, a particularly fierce  one catching hold in 1677. The council took a firmer and very important measure: it decreed that in future the building material for the front,  back and end gables of all new houses should be of stone rather than timber.71 Glasgow was not alone in suffering full-scale onslaught from fire. Dunfermline had been seriously hit by fire in the sixteenth century and much of the built fabric of the town was again destroyed in a disastrous fire in 1624. The town’s ‘wappenschaw day’ was 25 May (see p. 68). During the display of weapons, a small boy took hold of a gun and fired it randomly. A piece of burning tow, or hemp fibre, landed on the roof of a house near the back lane to the High Street – Ratton Row. The house was thatched with straw, peat or heather, the name ‘ratton’ giving a clue to the rest of the construction – ‘ratton’ implies undressed timber. Fire spread rapidly, ultimately destroying about three-quarters of the town. The school, newly constructed after the Reformation, disappeared in the conflagration; the tolbooth was probably damaged but, being of stone, survived largely intact; and the homes of most of the townspeople were destroyed as many of these had been of wood, although for those with solars of stone the effect of fire was limited to a certain extent.72 Despite the increasing use of stone and slates, fire remained a danger. In 1721, the council ordered hides to make fire buckets, but almost forty years later, when the buckets were being inspected, only eighteen were found to be in good working order. By 1785, it was decided that a ‘fire machine’ would benefit the town and the council subsidised the purchase to the extent of ten guineas.73 It is unclear whether this was bought; Ratton Row burned down in 1809, the only way to control the fire being with buckets and pitchers of water! The following year the council belatedly purchased two fire engines.74 Hamilton also tried to come to terms with the problem of fire. The sum of £3 5s was paid by the council to the five men who assisted at a fire in 1661; the records rather imply that this was assistance from passers-by, certainly not official firefighters.75 Measures were taken to make prevention more effective and eventually, in 1740, the council decided that all vents and chimneys should be cleaned three times a year. This was to be charged at 1d for a single-storey vent

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and 1½d for a larger one. If anyone tried to evade payment by a claim that they had already attended to this, a fine of 40s was to be imposed for any resulting fires.76 It was not until 1748 that the town obtained its first fire engine, but this was a considerably better record than that in many other towns.77 Records throughout the country highlight the constant battle against fire. In Tain an accidental fire burned down much of the town in 1706, damaging the upper part of the tolbooth tower, so the upper storeys may have been of wood, as at Dingwall;78 or possibly the steeple was shingled in wood like Canongate tolbooth and St Nicholas Church, Aberdeen. Nairn, in an attempt to control fire, forbade the drying of lint inside houses 79 but, as most houses were thatched, fire remained an ever-present threat. Small pieces of evidence throughout the records do show that increasing care was being taken by the Nairn authorities. Hugh Rose of Clava owned property which was attached to the west gable of Nairn tolbooth. Rose’s building was under repair in 1735, having lain dilapidated for some time after being burned down. While granting permission to Rose to erect two chimneys against this mutual gable, the council insisted that any further building at this location by Rose or his successors should be roofed in slates not thatch.80 Musselburgh bought twenty-four leather buckets in 1753 and decreed six years later in an attempt to control the danger that no new houses should be roofed with thatch.81 Dunbar, surprisingly given the quality building effected in the eighteenth century (see p. 235), did not order a ‘water engine’ and twelve leather buckets until as late as 1765.82 Forfar had to wait until 1795 for such an investment.83 Fire did bring one great advantage: attempts could be made to improve housing stock and so enhance the townscape. Essential rebuilding was triggered in all towns. Burnt-down wooden frontages might reveal earlier, sometimes more elegant façades that time had forgotten. Lady Walkstair’s in Dundee is one such example. This covering up of earlier architecture by inferior work unintentionally preserved important remnants of the past and, to this day, offers an insight that might have been lost; arcading and grand entrances could be found hidden (see Figs 5.10 and 5.11). Dundee was a prime example of superb new construction (see p. 183) but Glasgow was, perhaps, the showpiece. Imposing buildings appeared and, also, eventual expansion westwards which brought high praise from visitors. Daniel Defoe, after his tour of the British Isles, lauded Glasgow in the mid-eighteenth century as ‘one of the cleanest, most beautiful, and best-built cities in Great Britain’.84 Scotland was still an essentially rural country in 1750; scarcely more than one in eight Scots lived in towns.85 Life in towns, however, seemed increasingly attractive and brought slow, but increasing urbanisation. This carried its own challenges. Closeness and congestion implied a greater risk of ill-health and infection. Outsiders, lured by the attractions of the town, could offer a welcome task force but might also bring new disease and prove to be a burden in times of

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Figure 5.10   ‘The Sanctuary House’, Dunfermline, E. Henderson: a medieval house of safety standing close to the abbey precincts.

Figure 5.11   Twentieth-century use of the Medieval Sanctuary House.

poverty, which was exacerbated by war. And along with this increasing desire for town life came a further burden – a growing amount of dirt and sewage. To modern eyes, living conditions were unsavoury. Edinburgh had the unenviable reputation of being the filthiest city in Europe. The growing preponderance

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of dark closes and high-rise buildings added to dirty congestion. The practice of ‘gardy-loo’ and the accumulation of human waste on the streets prompted one visitor at the beginning of the eighteenth century to complain that In a morning the scent was so offensive that we were forced to hold our noses as we passed [along] the streets, and take care where we trod for fear of disobliging our shoes, and to walk in the middle at night, for fear of an accident on our heads.86

The authorities did make efforts to deal with this nastiness. Ejecting effluence from windows was banned; homes were to be equipped with chamber pots large enough to hold the waste for up to forty-eight hours; and fines would be imposed on culprits. Such strictures were often ignored.87 The growing awareness of the desirability of cleanliness may be seen elsewhere and is scattered throughout the records of all towns. The gild court records of Glasgow early in the seventeenth century reveal the dismay at the foul state of the town’s burns, the Molendinar so filthy that even a tinker deemed it unfit to drown his dog (see p. 57).88 Dumbarton reacted as most towns when it succumbed to plague, or possibly typhus, in 1644–5. Specialist ‘cleingers’, or cleaners, were hired from Paisley to fumigate the house of a deceased woman, and strict instructions were given that the body should not be handled, but rather dragged with ropes to the grave.89 All towns took measures to prevent and, if unsuccessful, contain plague. Aberdeen townsfolk were given forty-eight hours to round up and destroy all cats and dogs, suspects as carriers of the disease, in 1647; with a certain prescience orders were given that rats and mice were to be poisoned as health hazards.90 Clearly, the urban authorities knew the potential dangers that could come from a filthy environment but significant improvements in the standards of hygiene in towns were still to come. Women in the home were the major carers of the sick. Lack of medical knowledge and dirty living conditions meant they faced a hard task that, if not for them, would be an impossible one. The role of women was particularly tough. Although not required to fight, along with men they suffered the economic stringencies, epidemics of ill-health and the impact of wars. As in earlier times (see p. 59), some women might be found asserting themselves in roles considered the preserve of men. But they were still legally in thrall to men, as reiterated by the post-Reformation Calvinist church. A man was accused, for example, in 1620 of ‘put[ting] violent hands on [his daughter]’, striking her and ‘dinging her on various parts of her body’. He was fined for this offence not because of his violence, but because she was married and no longer ‘under his correction’.91 If her husband had been her assailant, there would have been no case to answer. There is evidence, however, of the changing role of women, particularly in the rise of schools for girls, especially after 1600. Girls were often taught by women teachers. Dumbarton, Dundee, Haddington, Kirkcaldy, Leith South and North,

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Montrose and Paisley all have recorded ‘dame schools’. The first official regulated school for girls in Aberdeen came in 1642, with the mortification of £1,000 Scots by Catherine Forbes, Lady Rothiemay. The rhyme in the commonplace book of the master of the music school in Aberdeen suggests that some, at least, felt that girls were as able as boys: The weaknes of a womanis witt Is not to natures fault Bot laike of educationne fitt Makes nature quhylls to halt92

Many of the afflictions endured from the Middle Ages have persisted until today (see p. 66) – influenza, tuberculosis, leukaemia, pneumonia, spina bifida and, the most serious for the times, measles, whooping cough (or chin cough) and other ‘fevers’ unspecified. A further threat to life soon presented itself. Smallpox was the most feared predator after the disappearance of bubonic plague in the 1650s. Being airborne, it was highly contagious and became endemic in Edinburgh by 1700 and in Glasgow fifty years later, although random epidemics every few years hit all towns including Edinburgh and Glasgow. The most likely group to succumb was infants and children between the ages of six months and two years. Adult immigrants from the countryside who had not previously contracted the disease and therefore had no immunity were the next most vulnerable. Where there is evidence, it seems that smallpox was responsible for one in six of all deaths, inoculation proving insufficient to control the disease. It was not until after 1800, with the introduction of vaccination, that smallpox ceased to be a major killer.93

IV.  Famine’s devastating and final strike To add to these difficulties, famine rivalled fire and filth as the most regular assailant. The seventeenth century was to witness Scotland suffering from one of the worst bouts of famine known in its history. One of the simplest reasons for this was that Scotland changed from a meat-eating country in 1500 to one in 1750 renowned for subsisting on a plentiful and nutritious commodity – oatmeal. In a small country, 500,000 people could live off a meat diet supplemented by meal, but 1,250,000 could not.94 Bad harvests were compounded by European wars which hit the country’s trade, so adding to economic deprivation. This was exacerbated by a falling exchange rate, which made imports of grain, typically from Scandinavia, less and less likely to provide a safety net for poorer sections of urban societies. In 1500 the £ Scots stood at one quarter of the £ Sterling; by 1600 it was worth a twelfth, where it remained.

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It is generally accepted that the last third of the seventeenth century was the harshest point of the Little Ice Age. Seventeenth-century travellers to Scotland talked of frozen lochs in the summer months and permanent snow on the Cairngorms. South-flowing Arctic sea-ice brought bitter winters and cooler, wetter summers. Water surface temperature off the Northern Isles reduced the air temperature, making the north-east considerably colder than the rest of Scotland.95 The 1670s saw serious blizzards with great loss of sheep. Wickedly severe winters combined with cold summers meant crops did not grow well; the 1690s saw the failure of harvests in seven out of eight years in many upland regions.96 Although the worst years were the 1690s, many towns had had a foretaste of bad times earlier in the century. Severe famine hit in 1623, largely caused by poor harvests during the previous two years and made worse by the failure of both Church and state to offer effective aid. Grain for bread or oatcakes was the staple food, and a bad harvest risked endangering the very lifeline that enabled men and women to work.97 It is estimated that in 1623 in Dumfries up to 15 per cent of the population died; in Kelso and Dunfermline the figure was nearer 20 per cent; and in Burntisland as many as 33 per cent perished, although some refugees from surrounding rural areas might have been included in this number. To add to this loss of townspeople, burghs were the worst hit in the last major outbreak of plague in Scotland between 1644 and 1649. Probably over the entire country less than 2 to 3 per cent of the population died during the plague years but the impact on urban settlements was severe. It has been calculated that in 1645 in Edinburgh alone about 9,000 to 12,000 died, approximately a third to a quarter of the population. Crail, Dunfermline, Paisley, Perth, Stirling, Dundee, Montrose and Aberdeen all suffered badly.98 With the harsh winter and spring of 1674, a third of the country’s cattle died. In Glasgow, the price of bread doubled, prompting a hasty production of beggars’ badges and a startling increase in the poor roll. Many residents fled, as was the case in other towns, leaving way for vagrants attracted by low rents and empty houses. Attempts to control entry to the town were monitored by the use of testimonials, but the influx of beggars, many from Ireland, did bring in a workforce and a source of domestic labour. It has been argued that much of the building and public works undertaken in the larger towns would have been impossible without this cheap male labour force.99 It was, however, the 1690s that were to see real devastation, particularly in the north-east, in Aberdeenshire and the Highlands. The west of Scotland probably suffered least, receiving as it did food supplies from Ireland and the offer of an escape route by sea.100 But few towns in Scotland were untouched. By 1699, the poor in Musselburgh were in a ‘starving condition’.101 Coupar Angus reacted as many other small towns, such as Melrose,102 giving to the poor and destitute but ultimately having to exclude them. In April 1690 in Coupar Angus, £2 8s was

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given to the common poor who came to the church door, as well as £4 16s to the poor of their own parish. This generosity may have been abused. In the autumn of that year there was such an influx of strangers that the session ordered that certificates should be held to prove entitlement to aid. Extreme foul weather followed and fifteen months later the number of poor being supported by the church doubled. The problem persisted: by March 1695, the minister warned that anyone sheltering fugitives or other vagrants who did not have a certificate, especially women with child, would be pursued by both the church and civil authorities. Famine was exacerbating an existing problem – the high level of pregnancies outwith marriage, as confirmed in the records. By June the following year, the number of licensed poor increased yet again because of the ‘great dearth in the land’. The burden on the townspeople was immense, exacerbated the following winter and spring by the presence of troops billeted in the town. The records from August 1698 to October 1699 are missing but, when they recommence, the parish church can be found distributing the collection money to the poor on the Sabbath, retaining only 2s for the beadle.103 In spite of these efforts, by 1700 there were reports of the poor starving – tragic conditions that would continue well into the eighteenth century for Coupar Angus and many other towns.104 Foul weather brought lack of germination of seeds in springtime and poor harvests in the autumn, which had the inevitable knock-on effect on food prices. Lack of food and the means to purchase supplies meant that many subsistence farmers followed the disastrous route of eating their seed corn, leaving themselves with nothing to plant the following year. Others were partially or wholly dependent on their trade to make their livelihood, and a downturn in the markets for plaiding and stockings, the specialist commodities of the north-east, at the time of high prices, allied to increases in taxation throughout the country to pay for the wars of King William (1689–1702), meant an impossible dependence for many on poor relief. Collection of poor relief was hindered by the 1690 religious settlement. With the re-establishment of Presbyterianism, Episcopalian priests forfeited their charges, often leaving vacancies which meant lack of services, collections and distributions to the poor. Aberdeen had an influx of beggars. Attempts were made to remove all but the genuinely locally born poor; weekly contributions towards the upkeep of the needy were imposed on merchants and tradesmen, failing which they were to be taxed; by 1699 all in receipt of a pension were to explain their circumstances every three months and were obliged to attend church and sit in allocated pews; efforts were made to remove all those who had lived in the town for less than seven years; guards were set up at the town ports to keep out strangers; and anyone found hiding the poor from the surrounding countryside was to be punished or fined.105 Those not initially dependent on poor relief soon found themselves in difficult circumstances. Many people were unable to grow enough to feed themselves

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and their families, and as prices of foodstuffs rose greater reliance was placed on cheaper food. Peas, beans and oatmeal were the mainstay for many rather than wheat; but at subsistence level, some were forced to eat flour made from ‘runches’, or wild radishes, mustard seed and nettles.106 Many died of starvation or famine-related diseases, such as typhus and dysentery, the latter often caused by eating rotten food; but malnutrition, without doubt, worsened the effects of everyday diseases such as measles, influenza and pneumonia. The most striking population statistic was the decrease in the birth rate. Conceptions began to fall from the winter of 1696. There could have been several reasons for this: loss of spouse; delay in marriage; avoidance of sexual activity; contraception; deliberate abortion; or lack of fertility caused by undernourishment. The three main reasons for the rapid population decline in these years were mortality, reduced fertility and exodus in search of food. It has been calculated that there was a decline of approximately 21 per cent in the population of Aberdeenshire in these years of famine, a decline that had still not been redressed by 1755.107 Such figures are shockingly high but, to some extent, mask the true dimensions of famine – the horrendous suffering of so many. Scotland would face serious dearth again in 1740–1 after two years of poor harvests, cold weather killing off cattle and sheep, and high prices. Food riots in Edinburgh and other towns, and localised famines in the Highlands, where striking loss of livestock reduced purchasing ability of grain from the Lowlands, were offset to some extent by the efforts of local authorities and heritors to purchase cheap food and sell it on at cost. In spite of this increase in mortality, the country survived intact, coping with crisis. The famine of 1695–9 had been the last nationwide subsistence crisis.108 During these two centuries, urban society had faced other challenges, when increasing political and natural events served to destabilise both the daily life and the economy of towns. The Records of the Convention of Royal Burghs attest to the parlous condition of many burghs on the eve of union with England and Wales in 1707, and highlight the fear held by many of economic competition from England and even greater increased taxation. But the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were, for some, also a time of vitality. The substantial funds, raised largely from the burgesses of Glasgow and Edinburgh who formed 33 per cent of the investors of the Company of Scotland, the mastermind of the disastrous Darien project, were testament to a latent urban wealth. Glasgow was the urban centre that showed the greatest resilience. The Ulster plantations brought closer commercial links and a draw for migration; increased demand for consumer and manufactured goods from both the rural hinterland and northern England; and successful trade with the Highlands in black cattle. All of this brought marked growing prosperity. A few small towns showed signs of increasing stability. Harbour improvements at both Kirkcaldy and Montrose after the Restoration spurred on many small east-coast ports to specialise in the grain

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trade to England.109 By 1750, others, such as Arbroath and Forfar, a town of probably only about 1,200 to 1,300 inhabitants, and one deemed to be poverty stricken ‘due to the decay of trade’ in 1711, prospered through its growing investment in the production of osnaburgs, a brown coarse linen.110 Paisley’s emergence as a centre for fine linens, muslins and other cloths was another success story (see p. 181). Many small towns, in spite of the travails of these times, showed exemplary resilience and hope. But economic recovery in general was slight and sporadic. For towns in Scotland, it is difficult to imagine two worse centuries than those from the years of the Reformation crisis through the struggles of the seventeenth century and the final triumph of Hanoverian military power to the defeat of plague and famine. All four horsemen of the apocalypse – war, conquest, famine and death – had visited certain towns with regularity. Nowhere on the mainland of Britain had towns suffered as much as Aberdeen, Dundee, Linlithgow or Nairn. Remarkably, all survived, with burgh society almost intact.

Notes





1. D. Stevenson, ‘The burghs and the Scottish Revolution’, in M. Lynch (ed.), The Early Modern Town in Scotland (London, 1987), 171; RCRBS, iv, 543; J. Spalding, Memorials of the Trubles, ed. J. Stuart, 2 vols (Spalding Club, 1850–1), i, 106. 2. RPC, v, appendix; E. P. Dennison, D. Gallacher and G. Ewart, Historic Maybole: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2005), 30. 3. J. Gordon of Rothiemay, Abredoniae Utriusque Descriptio 1660, ed. C. Innes (Spalding Club, 1842), 5. 4. G. DesBrisay, ‘“The civill warrs did overrun all”: Aberdeen, 1630–1690’, in E. P. Dennison, D. Ditchburn and M. Lynch (eds), Aberdeen Before 1800: A New History (East Linton, 2002), i, 238–66, gives a full account of Aberdeen’s troubles. 5. E. J. Cowan, Montrose. For Covenant and King (Edinburgh, 1977), 63–4. 6. A. Mitchell (ed.), Macfarlane’s Geographical Collections, 3 vols (SHS, 1906–8), ii, 25. 7. APS, vi (1), 171, 207, 251, 315, 316, 402, 501; vi (2) 170, 535. 8. NSA, viii, 148; NLS, EMS.s. 712(14), J. Ainslie, Map of the Southern Part of Scotland, 1821. 9. L. E. Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the Early Modern Period (Princeton, NJ, 1989), 35. 10. M. Lynch, Scotland: a New History (London, 1991), 276. 11. G. Donaldson, Scotland: James V to James VII (Edinburgh, 1965), 338. 12. APS, vi (2), 55. 13. APS, vi (1), 360. A merk was worth two-thirds of a £ Scots. 14. APS, vi (2), 156. 15. G. Bain, History of Nairnshire (Nairn, 1893), 268; Cowan, Montrose. For Covenant and King, 201–6.

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16. APS, vi (2), 535. 17. R. Williams, Montrose: Cavalier in Mourning (London, 1975), 291. 18. E. Furgol, A Regimental History of the Covenanting Armies, 1639–1651 (Edinburgh, 1990), 110, 111, 115, 118. 19. R. D. Oram, P. F. Martin, C. A. McKean, T. Neighbour and A. Cathcart, Historic Tain: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2009), 44; R. W. Munro and J. Munro, Tain Through the Centuries (Tain, 1966), 58–9. 20. Munro and Munro, Tain, 58–9. 21. Ibid., 61. 22. T. C. Smout, Scottish Trade on the Eve of Union, 1660–1707 (Edinburgh, 1963), 240, citing Calendar of the State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, vol. ccxxxiii, 14, and H. Farnie, The Handy Book of the Fife Coast (n.p., n.d.), 45; J. Campbell, A. T. Richardson, G. MacGregor, G. Deas and L. Macbean, Kirkcaldy Burgh and Schyre: Landmarks of Local History (Kirkcaldy, 1924), 51–2. 23. T. W. Fish, ‘Dunbar of old’, Transactions of the East Lothian Antiquarian and Field Naturalists’ Society, ii (1929–30), 37. 24. It is known, however, that Cromwell was at Broxmouth House in preparation for battle against General David Leslie and the supporters of Charles II. 25. Lynch, Scotland, 249. 26. I. Whyte and K. Whyte, Discovering East Lothian (Edinburgh, 1988), 162. 27. NRS, B18.39/4; B18.39/6; B18.39/7; B18.39/1. 28. J. Wilkie, Historic Musselburgh (Edinburgh, 1919), 80–1. 29. J. Dickson, The Ruined Castles of Midlothian (Edinburgh, 1894), 56. 30. J. C. Carrick, Around Dalkeith and Camp Meg (Leicester, 1984), 17. 31. RPC, 3rd series, ii, 714; iii, 744; iv, 713; v, 699; vi, 710; NRS, GD150/13/13, Morton Papers. 32. RPC, 3rd series, vi, 268. 33. Ibid., ix, 184; xi, 54, 256; xiii, 325; E. W. M. Balfour Melville, An Account of the Proceedings of the Estates in Scotland, 1689–1690 (SHS, 1955), ii, 107. 34. J. Nicoll, A Diary of Transactions and Other Occurrences, January 1660 – June 1667 (Bannatyne Club, 1836), 58. 35. OSA, viii, 209–10. 36. Nicoll, Diary, 58. 37. F. D. Dow, Cromwellian Scotland, 1651–1660 (Edinburgh, 1979), 64. 38. W. C. MacKenzie, History of the Outer Hebrides (Paisley, 1903), 350. 39. A. Geddes, The Isle of Lewis and Harris (Edinburgh, 1955), 89; for fuller details of this fort see E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Stornoway: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1997), 24–6. 40. NRS, B48/9/2, Linlithgow Council Minute Book, 1640–59, 13 September 1650; 11 December 1650. 41. J. Ferguson, Ecclesia Antiqua, or a History of an Ancient Church, St Michael’s Linlithgow (Edinburgh, 1905), 75.

Man-made and Natural Disasters, 1550–1750   167

42. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Linlithgow: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2000), 62–3. 43. B. Jamieson, The Church of St Michael of Linlithgow (Kirkcaldy, n.d.), 12–14. 44. Edin. Recs, 78, 84; Jamieson, Church of St Michael, 12–14; W. F. Hendrie, Linlithgow. Six Hundred Years a Royal Burgh (Edinburgh, 1989), 76. 45. NRS, B48/9/3, Linlithgow Town Council Minute Book, 1659–73, 29 March 1656. 46. Ferguson, Ecclesia Antiqua, 76–7. 47. RPC, 3rd series, i, 325. 48. RMS, xi, 240; RPC, 3rd series, i, 639. 49. NRS, B48/18/108, Town Council petition to the Privy Council, c. 1661. 50. P. Cadell (ed.), The Third Statistical Account of Scotland. The County of West Lothian (Edinburgh, 1992), xxi, 144; I. Fisher (ed.), Tolbooths and Town-houses: Civic Architecture in Scotland to 1833 (RCAHMS, Edinburgh, 1996), 135–8. 51. NRS, GD215/1731, Beveridge Papers. 52. E. P. Dennison, S. Stronach and R. Coleman, Historic Dunbar: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2006), 38–9. 53. Lynch, Scotland, 328, 329. 54. NRS, CH2/395/4 Coupar Angus Kirk Session Records, 1726–47, 1 September 1745; 29 December 1745; Dennison and Coleman, Historic Coupar Angus, 28. 55. R. Mitchison, A History of Scotland (London, 1982), 340. 56. E. P. Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate: a Thousand Years of History (Edinburgh, 2005), 106–8. 57. J. Wilkie, Historic Musselburgh (Edinburgh, 1919), 91–2. 58. A. Fraser, Royal Occasions in Midlothian (Midlothian District Library, 1977), 32; F. McLynn, Charles Edward Stuart (London, 1988), 156; P. Lambie, A Walk Around Historic Musselburgh (Musselburgh, 1993), 7. 59. J. Paterson, The History of the Regality of Musselburgh (Musselburgh, 1861), 126. 60. NRS, GD215/1731, Beveridge Papers; W. F. Hendrie, Linlithgow. Six Hundred Years a Royal Burgh (Edinburgh, 1989), 101, 104. 61. NRS, B48/9/10, Linlithgow Town Council Minute Book, 1739–51, 8 March 1746, 22 March 1746; GD215/1731; B48/9/10, 10 May 1746, 21 June 1746, 23 June 1746; GD/215/1731. 62. Highland Council Archives, Nairn, BN/1/1/3, 12 September 1715. 63. BN/1/1/3, 16 October 1726. 64. BN/1/1/3, 13 January 1746. 65. J. Daniel, ‘A true account of Mr John Daniel’s progress with Prince Charles Edward’, in W. G. Blaikie (ed.), Origins of the Forty-five (SHS, 1916), 210. 66. W. G. Blaikie (ed.), Itinerary of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, 1745–6 (SHS, 1897), 12, 40, 44, 97. 67. BN/1/1/3, 30 May 1746. 68. BN/1/1/3, 18 August 1746. 69. BN/1/1/3, 2 September 1746.

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70. BN/1/1/3, 3 September 1747. 71. J. McGrath, ‘The medieval and early modern burgh’, in T. M. Devine and G. Jackson (eds), Glasgow: Beginnings to 1830 (Manchester, 1995), i, 35–6; Glas. Recs, i, 223–4; ii, 230, 233, 300–1, 401; iii, 244–5. 72. E. P. Dennison and S. Stronach, Historic Dunfermline: Archaeology and Develop­ ment (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2007), 35. The blame for the fire being placed on a small boy is a centuries-old tradition in Dunfermline. 73. NRS, B20/13/13, 16 March 1787. 74. Dennison and Stronach, Historic Dunfermline, 51, 53. 75. MS Hamilton Burgh Records, (1642–99) (L.352.041.R783), fo. 20v. 76. Naismith’s Hamilton Directory for 1878–79, including The Handbook of Hamilton (Hamilton, 1879), 98–9. 77. Information from Hamilton District Council Museum. 78. Munro and Munro, Tain, 73–4. 79. Bain, History of Nairnshire, 320–1. 80. BN1/1/3, 9 June 1735. 81. Paterson, The History of the Regality of Musselburgh, 130. 82. NRS, B18/13/5, Dunbar Town Council Minutes, 16 August 1765. 83. D. T. Adam, Reviews of the Administration of the Town’s Affairs by Successive Town Councils, 1660–1965 (Forfar, 1967), 26; E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Forfar: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2000), 29. 84. D. Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain. Divided into Circuits and Journeys, 4 vols (London, 1753), iv, 122. 85. This figure is based on the assumption that a community of 4,000 constituted a town. B. Harris and C. McKean, The Scottish Town in the Age of Enlightenment, 1740–1820 (Edinburgh, 2014), 18. 86. J. Taylor, A Journey to Edenborough in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1903), 134. 87. Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate, 119–20. 88. E. P. Dennison, ‘Daily life, disease and death’, in N. Baxter (ed.), A Tale of Two Towns (Glasgow, 2007), 70, quoting manuscript early-seventeenth-century guild records. 89. F. Roberts and I. M. M. MacPhail (eds), Dumbarton Common Good Accounts (Dumbarton, 1972), 158. 90. E. P. Dennison, G. DesBrisay and H. L. Diack, ‘Health in the two towns’, in Dennison et al., Aberdeen Before 1800, 82. 91. NRS, B20/10/14. Dunfermline Court and Council Book, 1619–32, 26 September 1620; I am indebted to Mrs Sue Mowat for this reference. 92. S. Vance, ‘Schooling the people’, in Dennison et al., Aberdeen Before 1800, 319. 93. R. E. Tyson, ‘Demographic change’, in T. M. Devine and J. R. Young (eds), Eighteenth Century Scotland: New Perspectives (East Linton, 1999), 202–3. 94. T. C. Smout, ‘The Improvers and the Scottish environment: soils, bogs and woods’, in Devine and Young, Eighteenth Century Scotland, 210–11.

Man-made and Natural Disasters, 1550–1750   169

95. R. E. Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire, 1695–1699’, in D. Stevenson (ed.), From Lairds to Louns (Aberdeen, 1986), 33–4. 96. I. Morrison, ‘Climate’, in M. Lynch (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford, 2001), 101. 97. A. Cunningham and O. P. Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Cambridge, 2000), 211. 98. I. D. Whyte, Scotland before the Industrial Revolution (London, 1995), 123. 99. G. Jackson, ‘Glasgow in transition, c. 1660 – c. 1740’, in Devine and Jackson, Glasgow: Beginnings to 1830, i, 91–2; Glas. Recs, iii, 195–6, 197. 100. M. W. Flinn (ed.), Scottish Population History from the Seventeenth Century to the 1930s (Cambridge, 1977), 164–86. 101. NRS, B52/3/1, Musselburgh Council Minute Book, 1679–1714, 162. 102. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Melrose: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1998), 39–40. 103. NRS, CH2/395/1, Coupar Angus Kirk Session Records, 1682–1703, 27 April 1690; September/October 1690; 31 January 1692; [nn] March 1695; 21 & 30 June 1696; autumn 1696, spring 1697, passim; 29 October 1699. 104. NRS, CH2/395/2 Coupar Angus Kirk Session Records, 1703–24, which includes the Register of Disciplinary Proceedings of the Church Session of Coupar, together with a monthly and annual Account of the Poor’s Money. 105. Tyson, ‘Famine’, 36, 37. 106. APS, xi, 166. 107. Tyson, ‘Famine’, 49–50. 108. R. E. Tyson, ‘Demographic change’, 201. 109. E. P. D. Torrie and R. Coleman, Historic Kirkcaldy: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1995), 15, 55; G. Jackson and S. G. E. Lythe (eds), The Port of Montrose (Tayport, 1993), 28–9. 110. Dennison and Coleman, Historic Forfar, 24–5.

6

The Birth of Urban Scotland

T

he century and a half which spanned the years from 1750 to the end of the Victorian era saw immense social and economic changes, which both galvanised and threatened life in towns and the townscape. Scotland moved from being an overwhelmingly rural country to one of the most urbanised societies in Europe. If the measure of urbanisation in western Europe is a population of 10,000 inhabitants or more, Scotland stood at seventh place in 1750, rising to fourth in 1800, and by 1850 it was second only to England and Wales.1 Glasgow’s population rose from 77,385 in 1801 to 274,533 forty years later (see Appendix, pp. 299f.).2 In 1851, 22 per cent, that is one in five, of Scottish residents lived in one of the four big cities – Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen. This would rise to 30 per cent by 1911 and, if Partick, Govan and Leith were included, the proportion was even higher at 35 per cent.3 Very few new towns sprang up, unlike in England. On the other hand, most towns – medium-sized or small – grew in population. The dynamics and pressures operating within small-town Scotland varied immensely but were none the less viewed with apprehension by burgh authorities and local ministers of the church alike. The combination of steady, incremental industrialisation, fuelled first by migration from both rural hinterlands and the Highlands and, from the 1790s onwards, by Irish immigration, posed an alarming prospect: an alien workforce, under-educated and often unchurched, likely to become an unpalatable drain on public charity and a threat to established order. Such fears were understandable and this century and a half would witness quite staggering cultural and economic changes.

I.  Improvement and Enlightenment The second half of the eighteenth century has sometimes been classified, deservedly, as the ‘Age of Improvement’. Growing awareness of the necessity for increased sanitary measures, for townscape- and land-management and for

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better communication networks held its roots in the earlier eighteenth century and before. Seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century efforts to clean up towns continued with a deeper understanding of the need for progress. Many seemingly slight or insignificant measures reveal the growing enlightened thinking. Most towns began to forbid the grazing of animals, in particular cattle, in graveyards. These were accessible, empty areas but sensibilities about closeness to a place of worship were reinforced by awareness of lack of hygiene and possible infection. Linlithgow had taken an important step in 1736. ‘Damage [had been] sustained by mad dogs and particularly the melancholy accident that [had] happened’ caused alarm. Quite what the ‘melancholy accident’ was is unspecified but it was a sufficient cause of distress that it was decided that all mad dogs should be ‘worried’ (strangled) and buried at least three feet (0.91 metres) deep, with appropriate notice being placed on the church door.4 The need to relocate the essential but noxious fleshmarkets was a general problem in many towns. To end the slaughtering and butchering of animals in plain sight, with all its foulness and noise, in the central areas of towns was an important step forward. But a town’s awareness of the need for progress was not always matched either by the financial capacity or the compliance of the urban authorities; delays postponed progress. Complaints had been made in 1745 about one of Dunbar’s two slaughterhouses. It was sited at the foot of Flesh Market Close, to the west of Castlegate; some argued that the area should be paved since the cattle made the close impassable at the time of slaughter, ‘especially so because the south wall [was] too low and the cattle leap[ed] over it’. It was not until 1806 that the Council took serious measures to relocate it. In 1773, Dunfermline’s town council instructed that ‘killing swine or other bestial on the High Street’ would merit a fine of one shilling but moves to relocate the flesh market to a more remote area were not started until 1786. Musselburgh’s fleshmarket stood in the High Street beside the tolbooth, where prisoners were incarcerated and permitted to exercise on the roof. In spite of the fact that ‘excrement [was] dropped on [the fleshmarket] by the inhabitants of the tolbooth’ in 1783 the authorities decided merely to heighten the fleshmarket, rather than relocate. Even less action in the face of concern was shown in Dumbarton. As late as 1790 it was claimed that ‘fevers prevail very much. Many die of consumptions and the natural smallpox is very mortal’. But one of the town’s two wells, sited beside the slaughterhouse and fed by a pipe from 1715, had been known to have been causing pollution.5 On the other hand, in 1788, Linlithgow’s meal market was upgraded to a fleshmarket, with shading and roofing and division into stalls outside the West Port, a huge improvement on the previous site of open shambles at the Cross in the centre of town. Maybole council in 1809 enacted that the fleshers should wash the meat market once a week.6 This would not have been adequate to cope with the accumulated filth but was, at least, as for many small towns, a significant step forward.

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For centuries the Canongate’s fleshers had plied their trade in the middle of the burgh’s main street, the east–west thoroughfare from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to Edinburgh Castle, now known as the Royal Mile. The cattle market with the fleshers’ booths, seen so vividly on Gordon of Rothiemay’s famous plan of Edinburgh, caused such an unpleasant crush in the street, with dealers, customers and scavenging dogs, that it was claimed that residents could not even access their front doors. There was a further, increasingly obvious cause of congestion – the proliferation of wheeled traffic. Towns for centuries had acted as market places for their hinterlands; rising populations, in both town and countryside, brought a cacophony of carts, hucksters and animals to urban streets. This was also the age of increasing travel, with its carriages, coaches, coaching inns and stables. It was claimed, anecdotally, that in the 1670s the only coach in Edinburgh was that of Bishop Sharp. A hundred years later, leaving daily from Edinburgh, including Canongate, were four coaches bound for London, thirtytwo for Leith, seven for Glasgow and a further thirty-seven for other destinations. Added to these numbers were other services which operated only two or three times weekly. For every coach that left Edinburgh, another returned.7 Streets were narrow and obstructed. The ‘Narrows’, where Nethergate joined the market place in Dundee, was a mere two metres (6 ft 7 ins) wide. Seagate, also offering access to the market, was even more constricted, but only Nethergate ‘Narrows’ was widened in 1811. To add to the bottleneck, most roadways narrowed as a port was approached, so making access from both sides difficult. Of the standing evidence of their once crucial role in town life, only two have survived – the West Port at St Andrews and the Wishart Arch in Dundee. Early illustrations of town ports, such as Dunfermline’s West Port beside the abbey, confirm clearly the constrained width of roads inherited from the Middle Ages. There was a logic to the destruction of town ports (see Fig. 6.1). Market crosses, weigh houses and machines, open market stalls and forestairs, as well as town ports, were impediments to the smooth circulation of traffic. They had to be removed. The re-siting of the market cross was for many towns perhaps the most poignantly significant act. The cross was at the central core of settlement, the place where all matters of importance had always been announced and transacted, and the heart of the burgh and community. Some towns in sentiment placed markers, such as cobbled crosses set in the ground, as reminders of an almost revered spot. When the twentieth century brought pedestrianisation to many high streets, the old crosses were sometimes resurrected and resited in their original proud positions. Much of the transformation of townscapes at this time could be attributed to this need for greater circulation of traffic. Market repletion – encroachment on the open selling area – had been gradually eroding available space (see p. 156). As a result, in some towns this open area had been lost by the insertion of small rows of buildings, both shops and dwellings. These had now to be removed.

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Figure 6.1   The West Port, Dunfermline. The archway, only seven feet (2.13 metres) wide, shows the difficulties faced by wheeled traffic in attempting to navigate narrow town gates.

Linlithgow removed its ‘Middleraw’ in the High Street as early as the 1640s; Pococke, visiting in 1760, maintained that the town ‘consist[ed] of a street’, so open and airy had the thoroughfare become.8 Considerably later, some time after 1761, Musselburgh invested in several town amenities, including the removal of its Mid Row, where a new pump well was placed in its recently enlarged market square.9 Montrose took this step in 1748, demolishing semi-derelict houses in its Middle Row to reveal the magnificent wide market place to be seen today. The square, in fact, was once even bigger than in its present form, the occupants on the frontages of the enlarged High Street having been permitted to move their façades fourteen feet (4.27 metres) into the newly opened space. The illustration

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Figure 6.2   Montrose High Street, Alexander Milne. This view was painted some time between 1828 and 1831. Gas lighting had been introduced to the town in 1828, as seen in the picture; the Old Steeple of Montrose, as on this image, was demolished in 1831. The High Street would become larger still than this view suggests; some demolition had taken place in the seventeenth century but remnants remain to the right of this picture and would be demolished in 1848 when the ‘mid-row’ block would be removed to combine Murray Street and High Street into one. The main purpose of the painting was to display the ‘great and the good’ of Montrose society. Milne was, however, happy to show reality: as well as a tartan-clad blind fiddler, a Highland soldier, the local barber and a one-legged man, there is also a pickpocket.

here (see front cover and Fig. 6.2) shows a large, open market area even before full-scale demolition had taken place.10 Space became a new criterion of urban living. The natural environment of towns also benefited from improvement. One of the pioneers of drainage schemes was the president from 1723 of the ‘Honourable the Society of Improvers’, Thomas Hope of Rankeillor. His removal of Straiton Loch to form what is now known as ‘the Meadows’ on the south side of Edinburgh was a fine example of the benefits to society to be gained from the

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draining of boggy land.11 The latter decades of the eighteenth century witnessed the partial draining of Forfar Loch. The lowering of the water level by six metres gave access to rich marl, and even greater quantities were gained by machinedigging deeper into the submerged areas. The surrounding fields were supplied with nourishing fertiliser. Peat could also be gained by this process, a great boon to Forfar as fuel was scarce and coal had to be imported from Arbroath and Dundee.12 Dumbarton’s lost Broad Meadows (see pp. 18–20) would be partially regained in the 1850s when draining and embanking reclaimed land for the Bowling to Balloch railway line.13 In the 1860s in Inverness, Douglas Row, which lay on the east bank of the River Ness, was protected from constant flooding by earth excavated during the building of the town’s Union Street.14 And perhaps the most famous of the drainage schemes was the removal of the Nor’ Loch at Edinburgh. First mooted in 1759, the east end was drained in 1763 and the west in the 1830s, the whole operation being completed only in 1820 to make way for a new railway line and, ultimately, Princes Street Gardens. Improvements in the townscape may be seen as one reflection of what has become called the ‘Enlightenment’. The flowering of artistic, intellectual and scientific thought in the later eighteenth century grew from seeds sown earlier, reaching back into the late seventeenth century. Although its full fruition was centred in Edinburgh, it touched towns throughout the country. The new ideas brought light and adornment, in both material and cultural ways. Intellectual advancement in the early eighteenth century resulted in significant reorganisation of the universities, initially in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and later Aberdeen and St Andrews.15 Educational progress was not, however, confined to the universities. Many burgh schools were upgraded in their built fabric, in the content of the curriculum and in extending the inclusiveness of pupils. Local enthusiasm for furthering education was shown throughout the country. The town council of Dunbar in 1816 set aside land at the east end of Galla Green for the building of an academy by public subscription, even though the town was already relatively well provided for, with a private school at East Barns, and within Dunbar itself three further schools – a mathematical, a grammar and an English school.16 From 1830, funds had been raised to erect Nairn Academy, known by 1841 as Rose’s Academical Institution (see Fig. 6.3). A Mechanics Institute was also proposed, as in Forfar and elsewhere (see p. 226).17 Even small villages such as North Queensferry found the means to erect schools by public subscription.18 Benefactors also promoted education: Priory Lane, or Rolland Street, School in Dunfermline received a bequest for children whose parents could not afford fees from Mr Adam Rolland of Gask who died in 1763. The school was later attended by Andrew Carnegie, himself a great philanthropist.19 By 1843 in Cumnock, there ‘were very few above the age of fourteen who [were] not able to read and write, as parents evince[d] a laudable anxiety to give their children the common branches of education’.20 It was even claimed in Dumbarton in 1790 that fees were so low

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Figure 6.3   Nairn Academy (Rose’s Academical Institution), c. 1882.

for those attending the new purpose-built, two-storey grammar school ‘that almost every person has an opportunity of following any branch of learning’.21 Musselburgh’s schools became renowned as favoured establishments for the education of the sons of the wealthier families in Scotland.22 A cautionary note, however, might be sounded about civic investment in municipal education. In 1860, £34 was spent by the town council on Dunbar’s schools; it received £170 from the selling of dung from the streets.23 Increasing literacy and the provision of local libraries were mutually beneficial. Linlithgow was fortunate in its inheritance of the books of a local dignitary, Dr Robert Henry of Milnfield. On the order of the town council in 1791, a new library was erected specifically to house this collection. Six years later, Dumbarton’s public library opened to meet the demands of its grateful readers.24 Even small, unpretentious country towns such as Dunblane had four writers to the signet and a resident surgeon by the 1790s; and the list of borrowers and their chosen reading from the Leighton Library, accumulated by Bishop Robert Leighton in the mid-seventeenth century, suggests that many of the townspeople were far from illiterate and uneducated.25 Musselburgh possibly felt the influence of the Edinburgh literati more than other towns. A collection for a town library was made as early as 1727, but whether this came to fruition is uncertain.26 The manse, while occupied by Dr ‘Jupiter’ Carlyle, was visited by David Hume, Adam Smith and Tobias Smollett. Gilbert

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Stuart, one of the founders of the first Edinburgh Review, hosted conversations in his study – a gazebo in his garden, still standing today. The town was also the birthplace and residence of Dr Moir (1798–1851), the author and physician, to whose memory the town erected a statue.27 The last forty years of the eighteenth century have been seen as the golden age of the stagecoach.28 With the advent of regular stagecoach services, aided by turnpike trusts from the 1760s, communication became swifter and more widely available. Newspapers began to proliferate; mail could be sent with relative speed; and new enlightened notions circulated. The interest in scientific matters, already triggered in 1681 with the founding of the Royal College of Physicians and the establishment of Surgeons’ Hall in 1697, began to disseminate from the capital around the country. The Physic Garden in Edinburgh, the forerunner of the Botanical Gardens, founded in the 1670s, had promoted a growing horticultural fascination in enhancing townscapes and elegant residences; and, for those with time and privilege, gardening became a novel pastime. Leisure for some became more refined. Dancing and concert halls were the vogue. Some towns invested in assembly rooms but they were costly and town councils on a limited financial budget were not always happy to commit funds for meeting places that functioned solely for social events. Existing buildings, however, could be converted to hold balls and concerts. The tolbooth at Ayr was in a sufficiently poor state of repair in 1748 that it was partially demolished; the local dignitaries were prepared to finance its replacement only if it could serve also as an ‘assembly or dancing room’.29 The assembly room recorded at Stornoway in the 1790s was in all probability also an adapted existing building.30 New, grand assembly rooms were not constructed before the nineteenth century. Dunbar’s was an unpretentious, plain but gracious building of ironstone rubble with Catcraig dressing. Built in 1822, it had both a supper room and a ballroom.31 The latter decades of the eighteenth century brought modest wealth to Forfar. Previously, balls had been held only once or twice a year, but by the 1790s there was entertainment throughout the year, particularly in the winter season when a monthly concert of Scots and Italian music was followed by a dance. These occasions were attended by a ‘company of ladies and gentlemen dressed in the modern fashion’, who, with their subscriptions to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and The Bee, and the increasing availability of religious, moral, scientific and political periodicals, ‘shed an evident lustre on the conversation of many’.32 Relaxation was invariably found in many other less elegant ways. Drinking in the many taverns and ‘grog shops’ was routine. Ministers throughout the country complained bitterly of the number of licensed premises. Paisley in 1829 had 274 in the main burgh as well as 198 in the Abbey parish and new town, to cater for a population of 31,000.33 Football, of a somewhat disorganised manner to the modern eye, was popular, as were horse-racing, shooting competitions, golf and cock-fighting (see p. 230). The last was even enjoyed by school pupils in

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Dunblane. They were permitted to attend the annual cock-fighting competition held in the cathedral – in the ‘vasterie’, probably the east section of the chapter house,34 an unusual extension of the traditional use of church precincts for communal amusements, marketing and animal-grazing. Musselburgh was a mecca for sporting enthusiasts. Shooting was long-­ established on the Links, attracting large numbers, including the Royal Company of Archers who competed for the Silver Arrow of Musselburgh. The Links had also been the home of golf since the sixteenth century, interrupted only in 1650 by a Cromwellian encampment and in 1803 when a military camp was erected there during the Napoleonic Wars.35 It was also a favourite meeting place for horse-racing. It had long been enthusiastically followed, with much-sought-after prizes and gambling gains and losses. A saddle was the prize at the races in the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth. So that there was no bias towards wealthier horse-owners who could afford swift stock, a maximum value was placed on each horse; in 1680 this had been specified as £50.36 Football was as keenly appreciated here as elsewhere. The fishwives of Fisherrow at Musselburgh were known for their aptitude for sport but received uncomplimentary comments on their attire and cleanliness: The women . . . have dirty clouts tied round their shoulders, and peep out of pieces of boarded windows just big enough for their heads . . . Their butter is loathsome both to eye and taste, which they turn into oil when they use it. The sailors are far cleaner cooks than the women. In short, the unpleasantness of their food makes one in danger of a surfeit, while their dirty beds cause one to apprehend the music called the Scots fiddle.37

Others referred to them as ‘foul mouthed’ although ‘honest’ and ‘moral’. But whatever their failings, they knew how to enjoy themselves. The fishwives regularly played golf and held an annual football match, when the married women challenged the unmarried. Invariably, the former won.38 By contrast, Musselburgh, along with Portobello and Leith, was emerging as the refined rendezvous for the Edinburgh well-to-do. Excursions were taken to Leith to watch archery and horse-racing, stopping en route at farms to eat curds and whey. Promenading became the vogue; the elite would ‘drive in their carriages to the sands at Leith and Musselburgh, and parade back and forwards, after the manner of Scarborough’.39 A new sporting activity was growing at seasides throughout the country – swimming. Bathing resorts were becoming the vogue.

II.  Population growth Population growth in towns is often an enigma which is variously measured. Just as it is possible to view a ‘long sixteenth century’, stretching from 1500 until

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around 1640, so it can be useful to take a similar overview of a long eighteenth century, beginning in 1700 and ending in 1841, by which time a regular ten-year census of the population had become established. With such an approach, striking increases in population are readily traceable within and outside the large cities. There were tenfold increases in population in a series of counties, ranging from the predictable – such as Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire – to the more surprising, such as Kincardineshire and Caithness.40 In the latter two cases, there is a specific explanation: Alloa, in Kincardineshire, for example, grew sixfold between 1750 and 1800, and tenfold between 1750 and 1841, on the basis of local mining as well as a smattering of textile industries. Wick’s new one-industry suburb of Pultneytown expanded rapidly on the back of the herring fishery from 1807 onwards, when a new harbour was first planned (see Appendix, pp. 299f.).41 Alternatively, it is possible to trace in outline the growth of urban populations between statistical mileposts: these are the problematic hearth and poll taxes of the 1690s, Webster’s survey of 1755 and the two Statistical Accounts, drawn up by local parish ministers in the 1790s and in the late 1830s and early 1840s. There were about 150 small towns in Scotland by 1700.42 Almost all saw modest growth between these checkpoints. Cumnock in 1765 had 580 residents; this rose to 787 by 1792.43 According to the Old Statistical Account, there were 1,812 people in Stornoway in 1755; this was to increase to 2,639 by 1796 – a considerable expansion since Martin Martin’s visit in the late seventeenth century when the community consisted of a mere sixty families (see Appendix, pp. 299f.).44 Nairn had about 1,100 inhabitants by the 1790s,45 showing a steady recovery since the decimations of the 1690s. Coupar Angus similarly showed expansion – a parish population of 1,491 in 1755 rose to 2,076 by 1793. By then, 1,604 people lived in the town itself in 520 families.46 Forfar in the mid-eighteenth century had 300 families – probably accounting for around 1,200 to 1,300 people (see Appendix, pp. 299f.).47 By the 1790s, the population had risen to 3,400, fuelled by an increase of over 1,000 inhabitants in the twelve years following 1781.48 As in this case, there were usually particular triggers for larger-scale or more sustained growth. Situated at a natural crossroads from north to south and east to west, the key factor for Forfar was not its long-established status as a county town but, rather, the booming production of osnaburg, a coarse linen; where there had been forty looms early in the century, by 1750 there were 140 and by the 1790s between 400 and 500.49 In contrast, some other long-established burghs stagnated. The county towns of Dalkeith, Hamilton and Lanark all showed little signs of growth. Dalkeith had a population of 3,500 in 1755 and some 4,000 in the 1790s.50 Hamilton had probably fewer than 3,000 people in the town in 1704 when the Register of Burials stated that the ‘number of the dead are 109 of which number there are children dead of smallpox 43’.51 It has been suggested that there were 3,815 in 1755.52 There were only 805 families in 1782,53 about 3,600 people. In 1791,

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it was estimated that 954 families lived in the town and palace (see Appendix, pp.  299f.),54 implying a population of just over 4,000. This suggests a modest influx of population from the surrounding countryside in the last decades of the century, possibly partly as a result of the effect on the tenurial system and rural clearance introduced by the agriculturist John Burrell.55 Lanark had a population of 2,294 in 1755; it had risen only marginally by 1792, when it stood at 2,693. In this case, the emergence of the nearby cotton mills and one-industry town of New Lanark must have acted as a choke on development of its existing stocking industry (see Fig. 6.4). In 1792, New Lanark had a workforce of 1,157, although almost 800 of it was made up of children.56 By 1835, the population of the old burgh had increased by almost 60 per cent but it retained the profile of a typical county or market town; its economy was stagnant and its largest industry, employing 702 weavers, was ‘at its lowest ebb’.57 The major stimulus to urban growth was industry, in particular the various branches and offshoots related to textiles production. Five or more of the largest thirteen towns at least trebled their populations between 1750 and 1820. All were manufacturing centres – Falkirk, Greenock (which was also a thriving

Figure 6.4   A view of New Lanark. The new ‘model’ industrial town had a huge workforce of adults and children. The children were the first working-class youngsters in Scotland to receive schooling.

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port), Kilmarnock, Paisley and, of course, Glasgow.58 The example of Paisley is instructive. In 1755, it ranked tenth amongst Scotland’s towns (see Appendix, pp. 299f.). By the late 1790s, it had risen to third, overtaking Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth and Inverness in the process.59 The story of the growth of textile industries in and around Paisley is complicated and it demonstrates steady evolution rather than sudden change. It had long been the centre of domestic weaving but comparatively few workers lived in the town. In the 1690s, there were seventytwo weavers in the town itself, a further 118 across the river in the Abbey parish, which was largely rural in character, and some 150 more scattered in various villages in the shire. The next developments, which came in the 1730s and 1740s, were twofold: the growth of stocking ‘factories’ specialising in fine quality linen in neighbouring villages, such as Sneddon; and the improving of roads between the town and traditional weaving villages such as Maxwelltown. Parallel to such developments was the rapid growth of bleachfields to cater for the demands made by the fine linen end of the industry. By 1800, there were more than a hundred bleachfields in Renfrewshire; they were the largest sources of employment but, again, they were located in the surrounding countryside rather than in the towns themselves. The growth of cotton manufacture in Paisley and the rest of Renfrewshire came rapidly but late – not until the 1790s, by which time the shire had forty large mills.60

III.  New townscapes and new identities The impact of Paisley’s industrial expansion on its townscape was dramatic. George Street, the new thoroughfare to Maxwelltown, was laid out in the 1740s; it ran parallel to the old High Street but, unlike the old road, it was straight. Plans for a new town were first mooted in 1781. An elaborate plan by a land surveyor, William Semple, shows the beginning of the layout of a regular street pattern of a new town, to the west of the river, channelled through the entry point across the river of a new bridge – the Abbey or Saucel Bridge, completed in 1763 (see Fig. 6.5).61 This was a speculative venture by an ‘Improver’, the 8th Earl of Abercorn, who supervised the creation of the new street layout and then maximised his return by selling off the stone of much of the old abbey precinct wall to the new feuars to build their houses. The new town, largely residential, was laid out in a grid-like formation, in imitation of Edinburgh’s New Town, even though the latter was as yet largely unbuilt. If Semple’s plan of 1781 is compared with John Wood’s detailed map of the town in 1828, the contrast is striking (see Fig. 6.6). The population in 1791 had been 10,792; by 1831 it was 31,460.62 The names of the new streets around the abbey, which had previously stood in splendid near-isolation, revealed their provenance – Cotton Street, Gauze Street, Thread Street and Silk Street. Here, factories and homes stood side by side. Paisley’s second new town lay on the

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Figure 6.5   A Plan of the Town of Paisley and Suburbs, 1781, William Semple.

Figure 6.6   Plan of Paisley, 1828, John Wood. This plan highlights the great development of the town since the time of Semple’s plan (Fig. 6.6).

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other side of the River Cart and it was closely connected to many of the surrounding industrial villages, which by now were, in effect, suburbs. The result has been dubbed ‘Scotland’s first industrial region’, a development which forced a new relationship between town and hinterland – based on large-scale manufacturing rather than domestic industry.63 The early part of the eighteenth century had seen in many towns a withering of the traditional sense of burgh identity. The spate of building and rearrangement of the townscape in cases such as those of Paisley and Kilmarnock helped foster a new sense of civic identity, even if it was shared by only a minority of the population. Alongside the new styles of residential building and the separation of the commercial and the domestic spheres there developed an enthusiasm for a novel pattern in the distribution of public buildings, often aligned in new public squares or other open spaces. Paisley typified both trends.64 The erection in 1819, on an open greenfield site on the east side of the river, of the ‘County Buildings’, in a ‘County Square’, dubbed a municipal ‘castle’ in the New Statistical Account, testified to a burgeoning civic pride, characterised by ‘wealth, refinement and public spirit’.65 By the first decades of the nineteenth century, the new order of civic space was being finessed in many towns; squares and grid-style, straightline streets, which owed much to the style of drawing-board architecture which ignored physical contours in favour of strict geometry,66 were giving way to a different style of classical architecture. The new fashion was for circles and crescents, whether in Edinburgh’s West End, Pultneytown’s residential areas, bizarrely drawn in strict imitation of Bath,67 or Perth’s emerging middle-class suburbs in the terraces and crescents facing the open space of the North Inch. Edinburgh’s second New Town, the extension of the elegant western suburbs of Glasgow and Aberdeen’s Union Street were possibly the most striking developments. While burgh authorities took pride in their investment in new planned townscapes, private housing and public buildings also reflected the mood of improvement. Relatively small buildings, such as Stranraer’s Ann House and Dunbae House, originally functioning as a bank (see Fig. 6.7), Dunbar’s prestigious Lauderdale House, and Melrose’s Harmony Hall and a more modest house near the East Port, which in 1762 was graced with a sundial on the window-sill for the benefit of the occupants, were typical of many excellent private houses built at this time.68 There was a great variety of public buildings which in various towns marked out this new identity. Townhouses, built to demonstrate space and order, steadily replaced old-style tolbooths, as in Stranraer in 1776.69 Dundee outpaced other centres: its classical William Adam townhouse of 1732–4, Samuel Bell’s St Andrew’s Church (1772) and the elegant Trades Hall of 1776 were outstanding. They were the forerunners of new, embellished public buildings, all proclaiming their prestigious status. Separate gaols or bridewells, often hailed by local

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Figure 6.7   Dunbae House, Stranraer.

ministers as one of the ultimate signs of the new civic order, replaced the old arrangements in which prisoners were often housed in the lowest reaches of the tolbooth. Private and charity schools dotted the townscape in addition to the traditional grammar and parish schools. Public infirmaries (founded in Aberdeen in 1738 and Dumfries in 1777) and lunatic asylums (founded in Glasgow in 1807) replaced the old so-called ‘hospitals’. The level of concern over sexual misdemeanours exemplified one aspect of the new attitude to health issues. In 1797, the Philanthropic Society opened the first female penitentiary, or Magdalene

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home, in Scotland – a telling comment on the morals of the capital. Initially housing women of all age groups, it was soon recognised that concentration on young women with no venereal disease and who were not pregnant would bring an enhanced success rate. A strict regime of ‘mild, wholesome, paternal and Christian discipline’ was followed. Although it functioned into the next century (see p. 228), the authorities could be hoodwinked into receiving women who were, in fact, suffering from venereal disease or pregnant, with the result that many of the inmates were forwarded to hospital for ‘a course of mercury’ or to the poorhouse when pregnancy became obvious.70 The pride that a town might demonstrate in these fashionable new surroundings and public buildings is shown clearly in Alexander Milne’s painting of Montrose (see Fig. 6.2 and cover). The dating is interesting. Usually noted as ‘1826’, it must, however, have been executed between 1828 when gas lighting was introduced and 1831 when the Old Steeple was taken down.71 Both can be seen clearly in the picture. It also displays the west front of the townhouse, newly extended in 1819, with its arcaded loggia, or piazza, and the widened and cleared High Street (see p. 173). This painting demonstrates, equally, a self-appreciation of the governance of the town; on show are the arrayed provost, dean of guild, other burgh officers, the local minister and their minions, in effect, the ‘great and the good’.72 Probably influenced by Enlightenment ideals, there was during this time a certain realignment in the thinking of who precisely constituted the ‘great and the good’. The earliest academy of artists in Scotland, the Edinburgh School of St Luke, was founded in 1729; this was probably modelled on the Accademia di San Luca of 1577, which intended to promote the work of artists as superior to that of mere craftsmen. The new academy, however, was very much in step with the ideals and aims of a typical craft guild. One of the founders of the School was James Norie (1684–1757) who set up a famous family firm of decorators. He, along with the painter Roderick Chalmers, had aimed to raise the status of the Incorporation of St Mary’s Chapel, essentially a trade guild, of which they were members. Roderick Chalmers’ 1720 painting ‘The Edinburgh Trades’ highlights the pretensions of the craft guilds at this time, placed, as they are, in front of the Palace of Holyroodhouse (see Fig. 6.8).73 This controversy, for some an alarming prospect, of who should hold governance of the burgh would continue until well into the nineteenth century when the issue of urban power would become intermingled with the wider question of the franchise and the burgh reform movement. The lithograph cartoon of Thomas Sinclair (c. 1805–81), although not produced until 1830 as one of three reform prints, summed up the mood of the eighteenth century (see Fig. 6.9). It poked fun at the Canongate trade incorporations and their privileges. It suggested that the entry to burgess-ship – the right to freedom of the burgh coveted since medieval times – was so discredited that those who held power were ‘asses’. In

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Figure 6.8   The Edinburgh Trades, 1720, R. Chalmers.

this cartoon the ‘ass’ is being cajoled up the stairs to the first floor of Canongate tolbooth while proclaiming his right to freedom of the burgh, even though he was descended from Balaam’s ass of the Old Testament (Numbers 22: 21–38). From the reference to selling herring on the streets, the ass was considered to have forestalled the market (see p. 51) and had fallen foul of the authorities. The ass’s uncle was in the tolbooth in a position of authority, perhaps as provost or bailie, but even he was an ass. Clearly, for some sections of society, trade incorporations were getting above their station and bringing the whole edifice of burgh organisation into disrepute while attempting to bolster their own anachronistic status. If the trades had their way, the burgh would be run by asses.74 One of the striking changes lay with a new proliferation of churches. In 1797, Aberdeen, with a population of 16,000, had eighteen churches, chapels or meeting houses in addition to its original two parish kirks (see p. 101).75 All of this was more than four decades before the cataclysmic spilt within the Established Church, which would come about with the Disruption in 1843. In the 1790s, Stirling, which had a long history of dissent stretching back to Covenanting times, had eight dissenting congregations, accounting for 40 per cent of worshippers, as well as the two Established parish churches. Yet here lay a serious problem, which would get much worse in Stirling and elsewhere over the course of the next fifty years. Already, one of its ministers complained, ‘there is generally no room in churches for the accommodation of the poor’. In a sense, a very old problem had returned to haunt the Established Church; in the sixteenth century the poor had regularly been barred from parish

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Figure 6.9   A Residenter in an Ancient Burgh on his Way to procure a Burgess Ticket, 1830, Thomas Sinclair.

churches in the larger burghs (see pp. 101–2). But this was more than simply the problem of the town’s native poor. Here, it was feared, was a new underclass of migrants and vagrants. One in twelve, it was claimed, was on public charity and the bulk of them were of Gaelic extraction.76 Thomas Sinclair’s satirical print of 1830, ‘Mechanics of an Ancient Burgh going to Church to claim the Superiority of their Seats’ (see Fig. 6.10), was designed to poke fun, with the mechanics symbolically riding on asses, while emphasising a dire situation – churches could not accommodate all of their congregation. This particular vignette exemplified the Canongate, although it was relevant throughout the country. From 1692, only those with communion tickets and of ‘known quality’ – of a certain financial standing – were permitted entrance to the Established church. The price of the vignette – 10d, the same as the cost of The Scotsman (which included 4d of stamp duty) – indicated clearly that this cartoon was directed at an audience of the new professional and middle classes who were not yet enfranchised.

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Figure 6.10   Mechanics of an Ancient Burgh going to Church to claim the Superiority of their Seats, 1830, Thomas Sinclair

Sinclair found another issue dear to the heart – and pocket – of the Edinburgh bourgeois arrivistes. This was the compulsory annuity tax, paid to ministers of the Established Church by Edinburgh inhabitants whether they belonged to it or not. His third cartoon was of a group portrait depicting seven ministers, dressed in Genevan gowns and top hats, queuing outside the Bank of Scotland to be paid their weekly allowance.77 The issue was closely related to the clamour for burgh reform; town councillors were urban heritors who supervised burgh churches, employed the ministry and were the arbiters of the scale and expense of church extension to meet a rising population.78 Members of the Church of Scotland resented rising pew rents and dissenters loathed the annuity tax. Either way, burgh reform was intrinsically tied up in a toxic mix with patronage, dissent and the slipping grip of the Established Church on urban society. A new gulf was opening up in many manufacturing towns and cities between a mainly migrant, labouring poor, largely unchurched and remote from ­established

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civic society, which in turn was ever more conscious of its position and status. The scale of migration from the Highlands to staff the new industries or to act as servants for the new middle classes may be judged by the fact that by the 1790s nine major towns had Gaelic chapels.79 Irish immigration, which brought an even worse spectre – that of Roman Catholicism – came mostly after 1790 and helped to accentuate existing social problems and divisions. The 1820s and 1830s saw the peak of migration, immigration and sharply rising urban populations. It also witnessed urban society in some larger towns on the brink of social chaos. The response of civic society initially lacked coordination. Improvement Acts were not as common or as comprehensive in their scope in Scotland as in England, where over 400 were obtained in towns outside London.80 In Scotland, fifty were put into force before 1820, in towns ranging in size from Edinburgh and Aberdeen to Banff. They varied greatly in approach and the scale of fretting on the part of burgh authorities. Improvement was not always considered or coherent, nor focused on the standard needs of civic society – hygiene, water supply and drainage. The regulations laid down by the council in Dunbar in 1814 put the manners of the townspeople under particular scrutiny. Carpets were not to be shaken outside after 7 a.m. in summer and 9 a.m. in winter; fines were to be imposed for ‘wanton cruelty’ while driving animals; a constable and a magistrate were to walk the streets during divine service on the Sabbath to note shopkeepers and publicans with open doors and to apprehend ‘disorderly persons’; horses were to be prevented from drinking well water, and dirty linen and fish were not to be washed there; wheelbarrows and wheeled transport were not acceptable on pavements; and boys were not to be permitted to drive hoops and girds on the streets, to make slides in winter, to throw stones, to play shinty or to collect in gangs on the streets to be rude to passers-by.81 This was petty improvement, which might have come out of the pages of a seventeenth-century kirk session register rather than a serious attempt to come to grips with the new problems of a fast-growing urban population. The fear of impending social chaos also manifested itself in agitation for political reform. It reached its peak in the years between 1830 and 1832. The burgh reform movement emerged in Scotland in the 1770s, but the unholy and usually unspoken alliance between the oligarchic burgh rulers and the Ministry which ruled Scotland, not from home but from England, managed, in effect, to keep the campaign for better burgh government away from the Westminster parliament. One of the main issues was the inadequate franchise. Abuse varied throughout the country: in Edinburgh the right to vote for the Member of Parliament was limited to a mere twenty-five men out of the entire town population. Another cause for concern was the level of corruption and financial manipulation by the burgh rulers, self-serving cliques that thrived on nepotism. Allied to this went the grievance surrounding the elitism of those who might and those who certainly might not be permitted into the parish church. It was within this atmosphere

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of mistrust and hostile grievance that Sinclair penned his satirical prints (see Fig. 6.9 and Fig. 6.10). These were his last known publications in Scotland. By 1833, he was in Philadelphia, never to return. Were these the last expressions of disgust from the renowned lithographer of West Register Street, Edinburgh, at Scotland’s failing and unfair system of government?

IV.  Railways and improving communications Nothing changed the face of the early nineteenth-century town more than two irresistible forces which were both allowed to operate unchecked. These resulted from the lack of any coherent system of overall town planning, despite the long-established, but limited, jurisdiction of the Dean of Guild Court. Very few towns escaped the impact of the railways, one of the two ‘irresistible forces’ (see Fig. 6.11). They typically gouged their path into the very centre of towns, showing little or no respect for existing buildings, settlement patterns or street layout. Great swathes of tracks were laid across the country, and station buildings, tunnels and viaducts were engineered. Competition between rival railway

Figure 6.11   View near Provan Mill Bridge Looking West, 1831, David Octavius Hill. This is an image of the opening day of the Glasgow to Garnkirk railway. The cottages on the right are where the railway workers lodged while labouring on the line. In spite of all the claims of the importance of the railway in the development of passenger transport, the facilities, as is clear here, were primitive.

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companies, seeking extensive marshalling yards and sidings as well as the most favourable and direct route into the centre of settlements, exaggerated the extent of the architectural carnage on most of the major cities, including Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth.82 Damage to the urban environment was not confined to the big cities. At best, a town might be merely inconvenienced by the siting of a railway line and its station. The positioning of the line to Linlithgow’s station, set above the main street, meant that to this day the exit south from the town centre is a relatively tortuous and dangerous road. Coupar Angus found itself sliced in two at the head of Queen Street, the halves of the town able to communicate with each other only by the use of a level crossing. The railway line has since ceased, courtesy of Dr Beeching in 1967 (see p. 273), and in its place is now aligned the equally divisive A94. This line, founded by the Newtyle and Coupar Angus Railway Company, was an extension of the Dundee and Newtyle railway, and the town was one of the first to be served by a scheduled passenger service, albeit a horse-drawn one. One local tale relates that early passenger carriages were fitted with sails so that the horses could be spared when there was a good wind.83 The Dundee to Arbroath line ran close to the shore but the manner and location of the route meant that railway embankments hemmed in Seagate, the east road out of Dundee. Foetid lagoons developed, with no drainage into the Tay; these were worsened in summer with the waste and smell of whale blubber. The railway company appearing little interested, local people began to infill the lagoons themselves. The present main Dundee to Aberdeen line now runs right through the site. To the west of Dundee, Magdalene Green, a beautiful little spot, found itself also subject to foul smells from three lagoons created by the building of the Dundee to Perth line. Even though attempts were made to remove what many considered ‘cesspits’ with infill from the first Tay Bridge, they were still full of sewage in 1877. Waverley Station, Edinburgh, with its approach line cutting through the valley of the present Princes Street Gardens, the old Nor’ Loch, brought destruction of several buildings, the greatest loss being the sweeping away of the city’s Physic Garden and the historic Trinity Church and hospital. The church has been described as ‘one of the finest models of Gothic architecture that this country has to boast of’. Lord Cockburn described this demolition as ‘an outrage by sordid traders, virtually consented to by a tasteless city and sanctioned by an insensible Parliament . . . These people would remove Pompeii for a railway, and tell us they had applied it to a better purpose in Dundee’.84 After twenty years of procrastination, most of the stones of this medieval chapel, which had been laid aside for conservation and reconstruction, had been lost. Many more than Cockburn thought that the destruction of the chapel was nothing less than official vandalism. The innovation of railways, however, brought great advantages to the towns that it served, offering ready transport for people, animals and freight. One of the

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greatest beneficiaries of railway travel was the surge it gave to industry. Heavy goods, such as coal and iron, could now be more readily and cheaply moved. Like the earlier canals and wagonways, the railways proved to be the crucial lifeblood for conveying essential supplies to the emerging factories but initially they served as communications alongside the existing transport facilities. The Monklands and Kirkintilloch Railway, which opened in 1826, in the forefront of steam locomotives, took coal from the Monkland pits but only as far as the established carrier at Kirkintilloch – the Forth and Clyde Canal.85 But by 1861, rail links were dominant in the movement of goods between major urban centres.86 Areas of Scotland that were once considered remote, in particular the Highlands, gained access to the central regions of the country. There were cases where railways were the main stimulus to growth. Mallaig developed from a small village with only about twenty-eight houses to a substantial port, exporting herring by train and importing coal by the same means. It became the biggest herring port in Europe, and to this day it has a steady export trade, particularly in langoustines. The photograph of shops’ baskets on Dunbar’s cobbled High Street awaiting collection for carriage by train is evocative of many nineteenth-century towns (see Fig. 6.12).87 The possibility of commuting to work was also an option that had a direct impact. The insistence of the railway companies on providing suburban lines

Figure 6.12   ‘Railway baskets’ awaiting collection, Dunbar High Street

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encouraged the extension of suburbs in large cities and the increase in the numbers of wealthy commuters, whether based at a short distance, as in the case of Broughty Ferry, five miles out of Dundee, or further afield. These new lines heralded the growth of North Berwick, twenty-five miles from Edinburgh, and of Helensburgh, twenty-six miles from Glasgow. The affluent from Glasgow, as those from Edinburgh, were soon using the railway to travel to prestigious homes that they had established elsewhere outside the city. Standing evidence of their prosperous owners may still be seen in areas such as Millport and Prestwick. Leisure pursuits also benefited, with access to the favourite bathing spots on the coast, such as Saltcoats, North Berwick and Portobello (see Fig. 6.13), being made easier. Both rail and sea travel attracted visitors from as far afield as the south of England to Nairn, the rail link between Edinburgh and Inverness being a favoured route. An accompaniment to the new travel networks was a rebranded style of travel literature, now aimed at the mass market rather than, as before, at the intrepid traveller. Nairn’s baths were advertised in 1849: Salt water baths and open sea bathing . . . The rooms are provided with every requisite for delicate invalids, and connected with the establishment are two bathing, or rather dressing machines, which can be rolled to the water-edge, and affording much comfort to delicate parties who prefer bathing in the open sea.

And the town itself, it was claimed: has long stood high as a bathing quarter, on account of the salubrity of its climate, its extensive links along the sea shore, and its gradually sloping sandy beach, so suitable for bathing, and sufficiently distant from the town. The lodgings in the town are numerous and comfortable . . . Bread, butcher-meat, fish, butter, eggs and all other requisites are always in abundant supply, and in good quality. There is also a comfortable reading room, open to visitors at a very low charge, where are to be seen a London daily paper and various Scotch papers.

By 1856, the facilities were even more luxurious – six bathrooms, two dressing rooms, hot and cold showers, and open-sea bathing. Increasing numbers were attracted by facilities such as seaweed and mustard baths, and horse-drawn bathing machines, which were thus advertised: ‘the comfort of dressing and undressing under cover is tangibly felt to supersede the system of stripping on the beach, and thereby having the clothes uncomfortably impregnated with sand.’88 The opening of the Forth Rail Bridge in 1890, a remarkable engineering feat in itself particularly after the shocking tragedy of the collapse of the Tay Bridge, was a boon, sparing the passenger the slow trip across the Forth by ferry boat. North Queensferry became a spot noted for its fresh air and restorative ­swimming

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Figure 6.13   Portobello Beach, c. 1850, Anon. This wash drawing by an unknown artist displays the leisurely life available at Portobello. Bathing machines had been introduced there in 1795. Morality forbade undressing in public but a horse could pull the contraption out to the water where the occupant could descend to bathe. Once refreshed, a wave of a towel through the rear porthole would summon a horse to draw the machine to the shore. The building to the right still stands. Built in 1785 in stone and Portobello brick, it was the summer or bathing house of one Mr Cunningham, an Edinburgh advocate. Falling into disrepair, it was restored in 1864 by Mr Hugh Paton, the publisher of Kay’s Edinburgh Portraits. Of bizarre design, it is said to contain stones from the old Edinburgh market cross and the old college of Edinburgh University.

waters; Sir James Simpson, the early prescriber of chloroform, started the trend of sending patients to the village for recuperation. Edinburgh gentlemen also benefited from the closeness of the village to the capital, travelling by train to North Queensferry’s golf course. Bowler-hatted gentlemen became a regular sight, puffing their way up Ferryhills Road; the 5.17 p.m. train from Edinburgh to North Queensferry became known as the ‘golf special’.89 In the larger cities the growth of suburbs was also accelerated by a further means of transport – the tram. Initially horse-drawn, they were electrified from the 1890s onwards. In August 1898, the city of Aberdeen, at a cost of just over £100,000, assumed ownership of thirty-eight cars and 244 horses. The Aberdeen District Tramways Act had authorised the opening of five lines but by 1874 only two functioned. This left an entrée for private companies to provide

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transport to the suburbs. The Aberdeen Suburban Tramways proposed lines from Woodside to Dyce and Mannofield to Bieldside. The essential initial link for the hamlet of Balmanno was the introduction in 1880 of the horse tramway at Mannofield, first running every thirty minutes and, from 1889, every fifteen.90 This outreach to new suburbs was replicated in both Glasgow and Edinburgh. Following the routes of builders towards the emerging suburbs, they passed down Great Western Road in Glasgow and along Morningside Road and Minto Street in south Edinburgh.91 By the 1920s, however, the state of repair of both tracks and cars was dismal. Post-war housing developments were not close to tram routes, and buses proved more economical and flexible. Most tram routes would disappear by the 1950s.92

V.  Growing industrialisation The other ‘irresistible’ force at work was the unbridled spillage into the townscape of the various components of industrialisation – engineering works, factories and mills, and the infrastructure of warehouses, chemicals works, builders’ yards and all the communications that went with them.93 Inadequate building and planning control meant that development was permitted indiscriminately in all but the more superior residential areas; factory chimneys stood cheek by jowl with the poor-quality housing in which most of the workforce lived. There was in some smaller and medium-sized towns a degree of separation between residential and industrial zones – as at Galashiels, where the mills were mostly located across the Gala Water from housing (see Fig. 6.14), or at Falkirk, where the enormous Carron Ironworks, first founded in 1759, stood two miles to the north of the town, which had within its bounds only small-scale brewing, leather-making and weaving.94 The meteoric rise in the number of factories and industrial units from the 1790s is well documented for larger manufacturing towns such as Glasgow, Paisley and Kilmarnock. There are, however, cases of smaller burghs, such as Dunfermline and Kinghorn in the east, which were, for their size, highly productive in various branches of the textile industry. Both had extensive bleachfields; Dunfermline’s were sited on erstwhile monastic lands – Abbey Park. In Kinghorn, the three spinning mills and the bleachfield in 1840 provided employment in the town for approximately 537 out of a total burgh population of 1,555.95 The story of Dunfermline’s linen manufacture encapsulates the boom in textile production in many areas. Its occupational structure highlighted the importance of linen. In 1814, there were 873 weavers in the town, compared to eleven wrights, sixty-eight shoemakers, fifty-two tailors and eleven fleshers. Table linen manufactured in the town was estimated to have brought in £103,020 between June 1815 and June 1816.96 Three years later, there were 1,507 looms in the parish with a further 142 in outlying districts such as Carnock, Cairneyhill and

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Torryburn. These 1,649 looms which looked to the Dunfermline market brought in an estimated annual £120,000.97 By 1822, it was calculated that there were 1,800 looms in Dunfermline alone; by 1831, this had increased to 2,670, with a further 450 in the rural part of the parish. Goods woven in the town and exported to America by 1836 were valued at £153,000, with the home market bringing in £198,700.98 The transition from handloom weaving, often in private homes, to the factory system came later than in larger towns but was no less painful. From the late 1830s, power-loom factories in other towns, mainly manufacturing plain goods, debased prices and wages. Many handloom weavers in Dunfermline became destitute. In 1842, there was such a level of rioting and looting by the weavers that troops were drafted in from Edinburgh to restore order. There was an upturn by the 1850s, with six firms and individuals displaying their products at the Great Exhibition of 1851 at Crystal Palace in London. The Pilmuir Works had already opened in 1849 and was the first of eleven large steam-powered damask weaving mills in the town. By 1894, there were 5,000 power-looms in the town, employing nearly 7,000. The turnover was more than £1 million. The comment on Dunfermline in Campbell’s Almanac of 1875 could probably have been repeated for many newly industrialised towns: Amid the numerous tall stacks, belching forth their clouds of smoke, the clanking of engines, and the noise of the power loom, were an emigrant to return who had been absent only a few years . . . he would not know his own town.99

Cotton production superseded linen in many towns. The first water-powered textile mill was set up at Penicuik in 1778, taking advantage of the forceful flow of the River North Esk. Rothesay followed a year later and Johnstone, Paisley and East Kilbride soon entered the cotton boom. This innovation relied initially on industrial espionage and breaking patents of the first water-powered cotton mills of Derbyshire as they preceded Richard Arkwright’s visit to Scotland in 1784 and his first licensed mills.100 The working lifestyle for the cotton worker became very much more mill-orientated, rather than home-based in private workshops. The most notable venture was that at New Lanark (see Fig. 6.4). A mill was built which had the capacity to employ 1,300 people, but alongside it were constructed stone tenements to house the workers – children as well as adults. New Lanark has survived as a model nineteenth-century mill town, after years of restoration and conservation, a testament to the philosophy of ‘co-operative socialism’ of the proprietor, Robert Owen. The Borders have long been renowned for their textile industries. Galashiels underwent massive changes in the nineteenth century (see Fig. 6.14). It became, in effect, a town that was made by industry. It grew in wealth, size and population, from 800 inhabitants at the beginning of the century to a peak of 19,553 in

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1890. Most of this rise, some 53 per cent of the population, was due to migrant workers from the surrounding Borders counties.101 Dorothy Wordsworth, passing through in 1803, caught the essence of the effect of textile manufacture on the townscape: Went through a part of the village of Galashiels, pleasantly situated on the bank of a stream; a pretty place it once has been, but a manufactory has been established there; and a townish bustle and ugly stone houses are fast taking place of the brown-roofed thatched cottages, of which a great number yet remain, partly overshadowed by trees.102

The view of the town from Buckholm Hill in 1845 sums up the vast changes to the townscape: little may be seen of the original settlement, apart from the parish church and Old Gala House above background trees, and the later Glasite Church with its two windows emphasised below the tree-line. Otherwise, this is a view of an industrial townscape. The town had developed here mainly because of the Gala Water which provided a source of power for the many mills that sprang up. This source was supplemented in the late sixteenth century by the construction of the Galashiels Dam, a lade which followed the contours of the valley. Nine

Figure 6.14   Galashiels from Buckholm Hill, 1845, Anon.

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mills are portrayed, as well as Mr Lees’ suspension bridge and his Galabank Mill and, in the foreground, Wilderhaugh Mill with its prominent tenters, dominating the scene. While the Gala Water brought to Galashiels nineteenth-century prosperity with its motive power for the mills, there were also disadvantages. It created a barrier that needed bridging. In times of drought almost all of the water was drawn by the factories, but when the river was full it frequently flooded the town.103 In an attempt to prevent flooding, a type of construction described in 1833 as ‘puts’ embanked the river: These are masses of stones loosely piled in the interior, but finished on the surface after the manner of a pavement, and shaped like the fore half of a shoemaker’s last, pointing up the stream, and forming with the bank an angle of 45 degrees . . . The main thing is to guard the base with piles well driven, for if one stone suffered to give away, the whole scheme is futile.104

Such masonry still forms the base of the river embankment at Galashiels. The Gala Water had been harnessed. In current East Renfrewshire, close to the emerging commercial centres of Glasgow and Paisley, another settlement thrived on textile production – Barrhead. It, too, relied on water power – the Levern Water – to run its mills. The arrival of the power-loom in the west of Scotland, as in the east, meant the beginning of the prolonged demise of the home-based handloom weavers.105 The poorest of these still worked from home, but others moved to the factories. This continued for some thirty years and, in a similar way to cotton spinning, the mechanisation of weaving meant that it could be undertaken by the cheapest labour of all – women and children.106 Conditions for workers in Barrhead and Neilston were typical of textile towns. Concern over the employment of children was shown by the government as early as 1816. The mill at West Arthurlie was cited in the Report of the Select Committee on Children in Manufactories. Of the 217 employed, 132 were female; there were thirty-two youths and fifty-eight girls aged between ten and eighteen; two boys and one girl were under the age of ten. They worked twelve and a half hours a day, with breaks for meals of one and a half hours.107 Seventeen years later, conditions had scarcely improved: in some areas the working day was a minimum of thirteen hours. Certain factories, however, permitted a departure from work an hour or two earlier on a Saturday, but often that time had to be made up by working later in the week.108 A second round of evidence was collected by the Factory Commission in 1833. It came to the conclusion that there was excessive heat and dust at the Broadley Mill; according to one employee the temperature ranged between 80 and 90° F (26–32° C), there were no fanners in the picking room and ‘mill cough’ was common. On the other hand, corporal

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punishment was not allowed.109 A further report in the same year likened the health of children employed in the cotton factories of Glasgow and Paisley to that of those working at home with the poorest handloom weavers. The children ‘who draw over pulleys, certain parts of the warp at each traverse of the shuttle’ were described as ‘poor neglected ragged dirty children’, working thirteen to fourteen hours a day. Aged nine to thirteen, they ‘stand on the same spot, always barefooted on an earthen, cold, damp floor all day’.110 Working children with working parents away from home formed a new type of urban family. Long hours of employment meant that little time, if any, could be spent as a family unit. Home-based workshops had usually required the presence of at least one parent, albeit one who would be totally preoccupied. Factory employment for both mother and father meant minimal parental supervision and scant time in the day for an adult to care for youngsters. Early childhood was probably a time of dirty, listless boredom, punctuated with sibling quarrels and mischief. But even neglect and rough treatment at home would have been little preparation for the hardships of factory life. Older children, exhausted from their pitiless working day, were probably at the limits of their endurance. The home was a place where sleep and food were snatched in the few precious free hours and where, in spite of natural human instinct, time and abject fatigue did not allow the luxury of living as a warm, close, loving family. The same report of 1833 concluded that the factory-based spinners and powerloom weavers were ‘united in close exclusive societies’; there was a ‘monopoly of well paid cotton labour’; and the force was ‘able to strike when they please’. Handloom weavers, by comparison, were powerless.111 All would not go well for the factory workers, however: The full grown operative is dispensed with, and only children required for piecing up the threads, who are now paid one-half more than formerly . . . the mule producing about one-fifth more yarn, whilst the saving upon the wages will be about two-thirds. A third advantage is that it brings the workers under more control of the master.112

A further result was that the ‘combinations’, or new unions, of workers whose powers were so feared by the mill owners could be dispensed with. As in other industries, workers were gradually acquiring rights and the mule spinners ran what was a virtually closed shop until the mill owners defeated the cotton spinners’ strike in 1837.113 These ‘combinations’ and ‘monopolies’ were creating fissures in society, just as working life was accelerating dislocation within families. With the arrival of James Watt’s improved steam engines water power was soon partially obsolete: mills could now be sited closer to coal supplies and the growing railway system.114 Working conditions in the mines were worse than in the textile factories. Coal had, of course, been quarried for centuries (see p. 53) but, with the advent of new industries and, in particular, iron processing,

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demand became much greater. As well as the large-scale Carron Ironworks near Falkirk, towns such as Motherwell, Airdrie and Coatbridge expanded rapidly with this new industrial age. Mining towns, such as Tranent, emerged, where, it was said, workers could be recognised by their dirty, down-at-heel appearance, surrounded by slag heaps. Other specialisations arose in different areas of Scotland: shipbuilding on the Clyde, jute manufacture in Dundee and linoleum manufacture in Kirkcaldy. The first floorcloth works in Kirkcaldy were built by Michael Nairn in 1847. Twentyeight years later, he added to this venture by producing linoleum. This was done by applying linseed and cork to a jute backing and heating at a high temperature.115 There were eventually seven linoleum works in Kirkcaldy and Nairn’s linoleum was a household name until well into the twentieth century. Although the towns were never to be in a position to compete with the big cities, there were many success stories throughout the country. In eighteenth-century Dumbarton there was a considerable number of ‘handy craftsmen, freemen of the burgh’, whose members included tailors, hammermen, shoemakers, weavers and coopers. Tanning yards, bleachfields, printfields, a kiln and a foundry, with its principal business being the boring of cannon for the Clyde Ironworks, all occupied this small town.116 An important new industry arrived in 1777. The Dumbarton Glassworks Company was set up by James Dunlop as a speculative venture. However, in 1793, Glasgow Glassworks Company was purchased, being followed soon after by the Greenock Glassworks Company and Dumbarton Brewery Company (see Fig. 6.15). This was a formidable industrial concern with warehouses as far afield as Liverpool, Hull and London.117 In 1844, yet another new enterprise developed from the earlier shipbuilding firm of Alexander McLachlan – the renowned shipbuilders William Denny & Brothers. One of the most famous product of their shipyards was the tea-clipper the Cutty Sark. The old town was transformed: just as the ‘Artizan’ settlement had clustered around the glassworks, so new locations became the enclaves of ship workers. The tenements of Glasgow Road and Knoxland were built, and Dennystown would become an entirely new suburb. Such development throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries meant that old crow-stepped buildings were demolished, the green disappeared and the medieval  parish church and tolbooth made way for seemingly grander public buildings.118 The impact of regional specialisation on a town could be profound. The small burgh of Canongate, now a suburb of Edinburgh, was a prime case in point. Brewing had been one of the staples of life in Canongate since the Middle Ages but the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were to make it almost one vast brewery. One of the most successful ventures was that of the Youngers. By 1789, out of no fewer than seventy-two brewers in Edinburgh and Leith, Archibald Campbell Younger was paying the second-highest ale impost tax at £170 12s 2d.

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Figure 6.15   The Town of Dumbarton, 1818, John Clark. The Dumbarton glassworks stand prominently in the townscape.

With judicious purchase of other breweries, such as Blair’s Brewery, and the acquiring of property in Canongate, Younger’s brother, William, set up the infant great brewery empire. At the start of the twentieth century Abbey Brewery, along with Holyrood Brewery, occupied twenty-seven acres and their output accounted for a quarter of all the ale produced in Scotland. The unlikely location of the small, twelfth-century burgh had been transformed in the space of mere decades into a vast industrial unit. Contemporary illustrations reveal graphically the impact on the townscape of mass industrialisation, often associated with the urban landscape of the west of Scotland. A latenineteenth-century view of Queensberry House and Abbey Brewery, now the site of Scotland’s parliament, shows the tall chimney stacks belching out noxious fumes – as Lord Cockburn remarked, ‘Holyrood . . . is still polluted by the almost actual contact of base works and houses’ (see Fig. 6.16).119 Andrew Smith, a partner in the Younger enterprise, kept a notebook of events in the brewery. He commented that at Blair’s Brewery the ‘water not good; they always thought there was some connection with the gas tank’120 – a timely insight

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Figure 6.16   Abbey Brewery, Canongate, late nineteenth century. Apart from a muchaltered and now commodious Horse Wynd, seen on the right, the new parliament site belies its previous congested, smoke-ridden existence

into latent disastrous problems for Canongate’s future. The level of industrialisation was imploding on the townscape. On 5 March 1870, it was reported in the Scottish Standard that ‘the South Back of the Canongate of Edinburgh is more famous for breweries than any street in the United Kingdom’.121 But Robert Louis Stevenson grieved that ‘The Palace of Holyrood has been left aside in the growth of Edinburgh, and stands grey and silent in a workman’s quarter amongst breweries and gasworks’ – a significant comment on a once prestigious royal palace.122 And a sad facet of the outstandingly successful urbanisation of Scotland.

Notes 1. J. G. Kyd, Scottish Population Statistics (SHS, 1952), xvii, xx. 2. T. M. Devine, ‘The urban crisis’, in T. M. Devine and G. Jackson (eds), Glasgow: Beginnings to 1830, (Manchester, 1995), i, 406. 3. R. J. Morris, ‘Urbanisation’, in A. Cooke, I. Donnachie, A. MacSween and C. A. Whatley (eds), The Modernisation of Scotland, 1850 to the Present, vol. 2 of Modern Scottish History, 1707 to the Present (East Linton, 1998), 73–4.

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4. NRS, B48/9/9, Linlithgow Town Council Minute Book, 1726–39, 10 September 1736. 5. NRS, Dunbar Town Council Minutes, B18/13/2–17, 6 March and 1 April 1745, 20 March, 1 July and 26 September 1805; Dunbar Deeds and Warrants, B18/30/9, n.p.; Dunfermline Burgh Council Minutes, B20/13/11, 17 April 1773, B20/13/13/, 16 May 1786 and 16 March 1787; Linlithgow Town Council Minute Book, 1783–1813, B48/9/14, 8 March 1788; Musselburgh Council Minute Book, 1679–1714, B52/3/3, 5 February 1783; OSA, ix, 40. 6. Maybole Council Minutes, 1721–1825, 12 December, 1809; E. P. Dennison, D.  Gallacher and G. Ewart, Historic Maybole: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2005), 40. 7. H. Arnot, The History of Edinburgh From the Earliest Accounts to the Year 1780 (Edinburgh, 1816), 568–70. 8. NRS, GD125/1811, Beveridge Papers, notes on Middleraw, Linlithgow; E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Linlithgow: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2000), 29–30; R. Pococke, Tours in Scotland, 1747, 1750, 1760, ed. D. W. Kemp (SHS, 1887), 269. 9. NRS, B52/3/2 Musselburgh Council Minute Book, 17 September 1774. 10. E. P. Dennison, S. Eydman, A. Lyell, M. Lynch and S. Stronach, Painting the Town: Scottish Urban History in Art (Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2013), 350, quoting D. Mitchell, The History of Montrose (Montrose, 1866); B. Harris and C. McKean, The Scottish Town in the Age of Enlightenment, 1740–1820 (Edinburgh, 2014), 90, argue for the date of the painting as 1734, which is incorrect (see p. 174, caption). 11. T. C. Smout, ‘The Improvers and the Scottish environment: soils, bogs and woods’, in T. M. Devine and J. R. Young (eds), Eighteenth Century Scotland; New Perspectives (East Linton, 1999), 219. 12. OSA, xiii, 266–7, 259–60. 13. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Dumbarton: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1999), 37. 14. E. A. Cameron, ‘The construction of Union Street, Inverness, 1863–65’, Scottish Local History Journal, 44 (1998), 15. 15. I. D. Whyte, Scotland before the Industrial Revolution (London, 1995), 318–21. 16. NRS, B18/13/7, 20 March and 20 April 1816; OSA, ii, 473; E. P. Dennison, S. Stronach and R. Coleman, Historic Dunbar: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2006), 61. 17. Extracts from the Inverness Courier, ed. J. Barron, as The Northern Highlands in the Nineteenth Century, 3 vols (Inverness, 1903–13), ii, 78 and 169; NSA, xiii, 5; E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Nairn: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1999), 37–8. 18. Stephen, W., A History of Inverkeithing and Rosyth (Aberdeen, 1921), 406; E.  P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic North Queensferry and Peninsula: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2000), 26–7.

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19. S. Pitcairn, A History of the Old ‘Fitpaths’ and Streets of Dunfermline, Then and Now (Dunfermline, n.d.), 338. 20. NSA, v, 489; E. P. D. Torrie and R. Coleman, Historic Cumnock: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1995), 21. 21. OSA, ix, 44; Dennison and Coleman, Historic Dumbarton, 36. 22. J. Wilkie, Historic Musselburgh (Edinburgh, 1919), 103. 23. NRS, B18/13/11, 20 October 1860; Dennison et al., Historic Dunbar, 62. 24. NRS, B48/9/14, Linlithgow Town Council Minute Book, 1783–1813, 3 December 1791; OSA, ix, 44; The Third Statistical Account, Dumbarton, 224. 25. OSA, xii, 310; Stirling Council Archive Service, CH2/101/9 ‘Book of Discipline and Treasurer’s Accounts, 1746–66’, back of book containing list of borrowings from Leighton Library, 1700–45. 26. Paterson, J., The History of the Regality of Musselburgh (Musselburgh, 1861), 120. 27. Wilkie, Musselburgh, 103. 28. M. Reed, ‘The transformation of urban space, 1700–1840’, in CUH, ii, 629. 29. Harris and McKean, Scottish Town, 192. 30. OSA, xx, 23. 31. East Lothian District Council, County Survey (1953), 99; I. D. Whyte and K. Whyte, Discovering East Lothian (Edinburgh, 1988), 165. 32. NSA, xiii, 255, 256, 258 and 273. 33. NSA, vii, 190, 249. 34. A. Barty, The History of Dunblane (Stirling, 1944), 155. 35. NRS, ‘Ane book of debursements on the toune of Musselburgh for the year 1678’ (uncatalogued material from Haddington tolbooth); P. Lambie, A Walk Around Historic Musselburgh (Musselburgh, 1993), 13. 36. Paterson, Regality of Musselburgh, 54; NRS, B52/3/1, ‘Musselburgh Council Minute Book, 1679–1714’, 13 37. W. H. Langhorne, Reminiscences Connected Chiefly with Inversek and Musselburgh (Edinburgh, 1983), quoting Anon., Tour by a Gentleman (London, 1753), 52. 38. Ibid., 295 and 297. 39. E. Topham, Letters from Edinburgh Written in the Years 1774 and 1775 (London, 1776), 38, 51, 84, 256 and 94. 40. J. Langton, ‘Urban growth and economic change: from the late seventeenth century to 1841’, in CUH, ii, 472. 41. T. M. Devine, ‘Scotland’, in CUH, ii, 159; D. Maudlin, ‘Robert Mylne, Thomas Telford and the architecture of improvement: the planned villages of the British Fisheries Society, 1786–1817’, Urban History 34, 3 (2007), 453–80; F. Foden, Wick of the North (Inverness, 1996), passim (cf. Appendix 1). 42. P. Clark, ‘Small towns, 1700–1840’, in CUH, ii, 736. 43. OSA, vi, 112. 44. OSA, xx, 23; M. Martin, A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, circa 1695 (London, 1703; new edition, Edinburgh, 1994), 108–9 (cf. Appendix 1).

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45. I. Rae and J. Lawson, Dr Grigor of Nairn (Nairn, 1994), 79. 46. OSA, xi, 90, 92. 47. W. Macfarlane, Geographical Collections Relating to Scotland, ed. A. Mitchell, 3 vols (SHS, 1906­8), i, 271–2. 48. OSA, xiii, 271, 273. 49. OSA, xiii, 253. 50. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Dalkeith: the Archaeological Implications of Development (1998), 36. 51. W. Wallace (ed.), Hamilton, 1475–1975 (Hamilton, 1975), 83. 52. Ibid., 11. 53. OSA, vii, 391. 54. OSA, vii, 389. cf. Appendix 1. 55. T. M. Devine, The Transformation of Rural Scotland (Edinburgh, 1994), 105–6. 56. OSA, xv, 27–8, 36. 57. OSA, xv, 27–8, 36; NSA, vi, 19, 22. 58. Devine, ‘Scotland’, in CUH, ii, 162. 59. T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, 1560–1830 (1969), 261. 60. S. M. Nisbet, ‘The making of Scotland’s first industrial region: the early cotton industry in Renfrewshire’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 29 (2009), 5, 6, 8, 22; J. Shaw, Water Power in Scotland, 1550–1870 (Edinburgh, 1984), 243. 61. W. Semple, Town Plan of Paisley and Suburbs, 1781 (Paisley Museum and Art Galleries). 62. OSA, vii, 91; NSA, vii, 248–9, 252, 300–1. 63. Nisbet, ‘Scotland’s first industrial region’, 1–28. 64. M. Glendinning, R. Macinnes and A. MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture from the Renaissance to the Present Day (Edinburgh, 1996), 181. 65. NSA, vii, 301. 66. R. J. Naismith, The Story of Scotland’s Towns (Edinburgh, 1989), 96–7. 67. Maudlin, ‘Robert Mylne, Thomas Telford and the architecture of improvement’, 473–7; R. Gibson, The Scottish Countryside: its Changing Face, 1700–2000 (Edinburgh, 2007), 132–3. 68. D. MacGibbon and T. Ross, The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1887), v, 406. 69. E. P. D. Torrie and R. Coleman, Historic Stranraer: the Archaeological Implications of Development (1995), 53. 70. E. P. Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate: a Thousand Years of History (Edinburgh, 2005), 129. 71. I am indebted to Dr John Johnston, Collections Officer, ANGUSalive, for his views on this date. 72. Dennison et al., Painting the Town, 350–3. 73. M. Lynch, ‘Introduction’, in Dennison et al., Painting the Town, 12–13. 74. Dennison et al., Painting the Town, 108–11.

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75. OSA, xix, 185. 76. OSA, vii, 282, 288, 292. 77. Thomas Sinclair, The Procession of the Annuity Money Receivers to Bank Street (1828); BM 1868.0808.8754. 78. C. G. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707 (Edinburgh, 1997), 99–100. 79. P. Clark and R. A. Houston, ‘Culture and leisure, 1700–1840, in CUH, ii, 594. 80. J. Innes and N. Rogers, ‘Politics and government, 1700–1840’ and Reed, ‘Urban space’, in CUH, ii, 536, 625. 81. NRS, B18/13/7, Dunbar Town Council Minutes, 3 December 1814. 82. Naismith, Scotland’s Towns, 121–2. 83. Perth and Kinross Historic Trust, Jewels of Stone; the Architectural Heritage of Coupar Angus (n.p., n.d.), 20–1. 84. H. Cockburn, Memorials of His Time (Edinburgh and London, 1856), 418. 85. M. Lynch, Scotland; a New History (London, 1991), 210. 86. G. Gordon, ‘Industrial development, c. 1750–1980’, in G. Whittington and I.  D.  Whyte (eds), An Historical Geography of Scotland (London, 1983), 177, quoting from A. S. Morris, ‘The nineteenth-century Scottish carrier trade: patterns of decline’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 96 (1980), 114–23. 87. Dennison et al., Historic Dunbar, 55. 88. I. Rae and J. Lawson, Dr Grigor of Nairn (Nairn, 1994), 101; Dennison and Coleman, Historic Nairn, 40. 89. Dennison and Coleman, Historic North Queensferry, 32–3; A. S. Cunningham, Inverkeithing, North Queensferry, Limekilns, Charlestown and the Ferry Hills (Dunfermline, 1899), 133; D. M. Ferguson, Dunfermline Golf Club, 1887–1987 (Dunfermline, 1987), 16–19. 90. J. S. Smith, ‘Villages and suburbs’, in W. H. Fraser and C. H. Lee (eds), Aberdeen, 1800–2000; a New History (East Linton, 2000), ii, 466. 91. R. J. Morris, ‘Urbanisation and Scotland’, in W. H. Fraser and R. J. Morris (eds), People and Society in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1990), ii (1830–1914), 96–7. 92. C. H. Lee, ‘Local government’, in Fraser and Lee, Aberdeen, 1800–2000, 255–6. 93. Naismith, Scotland’s Towns, 119–20. 94. NSA, viii, 17; Dennison et al., Painting the Town, 234–7. 95. NSA, ix, 800–21; A. T. Simpson and S. Stevenson, Historic Kinghorn: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1981), 13–20. 96. E. Henderson, The Annals of Dunfermline, a.d. 1069–1878 (Glasgow, 1879), 585, 590. 97. P. Chalmers, Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline, 2 vols (Edinburgh and London, 1844–59), i, 396. 98. Henderson, Annals, 613, 631, 641. 99. H. Walker, The History of Hay and Robertson Ltd and the Robertson Family of Dunfermline (Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, 1996), 3, 5, 7.

The Birth of Urban Scotland   207

100. E. P. Dennison, S. Stronach and R. Coleman, Historic Barrhead: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2008), 21. 101. C. Gulvin, The Tweedmakers: A History of the Fancy Woollen Industry, 1600–1914 (Newton Abbot, 1973), 104–5; M. Rorke, D. Gallacher, C. McKean, E. P. Dennison and G. Ewart, Historic Galashiels: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2011), 37. 102. D. Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour of Scotland made in 1803 ad, ed. J. C. Shairp (1894, reprinted Edinburgh, 1981), 255. 103. F. H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: a Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, 6 vols (Edinburgh, 1882–5), iii, 67; R. Hall, The History of Galashiels (Galashiels, 1898), 88–9, 105, 578–9. 104. NSA, iii, 13. 105. ‘The Poor Law Enquiry (Scotland)’, Parliamentary Paper, 1844, vol. xxv, 149 stated that the handloom weavers were the lowest class in Neilston parish, earning five shillings a week. 106. A. Slaven, The Development of Western Scotland, 1750 – 1960 (London, 1875), 104. 107. Report of the Select Committee on Children in Manufactories, Parliamentary Paper, 1816, vol. III; Abstract of the Returns made by the Proprietors and Managers of Cotton Mills in Scotland. 108. Factory Inquiry Commission Reports, Parliamentary Paper, 1833, vol. XX. First Report of the Central Board of HM Commissioners – the Employment of Children in Factories, Northern District: reports of examinations taken before Mr Stuart, 7. 109. Factory Inquiry Part II Supplementary Report, Parliamentary Paper, 1834, vol. XX, 190ff, gives an explanation of terminology and work in cotton manufacturing in Britain, 115. 110. Factory Inquiry Commission Report, Parliamentary Paper, 1833, vol. XXI; Factories. Second Report of the Central Board of HM Commissioners for Inquiring into the Employment of Children in Factories – Medical Report by Sir David Barry. Report on Bridgeton handloom weavers, regarding their employment throughout the Glasgow and Paisley areas, 4. 111. Ibid., 4, 72–3. 112. NSA, vii, 327. The author praised this as progress, but would later call for the same child workers to be educated. 113. W. W. Knox, Hanging by a Thread: the Scottish Cotton Industry, c.1850–1914 (Preston, 1995), 145–64. 114. Naismith, Scotland’s Towns, 113. 115. G. Stell, J. Shaw and S. Storer (eds), Scotland’s Buildings: a Compendium of Scottish Ethnology (East Linton, 2003), iii, 538. 116. OSA, ix, 40–1; NRS, B16/2/3, Dumbarton Records, 1717–35, 101, 169; P. Thomson, Dumbarton Notes (Dumbarton, 1938), 14; NRS, B16/2/5, Dumbarton Burgh Register of Sasines, 1753–64,142; NRS, GD/18/54/35, 15 September 1742; Thomson, Dumbarton Notes, 11.

208   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

117. T. M. Devine, The Tobacco Lords: a Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and their Trading Activities, c. 1740–90 (Edinburgh, 1975), 38; S. G. E. Lythe and J. Butt, An Economic History of Scotland, 1100–1939 (Glasgow, 1975), 146. 118. Dennison and Coleman, Historic Dumbarton, 37. 119. H. Cockburn, A Letter to the Lord Provost on the best ways of spoiling the beauty of Edinburgh, ii, 318. 120. Scottish Brewing Archive, MS ‘Notebook of Andrew Smith’. 121. The Scottish Standard, 5 March 1870. 122. R. L. Stevenson, Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes (Edinburgh, 1878–9), ch. 1, p. 2.

7

The Victorian Town

S

cotland entered the nineteenth century as an enlightened, newly urban nation but also as one that inherited a multitude of mounting problems. The outstandingly urgent concern was how to cope with the new kind of urban society which industrialisation and a growing population had begun to produce. Legislation of 1833 set a precedent, offering a first step to a wider and more regularised solution – the police burgh. The combination of the Burgh Police Act and the Burgh Reform Acts of the same year provided some of the answers. One of the most significant statutes was that householders who paid a rateable value of £10 in a royal burgh or burgh of barony were authorised to institute a ‘police system’ and appoint ‘commissioners of police’. New powers to regulate town life involved both behaviour and the provision of lighting, water, cleansing and drainage. This was reform of a sort. The direct beneficiaries of these infant police burghs were the newly enfranchised groups in society, but £10 property holders amounted to fewer than one in forty of the adult male population. By 1847, legislation extended these rights to all parliamentary burghs. Even then, and with a more inclusive Police Act of 1850, which covered settlements with over 1,200 inhabitants, relatively few burghs took advantage of this new status. It was not until a third Act of 1862, which extended to towns or villages with a population of over 700, that the majority of Scottish towns began to develop systematic provision of lighting, pavements and building regulations. Many of the newly emerged industrial towns, such as Barrhead in 1893, or small market centres, like Cumnock in 1866, gained the privileges of burghs. Yet the legislation of 1862 was adoptive only, which meant that towns like Coatbridge could simply ignore it. Where implemented, the 1862 Act provided that commissioners had the right, and even duty, to raise local rates and institute measures to ensure the safety of the town and control vagrants; to pave, light and clean the streets, as well as naming and numbering streets and houses; to improve gas and water supplies; and to raise standards in slaughterhouses and prevent ­infectious

210   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

diseases. These were all well-intentioned objectives. But legislation was not always matched by co-operation.1

I.  Housing conditions and health In spite of legislation, many towns became vast pools of casual labour, subject to the most demoralising of living conditions and health risks. The greatest deprivation was felt in the large cities – Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen. But these cities were able and willing to address their problems, if not resolve them. The impression, often gained from the photographic record of squalor only in inner-city ghettos such as Glasgow and Edinburgh, can, however, be misleading (see Fig. 7.1). Unsavoury conditions were also to be found in small towns, especially those which doggedly resisted change.

Figure 7.1   Pipe House Close, 93 High Street, Glasgow, 1868, a close typical of many in Glasgow at this time.

The Victorian Town   211

Insanitary surroundings were exacerbated by a population explosion, largely instigated by immigrants flocking to the cities in search of work. One in five Scots by 1851 made their homes in the big cities; this figure would rise to one in three by 1911. In 1801, Glasgow housed 77,000,2 compared to Edinburgh’s 83,000, but its population would soon outstrip the numbers in the other three big centres. There were as many as 280,000 in Glasgow by 1841, while Edinburgh’s population had risen to 166,000 (see Appendix, pp. 299f.).3 Glasgow had by now made the transition from the transatlantic commercial hub of the eighteenth century to a strong manufacturing and cotton base and was the fourth largest British city after London, Manchester and Liverpool.4 By the turn of the century the figures were prodigious – Edinburgh had 400,000 residents and Glasgow 780,000 (see Appendix, pp. 299f.). It has been calculated that 66 per cent of the population increase resulted from an influx of outsiders, most significantly Highlanders and Irish. This influx hit Glasgow with tremendous force: one out of every 9.67 of the inhabitants in 1819 was Irish-born and in 1831 one out of every 5.69.5 The Old Town of Edinburgh, which included Canongate, was also hit hard by immigration. By 1851, 29 per cent of the adult population had been born in Ireland.6 Immigration from England, moreover, pushed the over-population in the capital to crisis level. Population explosions were not confined to the large cities. A small town like Alva, at the foot of the Ochils, grew from a population of 1,300 in 1831 to 3,200 in 1851.7 Coatbridge and Motherwell emerged in the space of fifty or sixty years from insignificant small settlements into substantial towns, dealing in the new technologies of iron and engineering. Coatbridge had a population of 741 in 1831. This rose to a staggering 30,034 by 1891. Selkirk, on the other hand, with other textile towns developing around existing urban centres, grew at a more sedate rate, from 2,098 to 7,298 in the same years.8 Apart from England, Scotland was by 1911 the most urbanised nation in the world,9 although, as yet, the bulk of the urban population lived in medium-sized or smaller towns. Overcrowding, particularly when confined to the medieval town footprint, inflamed the existing squalor and filth. According to the 1841 census, no. 3 Horse Wynd, Canongate, which had originally housed one family plus servants, was home to sixteen households and seventy people; at no.10 there were eleven households and forty-four people; and no.12 had nine households which accounted for twenty-nine people.10 None of these houses had internal water closets or water supplies. Lord Cockburn’s scathing assessment of the housing stock was that where ‘other previously genteel families in most excellent houses’ once lived they were now merely the haunt of ‘auctioneers and pawnbrokers’.11 Narrow, dirty, stinking closes, without a glimpse of sunlight to dry the constantly wet, slimy stonework, were the homes of the poor. Here, many a family lived in one windowless room, which might have next door a two-family residence of one room with a window. None would have running water or water-closets.

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Contemporary descriptions reveal a picture of filth and utter degradation. By the time of the publication of Edwin Chadwick’s Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population in 1842, Edinburgh’s Old Town closes were considered the most debased living conditions in the country. His discussions of hovels and lodging houses, lack of proper drainage, sewerage system or water supply, and high death rates are vivid evidence of the abject poverty and filth that many wretched souls had to thole.12 This ‘foul wretchedness of the poor’ in the Old Town of Edinburgh was forcefully corroborated two years later in a report on the condition of the working classes by Friedrich Engels.13 The decline in living standards as a result of environment was further highlighted in other contemporary writings such as James Pagan’s Dean of Guild Reports in Glasgow Past and Present (1851) and George Bell’s Day and Night in the Wynds of Edinburgh (1849). A German traveller in Scotland arrived in Edinburgh during the 1842 outbreak of cholera. His non-judgemental account gives a vignette of one aspect of living in Canongate’s slums – or ‘ruins’, as he called them. He noted that the narrow wynds were so wet that the sun could not dry them and that they were inaccessible to the local police, authorised with the thankless task of clearing out all pigs as they were felt to add to dirt and disease. Given that there was no space to graze the animals, many were kept indoors. Rural migrants often brought their animal ways with them and refused to be parted from their beasts. The Irish, he maintained, were particularly fond of their pigs and fed them well. Many had, however, become so fat that they could not make their way down the tenement stairs and had to be lowered by rope, sometimes from fourth-floor windows.14 These horrendous conditions in the Old Town of Edinburgh could be found, to a greater or lesser extent, in the other large cities. The elite of Edinburgh in their New Town residences were inured from the sight of deprivation. There was social segregation in Aberdeen also, albeit to a lesser degree, with the Bon Accord expansion, and in Glasgow with its Blythswood estate. Glasgow, however, was emerging as the classic working-class industrial city, with a professional, wealthy elite that was dominant and influential but small compared with other cities. Without this cushion, Glasgow was at greater risk of succumbing to working-class dereliction. It was even argued in 1840 that ‘the relative proportion of the middle and wealthier classes to the labouring classes must have been yearly diminishing’.15 The size and shape of the urban middle class differed significantly in Glasgow and Edinburgh and this had a partly hidden knock-on effect. In Edinburgh, 70 per cent of working-class wives had an extra income from domestic employment in the homes of the capital’s burgeoning professional and mercantile middle classes. In Glasgow the figure was less than half of that. Conversely, 65 per cent of Glasgow women were employed in the textile industry, compared with only 23 per cent in Edinburgh; 16 this was a significantly less stable and secure occupation for both women and men.

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Glasgow, more than other cities, suffered from recurring epidemics of infectious diseases. Cholera was the most feared but it was, in fact, typhus that was the more deadly. Typhus, as opposed to cholera which affected all classes of society, was regarded as a poor man’s disease, so received less attention from the authorities. It was spread by the faeces of the body louse, which flourished particularly in overcrowded conditions. Many believed that it was brought to Scotland with the immigrant Irish. Typhus escalated, recurring frequently. Between 1800 and 1815, less than 10 per cent of the patients admitted to Glasgow’s Royal Infirmary were suffering from ‘fever’ or cholera; this figure rose to between 31 and 36 per cent in the next fifteen years. In the years 1830 to 1835, about half of the patients admitted to hospital came with the disease.17 Two contemporary accounts encapsulate conditions in Glasgow by the middle of the century: the reporter for the Handloom Weavers’ Commission in 1839 said that he ‘did not believe until [he] visited the wynds of Glasgow that so large an amount of filth, crime, misery and disease existed in one spot in any civilised country’;18 the Commissioners for the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws reported that: in the very centre of the city . . . that is the interior part of the square bounded by Saltmarket, Trongate and Stockwell streets, and by the River Clyde, as well as in certain parts of the east side of High Street, including the Vennels, Havannah and Burnside, there was concentrated everything dissolute, loathsome and pestilential. Dunghills lie in the vicinity of the dwellings, and from the extremely defective sewerage, filth of every kind constantly accumulates . . . The people . . . nightly issue to disseminate disease and to pour upon the town every species of abomination and crime.19

It was not until 1849 that it was proved that one of the diseases prevalent in urban society – cholera – was water-borne. The lack of a clean water supply in overcrowded, confined hovels was at the root of the spread of much disease and incipient ill-health. Dundee, with a population of 91,664, had by 1861 a mere five water closets, three of which were in hotels.20 The town was relying on a combination of water carts and medieval wells, in particular the Lady Well (see p. 16), which was polluted by effluence from the slaughterhouse. Attempts to provide an adequate water supply were unsuccessful. As occurred too often, a significant barrier to change was local political interest. Private companies, including the Guildry and the Nine Trades, the very bodies that were established to protect the community, profited from selling commercially sourced water. As a result it was not until 1875 that water was brought to the town by aqueduct from the Sidlaw Hills.21 Dundee was not unusual in suffering from blocking mechanisms to prevent improvements. Until the 1867 Reform Act, local authorities could be dominated by rate-paying small property owners; they would often fight against improvement for fear the rates would increase.22 As ever, from the Middle Ages

214   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

(see Fig. 1.14), a small minority could dominate burgh society, and not always for the common good. Cholera, smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid fever (contracted from water contaminated with human effluence), typhus, measles, whooping cough, tuberculosis (a droplet infection), diarrhoea, stunted growth, skeletal deformities, perinatal and infantile death and other afflictions associated with poverty and cramped, dirty surroundings hit the larger industrialised towns worst. Few towns escaped, however. In the cholera epidemic of 1832, fifty-five of a population of about 2,200 in Tain died, while nearby Inver lost as many as forty-one of its population of just over 120.23 Nairn’s people attempted to control the epidemic by using the ‘Black Shed’ on the east pier of Fishertown as an isolation centre. They failed.24 Thirty-five of Kilsyth’s 4,300 residents succumbed in the epidemic of 1849.25 Barrhead suffered from a series of cholera epidemics. The famed pure water of the area’s wells had become contaminated with sewage. The report of the Poor Law Enquiry of 1843, based on the evidence of Dr Joseph Bell, surgeon in Barrhead for the previous six years, revealed one problem and a partial solution to better the wretched conditions: [The] recovery of patients [is] retarded by want of proper supply of cordials and a nutritious diet . . . Parish authorities [are] given directions that medical men in cases of destitution accompanied by disease be empowered to give a line to one of the grocers of the town . . . by virtue of which to furnish provisions or wine if necessary.

His description of the houses of the poor was even more depressing: ‘frequently no bedding or bed clothes . . . but they were not on the poor roll . . . as these were able-bodied poor, including labourers or colliers, who were not eligible for assistance’. Often, fever came annually, ‘usually through beggars from Glasgow and Paisley’. Bell had seen six sick people in a small bed, ‘five with fever’. He considered that many of the houses on the ground floor have beds in a recess with a little straw between them and the earthen floor and the floor is generally damp. I saw two in a bed in a cellar two weeks ago, both with scarlet fever with some gallons of water below the bed.26

Such living conditions were the breeding ground for a myriad of diseases and afflictions. There was little or no chance of resisting a renewed bout of cholera.

II.  The dawning of a better lifestyle Gradually, some came to the opinion that there was a correlation between high death rates and certain areas of towns – the parts that were crowded, badly drained, inadequately supplied with clean water and inhabited by the poor. But

The Victorian Town   215

any individual efforts by the poor to provide clean, well-fed homes were doomed to failure when all around was filth and destitution. There must have seemed, for them, no future in self-help. But small gestures of thoughtful kindness revealed tiny seeds of enlightened thinking. A young boy, born in 1839 into a large family near Roseburn, was sent away from home to Edinburgh with one of his sisters, to ease the family’s burden. The two entered into the household of relations who were butchers in the Canongate and the boy, John Johnston, became an apprentice to his uncle. As he grew older he was seriously disturbed by the poverty around him. Johnston experimented and devised a method of squeezing beef in order to extract and preserve its nutritious goodness. It proved a boon to his starving neighbours, and he was soon marketing it as a quick and cheap meal – ‘Johnston’s liquid beef’. As time went on and demand grew, he entered into partnership with a Canadian. The  new partner, with a more acute marketing sense, insisted that the name of  the product was not conducive to worldwide sales; it had to be rebranded. ‘Bovril’ entered into the culinary vocabulary, an offspring of poverty and a stalwart to this day.27 A somewhat hard line began to creep into contemporary thinking. It was suggested that, when certain predisposing conditions were linked to poor environmental circumstances, disease would inevitably follow. These ‘conditions’ were held to include drinking, immoral habits and poverty; the environmental circumstances were linked to vapours and smells from putrid waste and sewage. For many, moral, mental and physical disorder – the disintegration of the personality – represented in microcosm the symbolic disorder of society, with drunkenness one inflammable aspect of this dysfunction. An argument increasingly used was that greater government action was needed to improve the educational, social and environmental conditions of the urban masses. Much of the thinking was based on viewing this class as a sub-­ culture, inured from the normal restraints and standards of those who lived around them. If permitted to continue in this mode of living, they might spread out from their enclaves and threaten the very foundations of civilised society. Poverty and inadequate housing, allied to the social problems that they brought, became increasingly a concern of the ministers of both established and non-conformist churches. Many radical Presbyterian ministers felt at odds with the view that society’s ills were closely linked solely to the urban environment; they believed that social, economic and educational benefits for the poor would come only through religious leadership and evangelical initiatives. It was disagreement on exactly how to effect this that proved to be one of the factors that led to the Disruption of 1843, the founding of the Free Church of Scotland and the acceleration in the growth of non-conformist churches and ‘meeting houses’. One of the most forceful campaigners was the Rev. Dr James Begg, a controversial figure who combined an early reputation as a radical social reformer with an

216   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

increasingly hardline, evangelical stance as the right-hand man of Dr Thomas Chalmers, an evangelical minister and subsequently Free Church founder. In his quest for ‘a godly commonwealth’, based on the revival of the parish, Begg published a series of proposals to alleviate poor living conditions in the bi-weekly newspaper The Witness, which for a brief time in the 1840s outsold its rival, The Scotsman. In 1849 and 1851, Begg published two further pamphlets: Pauperism and the Poor Laws and Drunkenness and Pauperism. His intention was to deal specifically with the problems of Edinburgh. Following very much the same route as Chalmers, Begg put forward an eight-point charter: improvement in the quantity and quality of education; reduction of drunkenness; better homes for working people; public washing houses and bleaching greens; reform of the land laws; simplification of the transference of land; a distinction between punishments for crime and pauperism; and greater justice for Scotland in parliament. Begg’s address at the founding of the Scottish Social Reform Association spoke for many: ‘You will never get the unclean heart of Edinburgh gutted out until you plant it all around with new houses’.28 Chalmers’ schemes ultimately failed and Begg’s projects, in reality, failed almost before they began. Both were subjected to withering criticism from William P. Alison, the professor of Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh, and other figures in the campaign for improved public health.29 Yet the cumulative effect of the debate and the efforts of the evangelicals to bring to pass the new godly commonwealth began to have an effect on public opinion. The seeds of a recognition that town councils had a duty to be more proactive in the care of the urban environment were finally being sown. The time taken for those seeds to germinate varied enormously. Effective regulation could not be achieved overnight but the records suggest that gradually – and sometimes reluctantly – the amenities of town life began to improve from the eighteenth century onwards. In some towns life was sweetened by vastly improved water supplies, but improvement brought its own obstacles. Cumnock (the word itself containing the generic oich meaning ‘water’)30 received a plentiful supply from the Lugar Water but, as in many settlements, a local river, stream or well might also serve as a suitable spot to water animals, eject waste or remove industrial effluence. There was a twofold problem: to clean up the supply and also to make it adequate. Maybole was particularly blessed with springs, the most famous being Welltrees Spout, which in the late seventeenth century was considered so bountiful that it might ‘be accounted a rich treasure to the Capitall city of the nation’.31 Complaints had been made in 1736 about the washing of yarn and foul substances in the drinking water. As a result, throughout the century the town invested in improved maintenance and upgrading of this important natural resource.32 Kilsyth received a generous grant late in the eighteenth century when Sir Archibald Edmonstone, a local dignitary, donated the water from the springs of the slopes above the town along with £100 to pipe it down.33 Gradually, most

The Victorian Town   217

towns replaced their medieval wells and water supplies. Some homes were fortunate enough to have private wells within their premises, examples of which, as in Inverkeithing and Coupar Angus, still survive. These were replaced with piped water to standpipes or, for the very wealthy, to individual homes. In 1859, Glasgow acquired a new fresh water supply from Loch Katrine, some thirty-four miles distant. So splendid was this occasion that Queen Victoria attended the opening of the works, amidst much public jubilation.34 Aberdeen benefited from a new scheme, the inspiration of James Simpson, a civil engineer from London. Water was piped from Cairnton in 1862, removing a reliance on the source at the Loch of Aberdeen or that pumped from the Bridge of Dee. Small towns, while not in the main experiencing the industrial overcrowding of the cities, were also prey to contaminated water. Household waste still flowed down the streets of many towns, to be supplemented by offal and other refuse. This might then flow into streams which served as a source of drinking water as well as the communal facility for domestic washing. The streams could function also as the loci for the resident fullers whose collection pots on the roadway served as public urinals.35 Some towns showed no inkling of the latent danger on their doorsteps. The Local Government Boards had even to consider legal action in the Court of Session to force Kelso, Inverbervie, Lochmaben, Stromness and Pulteneytown, an industrial suburb of Wick, to install adequate water supplies.36 The case of Kelso sums up the myopic attitude. Many residents felt it unnecessary to provide a clean water supply; the River Tweed was readily available, even though it was known that it acted as the sewer for Peebles, Galashiels and Innerleithen. So determined were the townspeople, and perhaps eager to spare themselves expense, that they even supported an anti-water-supply council. Defeated in their objections, Kelso finally benefited from the installation of a pump in Market Square in 1869, and some time before 1883 ‘a new drainage system [was] effected at a cost of £2,250’ (see Fig. 7.2).37 The water system in Dunfermline had been a well-maintained feature since the Middle Ages (see p. 84). In 1805, the public were permitted, under certain conditions, to have private water supplies piped to their homes. The impact of this initiative was limited; very few could afford this luxury. The medieval lade ran through the town, on only a slightly altered route from medieval times, and was still an important asset and worth upgrading.38 In 1809, the old lead pipes that brought water from the Head Well to the town reservoir were replaced in cast iron; and the cleaning and repairing of wells and conduits were ongoing concerns for the council.39 However, in 1846 a new water company was formed with share capital of £13,500. This was occasioned not only by the expanding population but also by the demands of new industries in the town (see pp. 195–6). The supply was brought from reservoirs built at Craigluscar and was completed in 1850.40 By 1875, there were demands for an even greater supply, the Glensherup Burn, a tributary of the River Devon, being chosen as the source. The new system

218   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 7.2   The Market Place, Kelso, 1780, Anon. The well in the central part of the pretty market place, along with another just beyond the square, was the main source of water for the whole town. None of the elegant houses has survived.

was in place three years later.41 The burgh authorities were keenly aware of the need not only to supply fresh water but also to remove foul water from the town. With no suitable nearby river or shore to serve as the town’s septic tank, work was started in 1876 on a system to convey the Dunfermline sewage to Charlestown. At a cost of about £10,000, this was completed the following year.42 Compared with Dunfermline, Kirkintilloch was vastly undersupplied.43 It had only two public wells, one in Cowgate and the other at Townhead, which functioned for only part of the day.44 Although there were private wells, a better supply was desperately needed in a town with a population of 6,342 in 1851 (see Appendix, pp. 299f.). In 1874, a waterworks was opened, carrying water from the Kilsyth Hills into a 180,000-gallon storage tank, from which it was piped into the town. Further improvements came between 1881 and 1885, when the Woodburn Reservoir was constructed, and again in 1905 with the completion of the Corrie Reservoir.45 The cleanliness of water was also aided by a purification plant opened in 1888 at Dryfield on the Kelvin.46 Lack of adequate sanitation had also caused concern. Inspections throughout the town, reported to the Board of

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Supervision in 1842, noted appalling conditions: ‘ashpits and accumulations of manure abounded in all directions, open drains (carrying raw sewage in some instances) were led directly into the neighbourhood of wells supplying a considerable population’.47 It was not until three years later that the local authority decided to take care of the dungheaps and middens. From that time onwards until 1914, a vast investment was made in the construction of drains and sewers throughout the town.48 Resistance to change continued to delay progress. Forfar’s water was drawn from wells, both public and private, and collected, as in other towns, from rain butts. It was fortunate in having considerably more public wells than Kirkintilloch. In 1871 samples were taken from thirteen of the town’s wells. This might have seemed adequate for a population of 9,311 in 1851 (see Appendix, pp. 299f.). But only one proved to be clean. A plebiscite was held but, in spite of the foulness of the well water, the majority of the townspeople decided against clean piped water. The Police Commissioners over-ruled local opinion. Only then did Forfar gain a wholesome water supply.49 The town still faced a major problem, however – the removal of foul water. The streets had open ditches to remove water and effluence; these led into two main ditches, the Lord Burn, which came from the east of the town, and Cadger Burn running from Paddock Myre along Don Street. They entered Forfar Loch at roughly the spot where Reid Hall now stands. Improvements were effected in 1877 when culverting of waste water took place. The problem persisted, however: sewage still entered the loch untreated, while domestic refuse and dirt was disposed of in dry privies and ash tips, open to all, as in many other towns.50 The third quarter of the nineteenth century did, however, see improvements in the water supply of a number of middling and small towns. In 1860, Dumbarton received a gravitation water supply brought from the hills behind the town, a much-needed resource for the town with its burgeoning industries (see p. 200).51 Little Coupar Angus, which had the benefit of many wells, both public and in private gardens, also took water from the increasingly foul Coupar Burn. This was superseded in 1874 by a municipal supply, which was well timed: a local paper maintained that the state of the burn was such that ‘numerous cats and dogs suffering from senile decay usually terminated their existence, so that the water may have resembled clear soup in flavour’.52 Linlithgow Loch ceased to function as the town’s sewage tank in 1860 when a main drain was erected to draw the effluence further afield. It also received a piped supply of water from the Cockleroi Reservoir in 1889, which proved a valuable addition to the town’s many wells.53 Barrhead, which had suffered so much during cholera epidemics (see p. 198), received a purer water supply in 1865, and a new sewerage system followed soon thereafter. But, ironically, raw sewage was still discharged into the River Levern.54 It took the Burgh Police Act (Scotland) 1892 to effect wholesale change.

220   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Vast improvements came after 1893 when the Sheriff Court of Renfrew and Bute at Paisley found that, based on the ‘number of dwelling-houses therein and the density of population [Barrhead] is in substance a town and is suitable for being formed into a police burgh’. With the first provost being William Shanks, of sanitary ware fame, improvements abounded. Even though mains water had been introduced, it was claimed that the townspeople were ‘drinking their drains’, as foul water continued to contaminate ground water and wells. From this time, the records are replete with improvement measures: the removal of ashpits and ashboxes was initiated; a new drainage system was commenced; new purification works were established; drinking fountains were set up; and there was even the provision of public urinals.55 By the turn of the century radical improvements were in evidence. Most towns, whether willingly or as a result of enlightened pressure, had upgraded their water supply and drainage systems. Hand in hand went improved facilities for fire-fighting. By the early nineteenth century most towns had been able to boast a fire engine, whether primitive or of the latest design; they showed little improvement, however, on eighteenth-century machines. The greater availability of water meant that, for the first time, there was the genuine possibility of overcoming the medieval and early modern scourge – full-scale fire. The move to improve the quality of water was largely triggered by a fuller understanding of why there were recurring epidemics of cholera; and such improvements came at vast cost and effort. Other schemes were afoot which also brought a new, fresh and enlightened quality of life. The advent of gas lighting removed the need to attempt to illuminate by raw materials such as candle wax, linseed oil or, later, whale oil. Maybole, for example, had decided in 1808 to set up fourteen lamps for ‘lighting of the streets’ (and appointing a ‘scaffinger’ to sweep the thoroughfares).56 But most of these materials proved messy and inefficient. By 1828, Dunfermline had set up the Dunfermline Gas Company.57 In the 1830s, the Commissioners of Police in Kirkintilloch were looking for a suitable site to build a municipal gas works, but in 1838 a private company, the Kirkintilloch Gas Light Company, established a works in Canal Street, with street lights being introduced at the same time. This proved so successful that in 1878 the Commissioners purchased the Company for £14,000.58 Linlithgow was one of the towns to invest early – in 1831, with the marvel of the Linlithgow Coal Gas Light Company.59 Two years later Barrhead followed suit with its Gas Light Company.60 Nairn made an attempt to improve its lighting by purchasing Inverness’s old lamps, which had been thrown away when it converted to gas in 1834. According to the Inverness Courier ‘the good folks of Nairn’ acquired more than thirty, but these were outdated and inadequate; four or five years later, gas was piped into the town.61 Maybole’s investment in fourteen street lamps in 1808 was superseded by a considerably more efficient system in 1834 with the opening of Maybole Gas Company.62 The

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Kilsyth Gas Company was established the following year.63 Many other towns agreed with Dunbar that ‘it would tend much to the beauty of the town and the comfort of the inhabitants were the streets of this burgh lighted with gas’. Investigations and calculations, as to relative costs of lighting with oil and gas, decided in favour of gas, Dunbar setting up its Gas Light Company in 1836.64 It was followed sooner or later by most towns in Scotland, the priority being to light the streets of the middle classes. Throughout the century other improvements, already underway (see pp. 171–5), were ongoing. Hindrances to traffic, such as forestairs, were removed; pavements were laid; the streets were levelled and cleared of midden heaps; ‘scaffingers’ were appointed on a more regular basis, some towns even investing in a ‘cleaning machine’;65 meat markets were washed; streets and closes were renamed and houses renumbered. Many of these changes may have seemed minor, but all added to an air of cleanliness and control. Perhaps inevitably, the streets that housed the more substantial members of the town came first in the pecking order for renovation; the middle-class areas would always be the priority. This would remain a matter of some grievance throughout the country. Annan had been damned in 1700 by Daniel Defoe who dismissed the town as ‘in a state of irrevocable decay’.66 Sixty years later, a visitor suggested the town consisted of ‘huts of mud with no chimneys’.67 There were, however, houses of some substance ‘in general decent and well built’.68 Clearly, there were, as elsewhere, double standards. Dorothy Wordsworth, visiting in 1803, commented on both styles of dwelling: the stone buildings she felt were ‘comfortless and dirty’; she ‘peeped into a clay “biggin” that was very “canny”’ and considered it might be ‘as warm as a swallow’s nest in winter’.69 One wonders if the occupants would have agreed. Nairn was at the forefront as a seaside resort (see p. 193) but the streets away from visitors’ eyes, even as late as 1886, could remain largely ignored and unappealing (see Fig. 7.3). Adequate housing for the poor of the cities meantime remained doggedly problematic. Edinburgh had provided a preliminary solution in 1844 with the setting up of a model lodging house, and in 1850 Aberdeen followed suit. ‘Model’ developments in Edinburgh aided the lot of poorer members of society, offering accommodation which, although water closets and sinks were shared, was incomparably better than the alternative Old Town housing. Company housing also provided homes for a few fortunate employees. But there was a basic problem: skilled workers on a regular wage could afford rents; to build houses for this market was financially viable. Labourers, unskilled workers and the unemployed had irregular and low wages, or no income at all, and were often at the poverty level – rents could not necessarily be paid. The Aberdeen Association for the Improvement of the Dwellings of the Labouring Classes was founded in 1863. The purpose was to provide good quality dwellings for the working classes to purchase or rent, while giving a small return

222   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 7.3   Collector’s Close, Nairn, c. 1886. Nairn was a favoured holiday resort, with both swimming and golf attractions. As with so many towns, poverty-stricken housing rubbed shoulders with the more elegant districts.

on capital investment. Although well intentioned, the rents and costs were such that only the better paid amongst the working class could avail themselves of this opportunity. By 1864, the Aberdeen Lodging-House Association had leased out the former home of Provost Skene in Guest Row, becoming the Victoria Lodging-House, with accommodation for seventy-five persons (see Fig. 7.4). The driving force was moralistic, with a strong whiff of strict, old-fashioned religion: there were religious services every Sunday and the prevention of immorality was as important as the provision of hygienic and comfortable accommodation. The lodgers were mostly railway workers in the first year and tradesmen looking for work in the second; this system did not reach the genuine poor.70 The Aberdeen Corporation Act of 1881, in contrast, did try to tackle the wider problem of the city’s underclass. It gave the town council permission to close uninhabitable dwellings, so opening the door to slum clearance. Well intentioned as this proposal was, this meant for most of the poorest households the loss of a home in a slum, without a replacement. Ironically, the net result was even greater overcrowding in the surviving near-derelict properties.71 An ambitious and remarkable new initiative had commenced in April 1861: the formation by a group of building workers of a new company – the Edinburgh

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Figure 7.4   Provost Skene’s House, Aberdeen, was converted into the Victoria Lodging House in the nineteenth century. The house is an outstanding piece of domestic architecture and one of the few surviving early buildings in the town. The earliest section is a three-storey wing, perhaps dating from the mid-sixteenth century; and the interior has a painted gallery of 1626, which contains an important cycle of religious paintings. Other seventeenth-century additions remain intact, including a fine ceiling in one of the bedrooms.

Co-operative Building Company, Limited (ECBC). The stimulus to this innovative move was a lock-out of workers from building sites by employers. This had been triggered by a written request for a reduction in the working day from ten to nine hours, as part of a national campaign to improve ‘the physical, moral, social and intellectual condition of the working classes’. Underlying this action by the Edinburgh workers was the appalling condition of working-class housing in the Old Town. The aim of ECBC was to provide decent housing for sale to working people. Its purpose was vindicated six months after its formation: an old Edinburgh tenement collapsed, killing thirty-five and making a hundred homeless. Within ten years, ECBC was the largest building firm in Edinburgh, having built 1,000 homes. More than a further 1,300 were erected by 1914. In practice, market forces prevented the clientele being drawn from the working-class poor; they were rather the semi-skilled – clerks, shop workers and public-sector employees. Its original co-operative vision had of necessity to be abandoned. But

224   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 7.5   Workmen’s Co-operative Dwellings, Edinburgh. This engraving is from a newspaper, possibly the Illustrated London News, in the mid-nineteenth century. It shows some of the ‘Colonies’ in Stockbridge, namely Reid Terrace on the left, Hugh Miller Place in the middle and the back of Rintoul Place to the right.

the city gained a large stock of well-built housing. Some, such as the Colonies, are still distinctive in the townscape; many, indeed, have since been listed as houses of architectural merit (see Fig. 7.5).72 Glasgow set a fine example with its building of municipal lodging houses. Under the Glasgow City Improvement Act 1866, seven lodging houses and a family home were established. The purpose of the model lodging house was to encourage lodgers into a more ‘moral and sanitary’ environment, away from squalid one- and two-room cramped dwellings. The family homes were originally intended for widows and widowers with children, but it was later deemed inappropriate to have both sexes living alongside each other, and family homes were restricted to widowers. Qualification for entry was based on respectability rather than need. This had been the case for centuries: the new model lodging houses were based on the same assumptions as had governed admission to medieval ‘hospitals’ (see p. 67). Glasgow Corporation was also given authority to ticket houses at or under 2,000 cubic feet (5.66 cubic metres) in size. This authorised a metal ticket to be attached to a door or lintel, specifying the number allowed to reside in the premises. A good idea in principle, the ticket, however, gave the police or sanitary inspectors the right to raid the house at any time of the day or night.

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Local acts extended this to Edinburgh and Greenock and then, in 1903, by the Burgh Police Act, to all burghs that wished to be included. Intended as a prudent, preventative move, it was, for the families concerned, repressive and degrading. Measures such as ticketing and demolition of insubstantial properties meant that 3,000 were moved out of Edinburgh and a staggering 30,000 out of Glasgow between 1867 and 1877 to peripheral areas, which soon became as congested as their original rancid homes.73 This and other failures were the unintended consequences of well-meaning schemes in the cities that limped into only partial implementation. The Edinburgh Improvement Scheme of 1867, commenced by the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, William Chambers, at the instigation of Edinburgh’s first Medical Officer of Health, Dr Henry Littlejohn, was a radical first step, beginning in the 1870s, to tackle the inherent problems of the inner city. The main weapon to deal with insanitary areas of the city was demolition; little guidance was given as to what exactly a ‘slum’ was. In many ways, social problems were not assuaged by wholesale removals of neighbourhoods to other areas; they were merely transferred out of the inner city. And compulsory removal was resented by many who felt exiled from their traditional haunts. Even those who stayed behind and had their homes upgraded did not always prove grateful for modernisation. A classic case was the provision of double sinks in kitchens so that the housewife might more easily deal with her family washing at home. Many women missed the weekly visit, often with washing transported in an old pram, to the ‘steamie’, and the companionship and crack of their pals could not be readily replaced. Powers vested in the Edinburgh Scheme by Act of Parliament were subsumed into national legislation with the Public Health Act 1875 and the Cross Acts 1875 and 1880 dealing with slum clearance. The appointment of Medical Officers of Health was made compulsory. Local authorities were to be permitted to demolish areas that the Medical Officer deemed insanitary; they were to provide alternative accommodation for those evicted; rules were to be laid down on building regulations and street widths; and essential services were to be provided in all new developments.74 All were laudable aims in themselves, yet there was still no precise definition of what was a slum, and inadequate thought was given to open spaces, trees and play areas in, as some would define, ‘new ghettos’. The erstwhile sites of ‘insanitary’ housing were rarely used to build properties for the general public; the funding instead went to street widening, demolition and compensation to landlords.75 The Glasgow Improvement Trust did ensure the construction of homes for over 18,000 people. This, however, accounted for only a third of those affected by demolition of slum properties. What happened to the remainder is unclear.76 There seemed little understanding that, by pulling down large sections of the inner cities, the very heart of the historic town was being ripped out.

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Financially robust towns were at the forefront of upgrading their urban setting, but they too might feel hampered by the lack of funds. Where civic regulation failed or provided only a patchy solution, other initiatives were tried to fill the void. Amongst the middle and skilled working classes, none had greater appeal than the twin engines of self-help and teetotalism. The temperance movement, started in Greenock in 1829, fed off an almost evangelical zeal, which meant that it was viewed with suspicion by many parish ministers; they distrusted its leanings towards radical ideas and a distinctly secular brand of self-improvement.77 Other self-help initiatives did not necessarily fall under the same suspicion. They included Savings Societies, Bible Mission and Tract Societies, Sabbath schools and the Ladies’ Destitute Sick Society. All were measures of a growing gentility and desire for education, moral or otherwise.78 This can be traced in many towns. Friendly Societies, such as that at Newburgh, founded in 1807, offered protection to groups who tended to live in the same town or very nearby. The membership was not confined to specific trades but was open to all who laboured to support their families. For the payment of an entrance fee and regular subscriptions members gained financial protection if they fell sick and support of widows and children in the event of death.79 This security and the comradeship that held these tight-knit groups together was reminiscent of the closeness of the medieval gild and trade fraternities. Mechanics Institutes were founded, the first being in Aberdeen, Dundee, Greenock and Kilmarnock, not merely offering a widened education to apprentices, but also affording access to libraries, normally outwith their reach. Several, such as that in Brechin, were hugely impressive buildings (see Fig. 7.6). In 1810, the Edinburgh Institution for the Education of Deaf and Dumb Children was opened, with the purchase four years later of part of Chessels Buildings, on the ‘Royal Mile’, Canongate, to house the children. There were initially about fortyfive children being cared for; the boys were taught shoemaking and the girls sewing.80 This was a close reproduction, in a new age, of seventeenth-century solutions to the housing and training of orphaned and poor youngsters. Alternative solutions were sought to supplement the traditional provision of schools. One form of assistance was for an employer to help to educate his young employees or his workers’ younger children. As early as 1815, the young workers at the ‘Cotton Manufactory’ at Belhaven, Dunbar, were, in order to ‘instil good morals in to them’, to receive ‘every possible care and attention to their education’ and ‘be sent regularly to church under the management of the school master’. It is not clear that this proposal was practical, as the ancient parish church could not accommodate many and ‘the portion of seats allotted to the town [was] already occupied’. It seems that the manufactory failed in its educational aims.81 With considerably greater success, a school was set up in Dunfermline at St Leonard’s Factory in 1860. This was to provide an education for the children of the workers; when the children became a little older, they were employed ­half-time in the

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Figure 7.6   Brechin Mechanics Institute, Anon. The building with its elaborate Tudor castellated façade, built about 1838, symbolised the new spirit of progress, self-advancement and pride in the town.

factory but continued with their lessons. A library was also set up for the employees and their families and a reading society proved successful.82 In 1750, a large proportion of children, especially in towns, had gone to private ‘adventure’ schools. In the early decades of the nineteenth century many of these were being superseded by church schools. Precise figures for attendance and literacy amongst urban children are elusive outside Glasgow before the 1870s. Wider attempts were made from the middle of the century onwards, fuelled by denominational rivalry between the Church of Scotland and the Free Church, to improve educational facilities in towns. These consisted basically of the three Rs for working-class children. The picture was a confused one: it was at its worst in Glasgow, but in cities such as Edinburgh and Aberdeen and in established middle-ranking towns such as Perth and Stirling, educational provision and literacy were high, with attendance often above 90 per cent for children aged five to thirteen. Provision and attainment were markedly worse in new industrial towns such as Airdrie, Coatbridge and Paisley, where attendance often barely reached 40 per cent. The figures for Roman Catholic schools were worse still: in Glasgow, there were only thirteen out of a total of 213 in 1857. Their pupils

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received an elementary education at best and attendance was poor, with only about one-third of the children at school by 1861. The quality of teaching was also generally inadequate, partly because Roman Catholic teachers received only four to six months’ training.83 Finally, an Education Act was passed in 1872: it stipulated compulsory attendance for all children between the ages of five and thirteen, and it required that burgh and parish schools were to pass under the control of elected school boards. School fees came to an end in 1889 for the elementary stages of schooling, and by 1892 further financial support was given to secondary schools. Furthermore, education beyond the age of thirteen was available to all who could take advantage of it. There was little realistic prospect of a labouring-class youngster doing so. These public schools were run basically along Presbyterian principles, which meant that Episcopalians and Roman Catholics remained largely outside the system, although they were expected to meet the same educational standards.84 A more tolerant attitude towards society’s victims was becoming acceptable. Infirmaries ministered to the poor and, when overcrowding resulted in lack of space, temporary measures were taken. Queensberry House, now forming part of the Scottish Parliament complex, acted as an overflow for Edinburgh Royal Infirmary during a fever epidemic in 1818–19. The Magdalene Asylum in Canongate had been founded the previous century (see p. 185), with the specific aim of reforming young prostitutes. According to Dr William Tait, the secretary of the Edinburgh branch of the Society for the Protection of Young Females and the Prevention of Juvenile Prostitution, conditions at the asylum in 1864 were more suited to a madhouse or a prison than to a refuge for the penitent. Brutal methods of control, such as solitary confinement, corporal punishment and head-shaving, were practised. He also argued that locating such an asylum in a polluted city centre was counter-productive: washing became contaminated with the smoke of surrounding factories and the women were afforded no privacy when walking in the asylum yard. As a result of his arguments that the inmates should be free of the temptations of the city and have ‘free exercise and ­employment in the open air’, the institution was moved to a rural setting in 1864  – Dalry, now within the built-up urban core of Edinburgh. A year later, another enlightened measure to assist women came with the opening of Queensberry Lodge. This institution aimed to offer ‘safe accommodation and reformation of females addicted to habits of drunkenness’. As well as a bed and food, the women had the facility of a flat roof ‘for air and exercise without leaving the house’ – so saving them the temptations of Canongate.85 Along with the well-intentioned house-builders and burgh authorities, it was the large groups of volunteers, both men and women – paternalistic employers, religious missionaries and philanthropists of many hues – who sought to ameliorate the social consequences of rapid growth. The obstacles to housing the poor were little understood and in many cases not even recognised. Much of

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the underlying problem was the unwillingness of town councils to expend public funds on what many considered to be self-inflicted problems: fecklessness and immorality resulted in the poor choosing to spend their money on drink and licentiousness rather than better housing. Improvements came, but not at the rate to solve the intrinsic problems. As late as 1883 when John Bright, in his inaugural speech as Rector of the University of Glasgow, highlighted the fact that of every one hundred households in Glasgow, forty-one lived in houses of one room, he was barracked with unbelieving, derisive laughter.86 In 1913, it was calculated that Glasgow still had 44,354 ‘single ends’ (one-roomed houses), of which 93 per cent shared a water closet. Most, however, had the ‘luxury’ of their own sink. Edinburgh had fewer one-roomed houses – 7,106 in total. Some 94 per cent of them shared a water closet and 43 per cent had to use a single common sink.87 This was a miserably poor rate of progress with which to hail the new century.

III.  Leisure time In spite of vast areas of deprivation, there was time outwith the working hours for some relaxation. It is true that, for many of the poorer classes, life’s pleasures revolved around the consumption of alcohol. Edinburgh’s 555 licensed houses  averaged about one per thirty families. Glasgow had much the same proportions in its 2,300 public or ale houses, while Dundee went one step further with one ale house for every twenty-four families. But there were in many towns distinct groups of working people who aimed to better themselves. Their social identity was created through a commitment to sobriety and propriety. Community-based charities, such as Barnardo’s and Booth’s Salvation Army, aimed to bring ‘sweetness and light’ to the neglected members of society. A rash of temperance societies developed, such as the Good Templars, the Band of Hope and the Independent Order of the Rechabites. They generally managed to avoid the suspicion of links with political radicalism which had been cast on some early temperance groups in the 1830s, and were encouraged by the initiatives taken by the civic authorities in many larger towns to curb the excesses of the alcohol trade. The Forbes Mackenzie Act 1853, proposed by the Scottishborn Conservative MP for Liverpool, stipulated that no alcohol could be sold after 10 p.m. on weekdays and banned opening on Sundays. The Act had a series of perverse effects. It pushed the working-class drink problem underground; instilled the cultural habit of the ‘ten o’clock swill’ into the Scottish psyche; and abused the fiction of the ‘bona-fide traveller’, unable to order drinks in his own place of residence but entitled to do so outside normal licensing hours in the next town or village.88 It was ironic that one of the first ventures of Thomas Cook, a confirmed teetotaller, in setting up his travel company in 1841, was to promote steamboat

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journeys, offering a happy family day out for those in modest circumstances. Voyages down the Clyde and to Rothesay also gave access to public houses at a time when alcoholic drinks might be served to genuine travellers. A steamboat journey from Leith in 1898 could open up a veritable pandora’s box of alcoholic establishments: Pittenweem already supplied one for every 115 people; South Queensferry one for every 102; and Anstruther had the lure of providing one for every seventy-one people.89 The visitor could imbibe as much as he or she wished, even to the point of being ‘steaming drunk’. Benefiting from shorter working hours after 1868, walking, visits to the sea, golf, swimming, cricket, bowling and, in particular, football, were soon popular pursuits. The Education Act 1872 laid down regulations that covered children from the ages of five to thirteen. This meant that, officially, no child could be employed until he or she was fourteen. Not only would youngsters  now  have the  advantage of further schooling, but freedom from the long hours of working  in a factory from an early age, allied to shorter working hours  for adults, offered an opportunity for family bonding and relaxation. The working family could now mean more than a disparate group that ate and slept in the same place, although not necessarily at the same time. It gave  the opportunity for the family to be a unit that might even be able to enjoy time together. For those with a little more time for relaxation, gardening became even more popular as the century wore on (see p. 177) and regular local horticultural shows were held. The more cruel of animal-related entertainments, such as bearbaiting, had already been banned but many continued covertly. Cock-fighting (see pp. 177, 259), which was closely associated with gambling, was forbidden, although a new cock-fight pit was opened in Glasgow in 1835 and ‘officially’ organised fights were noted in Hawick and Pollokshaws in the 1860s.90 The welcome relaxation from the hours of toil in a working day, the increase in disposable income, which boosted interest in the new savings banks, improved transport facilities and, for many, a half-day free on Saturday afternoons afforded a modicum of opportunity for ‘pastimes’. Tribal allegiances and cheap entry also played a significant role in the emergence of organised clubs supporting a game well loved since the Middle Ages – football. In Melrose, the annual ‘Fastern’s E’en Ba’ festivities saw the windows of houses being barricaded and the shutters of shops put up ready for the one o’clock ball. This was thrown up at the market cross and ‘football-playing on a most indiscriminate and unlimited scale [was] the order of the day’ (see Fig. 7.7).91 With the formation of the Scottish Football Association in 1872 and the Scottish Football League twenty-eight years later, the scene was set for a professional and profit-making institution that encouraged strong allegiances amongst its members. Queen’s Park was founded in 1867. Glasgow Rangers (1872) appealed to the Protestant skilled working class. Hibernian of Leith (1875) and Glasgow Celtic (1888), on the other hand, attracted a Roman

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Figure 7.7   Fastern’s E’en Ba, 1901, Melrose.

Catholic following, in particular the Irish community. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a rash of other football clubs formed: Kilmarno Football Club in 1869; Stranraer, the following year; and Dumbarton in 1872. Hamilton Academicals and Heart of Midlothian were both founded in 1874. Football was a great favourite in Fife, the first club being Cowdenbeath which opened in 1881, to be followed two years later by Raith Rovers and Dunfermline Athletic in 1885. Many of the authorities voiced concerns over this spectator sport with the gambling, drinking and swearing that characterised these unregulated gatherings.92 To a certain extent this fuelled, yet again, the notion that the working class was something to be feared, or at least avoided and controlled.

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IV.  The changing townscape The townscape of 1750 was startlingly different from that of 1900. This century and a half had brought vast improvements in communications, engineering, health and well-being and, for many, a more comfortable and peaceful lifestyle. But the depths of foul living standards were never greater than in the nineteenth century. The Victorian town could be seen as a desolate, filthy jumble of hovels, largely home to down-and-outs and alcoholics. But this is only a partial picture. Appalling as were the living and working conditions of too many townspeople, overmuch weight should not be placed on the disturbing reports of medical practitioners and social reformers, genuine though they were. Considerable efforts were being made to upgrade both the townscape and the workplace, and not all building was substandard. Some of the architecture of the time, as may be evidenced to this day, was exceptional, putting to shame certain twentieth- and twenty-first-century designs. One of the positives of development was the saving of large open tracts of land in city centres, which might have disappeared with urban regeneration – the Meadows, commenced in the eighteenth century (see p. 174), Princes Street Gardens and Bruntsfield Links in Edinburgh, the Inches at Perth, which for a time hosted a race track, Glasgow Green and similar planned open spaces were part of a conscious policy towards community welfare.93 The pattern was followed in other towns, such as Forfar, Elgin, Dalkeith, Lanark and Aberdeen. The main beneficiaries of the new green spaces, however, were select groups. The green agenda was closely linked to the desire to erect commodious housing for the more wealthy, adjacent to municipal parks and open spaces. Intended as a better class of housing for the likes of mill owners rather than their workers, one of the tenets in the deeds of many of these houses would have restrictions such as ‘no pigs are to be kept’ – respectability at all costs.94 Polite living was becoming enshrined for certain sections of the populace. A flutter of concern went through Dunbar society in 1906. A formal, rather horrified complaint had to be made to the council: Francesco Ranaldi, ‘ice-cream dealer’, had set up a ‘chipped potato business’!95 Overcrowded inner-city doss-houses and jerry-built apartments apart, ­eighteenth- and nineteenth-century housing had much to commend it. Remnants of the red sandstone tenements with their shared facilities and communal staircases survive in Glasgow and, in differing materials, in other larger towns. Some show pleasing decorative façades and ornamentation and are witness to the Victorian desire to display respectability. Tenement-building was commonplace in Scotland, unlike England, which tended towards smaller cottage-like units. Scotland had more in common with the rest of Europe, where multiple occupancy was well known. The Scottish feuing system lent itself to the building of several storeys on one footprint, to maximise feuing income and increase

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Figure 7.8   The house of the secretary to Duchess Anne, Hamilton, in 1964.

rentals; this also made assessments for rateable values and local taxes more palatable. With considerable modernisation and the insertion of twentieth-century sanitary amenities, many of these flats today provide well-built, attractive homes. The middle-class homes that survive in many towns are, with few exceptions, a credit to the finer aspects of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century architecture. Hamilton Museum, Muir Street, the building of which started in 1696, was designed for David Crawford, secretary to Duchess Anne (see Fig. 7.8). It later became an inn and staging post for the Glasgow to London mail coach. Its windows are early examples of the sash type which were later introduced into Hamilton Palace and, gradually, to the rest of the country.96 Four-over-four and six-over-six glazed sash windows adorn many façades throughout the country. These were later replaced by the Victorian bay window in large, graceful villas; fine examples are much sought after, from Joppa to Stornoway and Selkirk to Inverness. Residential suburbs in many towns grew from the desire of the middle class to remove the home and family from the increasingly commercialised trading centre of the town. From the 1840s, with the horse-drawn omnibus, the suburban railways of the 1880s and the tram, horse-drawn from the 1870s and

234   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Figure 7.9   Levengrove House, Dumbarton.

electrified a decade later, distancing themselves became a possibility for the merchant and wealthy classes. Levenford House in the West Bridgend suburb of Dumbarton was constructed in about 1853 by the architect J. T. Rochead for the shipbuilder William Denny (see Fig. 7.9). A Scottish baronial mansion, it represents the height of Victorian good taste, with its mullioned windows and pedimented dormerheads. Sitting in extensive grounds, surrounded by a crenellated boundary wall, it is almost matched by the equally prestigious Levenford House Lodge.97 Such splendid buildings, although not commonplace, may be found throughout the country and are a reminder that examples of significant architecture are not confined to the big cities. Most middle-class housing aimed at comfort rather than grandeur. A move from the increasingly overcrowded heart of Stirling to the south and west, where there was available open land, was the choice of many middle-class families.98 Their fine villas are still standing. Such was the rate of relocation that the Stirling Journal and Advertiser in 1857 bemoaned that ‘in a few years at the present rate of feuing a new town will be formed’.99 Dormitory towns became the homes of the more wealthy (see p. 193). There was an added attraction: an escape from the higher city rates. Many of these elegant, comfortable dwellings are still sought after in the current housing market. Dalkeith has many examples of quality

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eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses surviving partially or totally intact. Fine eighteenth-century houses are to be found in the High Street, alone, at nos 228–230, 216–218 and 122–126; there are also a number of properties dating from the eighteenth century on the opposite side of the road – nos 41, 101, 103 and 161–163. The last is a mid-eighteenth-century L-plan tenement, with an asymmetric octagonal stair tower, and is reminiscent of the quality buildings that lined the market place in the eighteenth century.100 A number of properties in Musselburgh High Street attest to the growing prosperity of the town in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as do eighteenth-century Ivy House and early-nineteenth-century Ann House and Dunbae House in Stranraer (see pp. 183, 184 and Fig. 6.7). Delisle Street in Dunbar, a little removed from the overcrowded town centre, provides many examples of fine Georgian housing. Substantial nineteenth-century villas to the south of Linlithgow, such as Nether Parkley, Clarendon and Bonnytoun House and the more modest 79 and 79A High Street, Nairn, are all examples of quality domestic dwellings still standing as reminders of a significant inheritance from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Within these prosperous middle- and upper-class homes new ideas found expression. Privacy had been a luxury for only a few from the Middle Ages onwards (see p. 36). Increasingly, new homes for the wealthier members of society reflected a new notion of exclusivity. Bedrooms became private retreats; separate rooms, apart from servants, were the preserve of adults; and even, for certain sections of the upper classes, separate bedrooms for husband and wife, studies set apart for the master of the house and smoking rooms for the gentlemen after dinner became the norm. It was a lifestyle which would remain alien to the average household. In sharp contrast, it was reported in 1917 that half of Scotland’s population lived in one or two rooms.101 That would not change until well into the twentieth century. Commodious dwellings were complemented throughout the country with public buildings asserting the dignity of the town – sheriff court houses, town halls, museums, Mechanics Institutes, many still standing, all attest to the significance placed by polite Victorian society on ‘appearance’. They served another function. They symbolised authority and standing. This was reinforced by ceremony; with foundation stones laid with pomp; official openings of wells and fountains to celebrate royal anniversaries; and art galleries and libraries to display the enlightenment of the populace. Tolbooths were converted to townhouses or, in many cases, were replaced totally with brand new architectural exhibits. There was a number of magnificent examples in small and medium-sized towns. They included Montrose’s townhouse of 1762–4, which was altered in 1819 to add assembly rooms and an extra storey and wing (see cover and Fig. 6.2). Forfar had not one but two architectural icons: its Town and County Hall, built between 1785 and 1788 to a design of

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Figure 7.10   Forfar’s Town and County Hall. Completed in 1788 to a design of James Playfair, son of the minister of Liff and Benvie parish and father of William Henry, its costs were covered by £846 17s from gentlemen of the county and 400 guineas from the town.

James Playfair, and its Sheriff Court House of 1821–4. They were both reminders of Forfar’s role as chief town in the shire (see Fig. 7.10). But the bustle and chaos of Forfar’s cattle market, held just beside these prestigious structures, was a sharp reminder that life was not one of elegance for all (see Fig. 7.11). Dunfermline City Chambers, so called although it was never a city, dating to 1875–89, of a mixed Scottish Baronial and French Gothic design, and Barrhead’s Burgh Chambers built of bull-faced red sandstone with polished ashlar dressings in the ‘Free Scots Renaissance’ style, completed in 1904, are both examples of municipal buildings which were outstanding in their own way. The prosperity of a town could also be displayed in other public buildings. Greenock’s Custom House was built in 1818. A hugely impressive example of civic architecture, it dominated the town’s two harbours and docks on the south side of the Clyde (see Fig. 7.12). A visitor would scarcely imagine that as late as 1700 this boom town had been a little fishing village of about only 1,800 inhabitants (see Appendix, pp. 299f.). By 1835, it would have a population of over 29,500.102 The financial success of the town may be shown from the gross

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Figure 7.11   The cattle market at Forfar continued to be held at its traditional site, even though by the nineteenth century it was close by the new elegant town and county hall (1788) and sheriff court house (1821–4).

receipts of customs: from 1728 to 1822 they rose from £15,000 to £263,000; by 1828 these figures would jump to an incredible £455,000.103 Behind this image of industrial success, there was, as elsewhere, a spectre of ‘moral contagion’, largely blamed on the influxes of Highlanders and Irish in search of work: illconstructed houses and chronic overcrowding bringing insanitary conditions and disease (see p. 255 and Fig. 8.3).104 Banking houses displayed their importance with discreet architectural decoration. Many are still extant, often now converted to coffee shops and bingo halls. Hints to the past glory of urban architecture may still be found, often partially concealed behind modern, plastic-fronted shopping fascias in towns like Kirkcaldy: a testament to previous economic successes (see Fig. 7.13). Department stores, the offspring of the ‘monster shops’ that had appeared in London and other large cities in the 1820s, reached Scotland late in the century. Jenners in Princes Street, Edinburgh, built in 1893–5, was probably the pinnacle of choice retail houses, a veritable leisure outlet in itself, with its elaborate architectural decoration enhancing the already busy retail capital (see Fig. 7.14).

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Figure 7.12   The Custom House, Greenock, by Robert W. Salmon was painted in 1820, two years after its completion, reflecting the deserved pretensions of the town.

Figure 7.13   Nos 225–229 High Street, Kirkcaldy. The elegance of historic buildings is often partially hidden by modern accretions.

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Figure 7.14   Princes Street with the Commencement of the Building of the Royal Institution, Edinburgh, 1825, by Alexander Nasmyth: this detail shows the street as a fashionable shopping destination even before the arrival of Jenners store and the later ‘monster’ retail outlets – department stores.

The surge of municipal histories, largely confined to the bigger cities in the eighteenth century, proliferated in the nineteenth, celebrating the heritage of middling and smaller towns. The identity of the townscape was lauded in paintings that stressed its beauty while omitting the poorer aspects; and flattering, often commissioned, portraits of the towns’ dignitaries hailed the town’s standing. Throughout the country, towns in this way highlighted their growing ­ambition and confident pretensions.

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The ‘Athens of the North’ is Scotland’s great pride, with its sweeping Georgian terraces and sumptuous classical architecture, drawing admiring visitors in their thousands to the capital. It received the accolade of being recognised as a World Heritage Site. Its rival, Glasgow, was not to be outdone. Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson fought successfully to bring classicism to Glasgow, challenging not only Edinburgh but also the dark Gothic edifices, such as Glasgow University, which had hitherto stood as symbols of the Victorian City. The Royal Exchange, the United Presbyterian Church in Caledonian Road and Great Western Terrace translated into physical form Thomson’s Athenian idyll.105 Parts of Glasgow rebelled against his dominance with Venetian-inspired designs. The Stock Exchange in Nelson Mandela Place and the Clydesdale Bank, in particular, are outstanding. Even factories were objects of architectural splendour. Probably nothing can match the magnificent Templeton’s Factory at Glasgow Green, built in 1888–92, with its Venetian Gothic windows and polychrome colouring inset with blue mosaic (see Fig. 7.15).106 To add to the city’s architectural flourishing, in 1888, amidst flags, decorations and elaborate uniforms, 60,000 crushed together to witness the opening by Queen Victoria of the sumptuous renaissance building – Glasgow City

Figure 7.15   Templeton’s Factory; an outstanding piece of Victorian architecture.

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Chambers  – in George Square.107 With its impressive loggia, and granite and marble staircase it was the epitome of good taste. Present-day observers might note that in all this grandeur, only forty-four seats were allocated for the public to witness council debates. They might, perhaps, then reflect on how much progress has been made since the days of the medieval gild’s hold over the town’s business (see Fig. 1.16).

V.  Visionary thinking? Scotland moved out of the Victorian era and into the twentieth century with great hopes. Much had been achieved to rid the country of the harshness of the inner-city environments. Sanitary engineers and Dean of Guild Courts, with the backing of improving Acts of Parliament, many local authority councils and enlightened members of the public had used their expertise to address the failings of the new industrial townscapes. But the numbers of city families living in single rooms, up dirty communal stairways, with shared sinks and water closets belied the progress experienced in many smaller towns and sat ill at ease with the splendid municipal and commercial buildings and elegant middle-class villas that had begun to adorn townscapes. This level of dereliction in pockets of Scotland did not go unnoticed. The ideas of radical thinkers began to circulate. John Ruskin, for one, provided the intellectual foundations for the Arts and Crafts approach to town planning, championed by the socialist William Morris, with his view that it was impossible ‘to have any right morality, happiness, or art, in any country where the cities are clotted and coagulated together’. Rather, ‘you must have lovely cities . . . limited in size, and not casting out the scum and scurf of them into an encircling eruption of shame, but girded each with . . . garlands of gardens, tall blossoming trees, and softly-guided streams’.108 His utopian ideals impressed Ebenezer Howard, a Hansard clerk who was also a Quaker and fluent Esperanto speaker, lately returned from the horrors of Chicago. For Howard, an unlikely town planner, and a like-minded body of influential opinion, Britain’s cities had disintegrated to such a level that they should be destroyed and in their place there should be new, free-thinking communities, not tainted with the detritus of the city. Howard, modifying his views a little, was influenced by the Bournville community, the brainchild of George Cadbury, the Quaker cocoa and chocolate manufacturer, who believed that the key to a better quality of life for the poor was improved housing. Along with the rise in the confectionery business was the growing industry of soap manufacture. The ‘Sunlight’ business of the Lever brothers was a brand leader. They, too, in 1888, wished to improve the lot of the workers in their new factory outside Liverpool, and so set up the model village of Port Sunlight near the Mersey. As at Bournville, Port Sunlight residents enjoyed open air, green space, and front and back gardens. It was in this atmosphere that

242   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Howard began to ruminate on a new type of civilisation, where town and country could work alongside each other. This new spiritual approach, he believed, would bring a series of enlightened and free settlements that he called ‘Garden Cities’.109 Howard saw this as the solution to Scotland’s problems. The twentieth century was to see the country transformed Another of the foremost thinkers to emerge from this nineteenth-century era of both destruction and improvement was Patrick Geddes. Like Howard, he despaired of the state of Scotland’s towns. He was, in many ways, a visionary who saw that the historic core of towns and their standing buildings, the testaments to the past, were being destroyed for ever; the heritage and symbol of Scottish identity was being lost for future generations. Since the Public Health Act 1875 many improvements had been made to the physical environment, but too often this was interpreted as regulated, terraced houses, standard width of streets and houses; they screamed conformity. For Geddes and like-thinkers this regularity was anathema. Their reproach was that little or no concern was being shown for the social well-being of inhabitants – a lack of green, open spaces, with trees, gardens and grass; no play areas for children; and inadequate provision for libraries, meeting halls or sports facilities. Geddes was commissioned by the Dunfermline Carnegie Trust in 1904 to produce an innovative town plan. He considered his report to be ‘a plan and plea  for conserving and developing the amenities of a small provincial city . . . [with] its constructive proposals based upon a photographic survey of the  present, and a re-reading of its past’.110 The proposals covered many aspects  of the historic town. They ranged from improvements to the railway viaduct by planting and landscaping, the upgrading of the royal palace gardens and environs of Dunfermline Abbey, to the provision of zoos, aviaries and a ‘Hall of Medieval History’ in Pittencrieff Park.111 The document is a beautiful testament to his visionary ideals. His hope was that this would be the inspiration for many to follow. Scotland’s housing problems would be solved in the twentieth century.

Notes 1. J. F. McCaffrey, Scotland in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1998), 62–3. 2. Population figures for Glasgow turn on what is counted. The Barony parish with Gorbals and Govan would produce a higher figure of over 81,000; see Appendix, pp. 299f. 3. T. M. Devine, ‘The urban crisis’, in T. M. Devine and G. Jackson (eds), Glasgow, Beginnings to 1830 (Manchester, 1995), 406; Devine argues that the 1841 population figure was 274,533; R. Rodger, ‘The Scottish cities’, in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford University Press, 2012), 456, places the number as greater, at 287,000; see Appendix, pp. 299f.

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4. T. Hunt, Building Jerusalem: the Rise and Fall of the Victorian City (London, 2004), 15. 5. Devine, ‘Urban crisis’, 407. 6. R. Q. Gray, The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (Oxford, 1976), 11. 7. McCaffrey, Scotland, 2–3. 8. R. J. Morris, ‘Urbanisation’, in A. Cooke, I. Donnachie, A. MacSween and C. A. Whatley (eds), The Modernisation of Scotland, 1850 to the Present, vol. 2 of Modern Scottish History, 1707 to the Present (East Linton, 1998), 121–3. 9. Rodger, ‘Scottish cities’, 456; McCaffrey, Scotland, 2–3. 10. E. P. Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate: a Thousand Years of History (Edinburgh, 2005), 143–4. 11. H. Cockburn (ed.), Memorials of his Time, by Henry Cockburn (Edinburgh, 1910), 99. 12. E. Chadwick, Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population (Edinburgh, 1842), 13, 17, 59–60, 78, 97–9, 106, 120–4, 138, 162, 198, 233, 247, 277, 281–2, 366, 397, 416. 13. F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Classes in England (Stanford, CA, 1844), 41–3, 113, 119. 14. J. G. Kohl, Reisen in Schottland (Dresden/Leipzig, 1844), part i, 53. 15. R. Cowan, Vital Statistics of Glasgow, Illustrating the Sanitary Condition of the Population (Glasgow, 1840), 5, quoted in Devine, ‘Urban crisis’, 412. 16. Devine, ‘Urban crisis’, 412. 17. R. Cowan, Statistics of Fever and Smallpox in Glasgow (Glasgow, 1837), 9. 18. Quoted in Adams, Making of Urban Scotland, 155. 19. Quoted by Devine in ‘Urban crisis’, 406. 20. The population had been over 61,000 ten years earlier (see Appendix, pp. 299f.). Even at this lower figure this was an appalling lack of amenities for such a number of people. 21. I. H. Adams, The Making of Urban Scotland (London, 1978), 136. 22. Hunt, Building Jerusalem, 180. 23. R. W. Munro and J. Munro, Tain Through the Centuries (Tain, 1966), 115; R.  D.  Oram, P. F. Martin, C. A. McKean, T. Neighbour and A. Cathcart, Historic Tain: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2009), 70, 111. 24. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Nairn: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1999), 35–6. 25. E. P. Dennison, G. Ewart, D. Gallacher and L. Stewart, Historic Kilsyth: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2006), 30. 26. The Poor Law Inquiry (Scotland), Parliamentary Paper, 1844, vol. xxii, 419–20. 27. This information comes from a descendant of John Johnson. 28. Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate, 156–7. 29. W. P. Alison, Observations on the Management of the Poor in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1840).

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30. F. H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: a Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, 6 vols (Edinburgh, 1882–5), ii, 327. 31. W. Macfarlane, Geographical Collections Relating to Scotland, ed. A. Mitchell, 3 vols (SHS, 1906–8), ii, 4. 32. NRS, B50/1/1–2, Maybole Council Minutes, 1721–1825, 26 October 1736 and 8 September 1788, for example. 33. T. Robertson and D. Haldane, The Economic Geology of the Central Coalfield. Area 1 Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch (Edinburgh, 1937), 155. 34. Hunt, Building Jerusalem, 193. 35. Adams, Making of Urban Scotland, 137. 36. Ibid., 137. 37. Groome, Gazetteer, 386. 38. E. P. Dennison and S. Stronach, Historic Dunfermline: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2007), 56. 39. E. Henderson, The Annals of Dunfermline, a.d. 1069–1878 (Glasgow, 1879), 555, 556. 40. P. Chalmers, Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline, 2 vols (Edinburgh and London, 1844–59), ii, 63–5; E. Beveridge, Viagraphy Dunfermlynensis (Dunfermline, 1827, revised 1858), 252. 41. Henderson, Annals, 707. 42. Ibid., 706. 43. M. Rorke, E. P. Dennison, S. Stronach and R. Coleman, Historic Kirkintilloch: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2009), 44, 45. 44. T. Watson, Kirkintilloch, Town and Parish (Glasgow, 1894), 201. 45. D. Martin, The Story of Kirkintilloch (Strathkelvin District Libraries and Museums, 1987), 32–3; J. Shanks, The Development of Public Services in Kirkintilloch, 1870– 1914 (Glasgow, 1980), 18–24. 46. Martin, Story of Kirkintilloch, 32–3; Shanks, Public Services, 28. 47. D. Patrick, ‘Burghal development’, in J. Horne (ed.), Kirkintilloch (Kirkintilloch, 1910, reprinted 1993), 62. 48. Martin, Story of Kirkintilloch, 32–3; Shanks, Public Services, 28. 49. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Forfar: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2000), 32. 50. D. T. Adam, Reviews of the Administration of the Town’s Affairs by Successive Town Councils, 1660–1965 (Forfar, 1967), 34–5. 51. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Dumbarton: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1999), 37. 52. Perthshire Advertiser, Centenary Number, Special Edition, 1929, quoted in E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Coupar Angus: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1997), 31. 53. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Linlithgow: the Archaeological Implications of Development (2000), 45.

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54. J. McWhirter, Mine Ain Grey Toon: the Story of Barrhead from Prehistoric Times to 1914 (Barrhead, 1970), 46. 55. E. P. Dennison, S. Stronach and R. Coleman, Historic Barrhead: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2008), 43–4. 56. NRS, B50/1/1–2, Maybole Council Minutes, 1721–1825, 14 October 1808; E.  P.  Dennison, D. Gallacher and G. Ewart, Historic Maybole: Archaeology and Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2005), 40. 57. Chalmers, Account, i, 393–4. 58. Martin, Story of Kirkintilloch, 30, 33; J. Horne, ‘General expansion’, in Horne, Kirkintilloch, 23. 59. NRS, B48/11/1, Dean of Guild Minute Book, 1793–1839, 315, 320. 60. NSA, vii, 56; NRS, GB1/7/1–6, Barrhead Gas Board Records, 1868–1949. 61. Groome, Gazetteer, v, 93; I. Rae and J. Lawson, Dr Grigor of Nairn (Nairn, 1944), 79. 62. NRS, Maybole Council Minutes, 1721–1825, 12 December 1809; J. J. Gray, Maybole, Carrick’s Capital: Facts, Fiction and Folk (Bala, 1972), 57. 63. J. Gordon, Kilsyth History Trail (Kilsyth, 1980), 3–4. 64. NRS, Dunbar Town Council Minutes, 1688–1919, B18/30/4, n. d. 65. Dennison and Stronach, Historic Dunfermline, 57. 66. Quoted in J. Gifford, Dumfries and Galloway (London, 1996), 94. 67. E. P. Dennison, S. Eydman, A. Lyell, M. Lynch and S. Stronach, Painting the Town: Scottish Urban History in Art (Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2013), 78. 68. OSA, xix, 448. 69. W. Knight (ed.), Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth (New York, 1904), i, 166. 70. Aberdeen University Library Special Collections, Third Annual Report of the Aberdeen Lodging-House Association 1852; N. J. Williams, ‘Housing’, in W. H.  Fraser and C. H. Lee (eds), Aberdeen, A New History, 1800–2000 (East Linton. 2000), ii, 302. 71. Williams, ‘Housing’, 302–3. 72. R. Rodger, Housing the People (Edinburgh, 1999), passim. 73. McCaffrey, Scotland, 63. 74. H. Meller, Towns, Plans and Society in Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1997), 21. 75. R. Rodger, ‘Introduction’, in R. Rodger (ed.), Scottish Housing in the Twentieth Century (Leicester, 1989), 8. 76. W. H. Fraser and I. Maver, ‘Tackling the problems’, in W. H. Fraser and I. Maver (eds), Glasgow, 1830–1912 (Manchester, 1996), ii, 421. 77. McCaffrey, Scotland, 35. 78. R. Chambers, The Gazetteer of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1832), 224–5. 79. Dennison et al., Painting the Town, 374–7. 80. Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate, 153–4. 81. NRS, Dunbar Town Council Minutes, 1688–1919, B18/13/7, 18 September 1815. 82. H. Walker, The Story of Erskine Beveridge and St Leonard’s Works, 1833–1989 (Dunfermline, 1991), 13. 83. R. D. Anderson, ‘Education and the state in nineteenth-century Scotland’, Economic

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84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111.

History Review, 36, no. 4 (1983), 522–34; W. W. Knox, ‘The Scottish educational system, 1840–1940’, in A History of the Scottish People (SCRAN, 2000), 1–4. McCaffrey, Scotland, 61, 65–6. Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate, 154–5. J. F. McCaffrey, ‘Introduction’, Shadow’s Midnight Scenes and Social Photographs (Glasgow, 1858, this edition with ‘Introduction’ Glasgow, 1976), 14. Morris, ‘Urbanisation’, 83. McCaffrey, Scotland, 62. W. H. Fraser, ‘Developments in leisure’, in W. H. Fraser and R. J. Morris (eds), People and Society in Scotland, 1830–1914 (Edinburgh, 1990), ii, 241, 250. T. Collins, J. Martin and W. Vamplew (eds), Encyclopedia of Traditional British Rural Sports, (London  and  New York, 2005), 74. For further information, see J.  Burnett, Riot, Revelry and Rout: Sport in Lowland Scotland before 1860 (East Linton, 2000). J. E. McLachlan, ‘The story of Fastern’s E’en’, Borders Magazine, viii (1908), 86–8. Fraser, ‘Developments in leisure’, ii, 236–64. R. Rodger, ‘The evolution of Scottish town planning’, in G. Gordon and B. Dicks, Scottish Urban History (Aberdeen, 1983), 85. For example, 14 Park Avenue, Dunfermline. NRS, Dunbar Town Council Minutes, 1688–1919, B18/13/17, 10 October 1906. E. P. D. Torrie and R. Coleman, Historic Hamilton: the Archaeological Implications of Development (1996), 65. Dennison and Coleman, Historic Dumbarton, 83. F. McKichan ‘A burgh’s response to the problems of urban growth: Stirling, ­1780–1880’, Article 34, SHR, 57 (1978), 68–86, in A. Cooke, I. Donnachie, A. MacSween and C. Whatley (eds), Modern Scottish History, vol. 4; Readings, 1850 to the Present (Dundee, 1998), 154. Stirling Journal and Advertiser, 1 May 1857. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Dalkeith: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1998), 82. R. J. Finlay, Modern Scotland, 1914–2000 (London, 2004), 45, 46–7. NSA, vii, 426–7. D. Weir, History of the Town of Greenock (Glasgow, 1828), 42. Ibid.; Dennison et al., Painting the Town, 262–5. Dennison et al., Painting the Town, 176. Hunt, Building Jerusalem, 180. Ibid., 268. Ibid., 312. Ibid., 315. P. Geddes, City Development, a Study of Parks, Gardens and Culture-Institutes: a Report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust (Dunfermline, 1904). Ibid., 90, 83–8,148–52, for example.

8

The Twentieth Century

T

he visionary thinking of Patrick Geddes and the utopian ideals of Ebenezer Howard and like-minded theorists heralded hope for the twentieth century after the harshness that nineteenth-century industrialisation had brought. That hope was short-lived. Geddes was appointed to only one town-planning commission in Scotland, that initiated by the Dunfermline Carnegie Trust in 1904 (see p. 242); the majority of his idealistic proposals were not adopted. A few streets in the town are still lined with trees, a small, fleeting acknowledgement of his great vision. Many were in tune with the new thinking and expressed the desire to relocate, away from the slums of industrialisation and its problems of overcrowding, to a more healthy ‘green’ environment. But the reality was to be very different: this was to be a century of bitter wars, personal deprivation and economic retrenchment. Townscapes were, indeed, to be transformed and new homes would be built. But the economic and political climate would dictate the format of the urban scene. Too often, this brave new world would give not even a nod to visionary thinking.

I.  The Garden City ideal The Garden City was the ideal of Ebenezer Howard, a utopian view laid out in his 1898 treatise, To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform.1 Howard’s aim was to provide the best of the countryside alongside the advantages of city living, so as to eliminate for the twentieth century the many social evils that beset nineteenthcentury towns: the benefits of cities were opportunities for work and cultural pleasures; those of the countryside were open spaces, gardens, fresh produce and the enjoyment of natural beauty. He proposed that new towns should be built on greenfield sites, with populations of no more than 30,000. They would have central parks where cultural activities might take place and be encircled by green belts. Although existing as entities, the Garden Cities would have first-rate

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t­ ransport to, and good communications with, other urban centres. The settlements would be economically self-sufficient, attracting industries by the facility to work and live in pleasant, healthy environments, and there would be a clear distinction between industrial and residential areas. These would be self-sustaining communities, not dormitory towns dependent on cities for employment. Each house would have sufficient land to grow the occupier’s own vegetables to supplement the diet. In such healthy conditions, poverty, illness and crime would disappear. The City would be developed by a private company which would purchase the land and build the infrastructure but, once purchased, the land would belong to a democratically elected local government. Interest would be paid on the initial investment but, thereafter, rent and rates would accrue to the community at large and funds would be set aside for cultural and social programmes. In this way, any increase in the value of land would not disappear into the pockets of private landowners but would, rather, benefit the entire community.2 With a few notable exceptions – at Greenock, the Lucy Sanderson Homes at Galashiels and Rosyth Garden City – the importation of the new ideas from England was less successful. Rosyth had been the chosen location in 1909 for a new naval base; the first phase of its development was the building of its Tin Town homes, corrugated iron huts, for the families of the workers who were involved in the construction of the dockyard. The second phase of the new Rosyth was to be constructed on the Garden City model and was intended to house yard employees. The project stalled and no housing was built until after the onset of war.3

II.  The ‘Great War’ and the inter-war years Howard’s Garden City was founded on the notion that social reform and the physical environment should be inextricably intertwined. His ideas came to the fore at a time when traditional acceptance of who should hold political power was being questioned: was it necessarily to be the sole preserve of the governing classes? The Trade Union Congress in the 1890s had already placed on its agenda issues such as old age pensions and housing; the rise of the Labour Party was questioning the country’s economic, political and social status quo; the more extreme wing of the women’s movement was beginning to reassess, largely through urban guerrilla tactics, the role of women in the home and family; and Britain was engrossed in an arms race with Germany. The very foundations and stability of society appeared to be in flux. A firm and positive stand needed to be taken and placed on the social and political agenda – and this included town planning.4 Virtually no towns in the first decade of the century were to experience the healthy, pleasurable environment advocated by Howard. In 1914, Britain faced war. Many rushed to enlist, answering Kitchener’s pointed summons to arms.

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Figure 8.1   Recruiting in World War I; many young boys lied about their age to follow the call to arms. This little one could not have deceived the authorities.

Three out of ten eighteen to forty-nine year olds volunteered; the mining industry lost over a quarter of its workers. In small villages and towns throughout the country volunteers proudly paraded and exercised in front of their admiring neighbours and the local press (see Fig. 8.1). Even music halls, which had established themselves as the main social meeting places of urban society, were used as recruitment centres for the war effort. Harry Lauder (1870–1950), who was probably the highest-paid performer in the world, went on a recruitment tour of music halls in 1915.5 For most, to support the war was a matter of local pride as Scottish regiments usually had well-established local bases for recruitment. People’s loyalty was bound to their locality.6 With war imminent, the Clyde basin became the most important base for munitions production in Britain. The area had the prime advantage of being

250   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

supposedly beyond the tentacles of the enemy navy; and by 1914, 90 per cent of shipbuilding came from the Clyde. A further asset was that key supporting heavy industries – coal, steel and engineering – were at close hand, backed by an efficient transport system. Labour was readily available; and eventually a quarter of a million were employed in war-related industries, not just in the Clyde region but also in other towns throughout Scotland.7 Profit could be made from war in many towns and in many ways. The demand for shells, armour plating and engines boomed. Likewise, companies such as those involved in textile production, particularly in the Borders – Galashiels, Hawick and others – received increased orders: boots and uniforms were in constant demand throughout the war, and carpet firms converted their factories in order to produce plentiful supplies for the troops. Wartime demand meant an increasing need for jute. This was the standard cloth of the British forces’ uniform and was also required for sandbags, the mainstay of the trenches in the quagmire of the Western Front. Canvas for tents and coverings for horse-drawn wagons used by the likes of the army ambulance services were also in need of constant replacement. While responding patriotically to this market, some manufacturers saw this as an opportunity to raise the price of jute cloth by using raw material bought at pre-war prices. It is estimated that in Dundee profits rose by over 50 per cent. Jute workers, who were put under pressure from the increased workloads, went on strike; it was ultimately only government intervention that regulated spiralling prices. Equally reprehensible was the scam of those munitions manufacturers who deliberately held back production in order to force the government to buy at inflated costs.8 The war relied on the patriotism of the workforce but, in the final resort, it was forced to depend also on profiteering and manipulation of the market. No town was immune from the deprivations brought by war. The employed had to work hard for the same pre-war wage while prices rose; the unemployed found life tougher still. All felt the pain of the losses of their menfolk, as may still be seen in the War Memorials dedicated to the dead throughout the country. There was yet a further pressing cause for concern. The origins of discontent lay in the virtual ending of house-building at the beginning of war; the available housing stock, already low, declined even further. Unscrupulous individuals saw a money-making opportunity. With the influx of workers into areas like Govan and Partick, some landlords took the opportunity to raise rents. Women and their families, with husbands fighting at the front and army pay proving inadequate to cover rack-renting, faced the real possibility of eviction. By 1915, thousands of tenants were refusing to pay their rents. Strike was their only weapon. When those involved in wildcat strikes were threatened with legal action, there was major revulsion. Such was the anger that, on 17 November 1915, outraged housewives, many with their children, and backed by women already active in Labour politics, marched on George Square, Glasgow, to protest at the prosecu-

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tions of those forced into debt. Husbands still at home dropped tools and joined the women in what some considered the ‘women’s fight’. Rent increases were restricted for the remainder of the war but landlords, while seemingly forced to back down, recouped their position by avoiding improvements and delaying repairs to property.9 One major change in lifestyle for many women was the role they were required to adopt during the war. With the deaths of so many husbands and sons in battle, and men absent at the front, women stepped into the breach. Working alongside men in factories, taking over public or administrative duties normally performed by males, including selling tickets on buses and trams, women gained a confidence and a sense of comradeship almost unknown, to this extent, in the public arena before the war years. They were unwittingly following in the footsteps of their grandmothers of the Middle Ages who quietly and efficiently, and without legal and social recognition, took on the roles of men in their absence (see p. 59). The pressure for women’s suffrage was escalating steadily or even ferociously. Women were no longer the ‘little wives at home’. Labour activists intended to keep it that way after the war ended. A primary task of government after fighting ceased was to solve the pre-­existing problem of overcrowding, now worsened with the lack of building in the war years. Overcrowding had been addressed, with varying levels of success, in the previous century, but there was still much to achieve. According to the 1901 census, 11.29 per cent of the residents of Greenock, 13.5 per cent in Paisley and as many as 18.93 per cent in Kilmarnock had been living in dwellings of one room.10 Matters had not greatly improved ten years later. The census of 1911 indicated that in Kilsyth, Coatbridge and Wishaw between a third and a quarter of the inhabitants were crammed more than four to a room; Cowdenbeath, Clydebank, Motherwell, Hamilton, Barrhead and Airdrie fared little better, with four out of ten people living at more than three to a room; in Glasgow nearly six out of every ten existed in a room with more than two people. In Dundee, almost half the population tholed such wretched conditions; for Aberdeen, the figure was just over a third; and Edinburgh showed a slight improvement with just under a third existing in these deprived circumstances. Inverness, away, it might be thought, from extreme pressure for domestic space, still had a quarter of its population living with more than two people to a room. These figures, in reality, did not quite give the full picture: two children in this 1911 assessment were counted as one person. Three-quarters of the Scottish population were living in overcrowded conditions.11 By 1918, the situation was worse. With men returning from the front, often mentally and physically scarred, families distraught by the loss of husbands, fathers and sons, home life disrupted and women disgruntled if expected to revert to their pre-war role of subservience, the government faced a major housing crisis. Tenement life, with its overcrowding, smells, noise, communal water closets and disease, especially tuberculosis (TB), commonly called ‘consumption’, was

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continuing largely unchanged from the nineteenth century. Certainly, the west of Scotland and the big cities were hit with overcrowding more than other areas, but small towns also suffered badly. Low incomes and large families, often the catalyst for poor, cramped dwellings, were further burdened by the taking in of lodgers, a device that aimed to ease but, in reality, exacerbated an existing problem. A migrant workforce could add further to the congestion. Seasonal employment in the berry harvest on farms beside towns like Carnoustie, potatopicking weeks all over the country, herring curing and gutting time in fishing towns like Mallaig (see p. 192) and temporary work in the much-needed construction industries, all brought with them a need for accommodation. The common lodging house, rarely offering adequate sanitary facilities, could be found in most towns, small and large.12 Many felt that overcrowding encouraged immorality and failed to offer an environment where children could be protected from neglect or abuse. Overcrowding did not of itself mean deprivation. A clean one-roomed home was a healthier and more comfortable environment than a dirty two- or threeroomed dwelling. This had been recognised from the mid-nineteenth century, when local authorities were given the right to enforce hygienic conditions and, in some cases, to demolish insanitary and dangerous buildings. Many local officials still believed that an initial approach to the housing problem was the cleansing of existing properties. James Henry, the Surveyor of Police and Municipal Assessments of Glasgow, had argued cogently in 1903 that ‘the great barrier between the wealthy and the poor is not the poverty of the poor but their dirty houses’. For him, and many others after World War I, ‘cleanliness [was] the first step in the right direction’.13 Unhealthy, ill-ventilated and overcrowded housing was merely one of many seemingly insuperable problems. There was also the promise of ‘Homes for Heroes’, much championed by Prime Minister Lloyd George. To deal with the provision of ‘houses fit for heroes’, the Local Government Board for Scotland commissioned the production of type plans for dwellings under the Housing of the Working Classes Acts 1890–1909. Various suggestions were put forward: natural features and contours were to be retained where possible and these should determine the routes of roads; semi-detached houses were to predominate and terraces were to be small, with no more than eight houses; and trees and shrubs were to be planted to soften and enhance the built environment.14 The one bright light on the housing front was the accommodation built for the employees at the new dockyard, Rosyth Garden City. The Scottish National Housing Company (which later became the Scottish Special Housing Association, or SSHA) was commissioned to build Rosyth Garden Village, and work commenced in 1915. In general, the balance between housing, gardens and roads was difficult to achieve in the Scottish townscape: roads and pavements were normally wider than those in England, tenements were taller, largely due

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to the Scots feuing system (see pp. 232–3) and Scots builders favoured flatted blocks of two storeys, housing four homes; gardens were not as successfully incorporated into the broader scheme of the design; and, too often, trees were felled prior to building and, where retained, found themselves removed at the request of the inhabitants. Rosyth, however, was built largely according to the ideas of Ebenezer Howard, with tree-lined avenues and crescents around a central park. All the new houses, which were first occupied in 1916, had gardens at front and back. The 1,700 houses are still excellent homes, perhaps not outstanding to the twenty-first-century eye (they have been referred to as ‘drab, grey cement-­rendered council houses’)15 – but they were a beacon for decent standards in public housing and overcame the incipient problems of filth and overcrowding which featured still too often elsewhere (see Fig. 8.2). The Committee on the Provision of Dwellings for the Working Classes was set up by the Ministry for Reconstruction. The findings of the Tudor Walters Report resulted, in the years from 1918 to 1923, in housing built to the standards of the promoters of the Garden City. The problems of providing such quality buildings, with the exacting standards to meet those demanded by Lloyd George’s 1918 ‘Homes for Heroes’ campaign, however, were immense.16 Glasgow, it was

Figure 8.2   Rosyth Garden City houses make excellent homes to this day.

254   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

estimated, needed 60,000 new dwellings to house its working people. Dundee required fewer, at 6,000 but, by the time of the cuts in public expenditure in 1921, a mere 700 had been started.17 For most of the rest of the century, public opinion suggested that building standards for public housing throughout Scotland dropped as a result, largely, of cost. The introduction of subsidies reflected the cost of house construction as well as the plight of the homeless and inadequately housed. The result in the 1920s and after was an enlarged publicsector housing stock.18 In the meantime, Scotland faced wider economic challenges. Britain’s low productivity became apparent; it would last through all the inter-war years. New industry was hard to attract, part of the reason being the high level of business rates – between 1914 and 1927 they rose by 130 per cent. Established staple industries which had reinforced the Victorian city, such as textiles, shipbuilding, engineering, coal, iron and steel, as well as fishing and agriculture, suffered contraction. Even small towns were hit. Coupar Angus was renowned for its annual horse market. Lack of funds saw it petering out in the 1920s, the sole reminder of this important local event being the gingerbread horses made by local bakers.19 Industrial relations were brought to a crisis point by a combination of issues: government interference, the attitude of certain trades unionists, strikes over pay, working conditions and long hours, unemployment, the poor level of the dole and ambiguity over who should receive poor relief and a chronic shortage of housing. In addition, by early 1918, a general dissatisfaction with escalating food shortages and rising prices came to a head with the introduction of rationing, first on sugar but shortly afterwards on meat, butter and lard. A decade of economic regression culminated in a bitter showdown between workers and employers. Strike was the ultimate resort. This was triggered by the mining industry in 1926 but reverberated throughout society: class conflict spilled over into class hatred. Pickets, baton-wielding and mounted police, and hundreds imprisoned without the option of fines brought increased mistrust. But the General Strike, while deeply hurting many working families, failed to bring the country to its knees and, for some, life continued as before. The Scottish economy was on a knife edge. Agricultural prices, which had reached an all-time high in the war years, were plummeting; and with the traditional industries spectacularly failing to recover after the war, the Scottish economy was unable to attract much new industry. Established projects faltered: the important Scottish National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle, the vision of the renowned architect Sir Robert Lorimer, was slowed down as a result of the strike.20 Worldwide jitteriness discouraged long-term planning and investment.21 Financial sectors were increasingly looking to London and its Stock Exchange; the Glasgow Royal Exchange was ceasing to function and it has now transmogrified into an art gallery.22 With Wall Street frantically selling stocks, the Scottish economy collapsed.

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The Great Depression set in. It was estimated that 100,000 men in Scotland were permanently surplus to the country’s labour requirements. The country was numerically in a vulnerable position, in spite of emigration abroad and migration to England of 500,000 between 1918 and 1931. Many of these emigrants were young and skilled.23 At the height of the Depression in 1932, about 400,000 were out of work, a gargantuan problem that would be partially resolved only in 1939 with strenuous rearmament under way. While many weathered the years of the Great Depression, there were vast numbers who still struggled along in substandard, overcrowded conditions. The photograph taken of 15 Market Street, Greenock in the 1930s epitomises the deprivation endured in certain parts of seemingly financially robust towns (see pp. 236–7) (see Fig. 8.3). Some efforts were made by both government and  local authorities to deal with the problem, with varying levels of commitment and  success. By the 1930s, building activity increased in some areas but a shortage of labour and materials was soon reflected in sharply rising costs. The year 1935 would find 22.6 per cent of all working-class houses overcrowded. The acuteness of this situation was highlighted when compared with

Figure 8.3   15 Market Street, Greenock in the early 1930s still reflects nineteenth-century slum conditions and is an interesting comparative to Fig. 7.12.

256   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

the ­situation in England and Wales: their percentage of overcrowding was a mere 3.8.24 Many working-class people were still stranded in inner cities. An option for the authorities was to provide out-of-town estates to rehouse some of them. Former slum-dwellers from central Glasgow, for example, found themselves in conditions far removed from their tenement dwellings, but distance from family, social amenities and the workplace, to which they had walked or taken the tram or subway (opened in 1897), brought unwanted novelty, disorientation and discontent. Edinburgh also embarked on wholesale removal of many of the poorer families of the Old Town, planting them in areas that in many cases have now themselves become slums. In the 1930s, local authorities throughout the country took up the task of providing new housing. Many of these estates are still to be seen – from Burntisland to Inverness and Tain to Dumfries. Somewhat grey and bland, of little architectural merit, but adequately built, they at least served their purpose – they provided homes. Just as relocation to out-of-town sites displeased many Edinburgh and Glasgow tenants, dislike of change was sometimes true of smaller towns. Early in the 1930s, the first of Dalkeith’s high-quality, local authority schemes was undertaken in St Andrew Street. Many of the old closes which stood at right angles to the former Back Street were demolished. This certainly got rid of some very poor, almost derelict properties but they did not all come into this category. Later, extensive demolition work was undertaken at the east end of the High Street. Much of the historic past at that end of the town was removed, although upgrading might have saved it. At the same time, in 1937, North Wynd, an attractive little street retaining its old houses with outside staircases, was removed (see Fig. 8.4). This was a serious loss to the character of the town. Such appealing little houses may still be found in east-coast towns, such as Pittenweem, Anstruther, Crail, St Monans and Elie, and at the beautifully preserved small town of Culross, little changed since Slezer depicted it in the 1690s (see Fig. 4.2). They all attract hundreds of visitors every year to admire their townscapes and support the local economy. Dalkeith is, unfortunately, not the only historic town to lose sections of its built past in the name of progress.25 Seemingly unimportant industrial buildings in many towns also disappeared. Old factories, now demolished, such as the extensive Mellis’s buildings in Prestonpans, once gave insights into past working practices. Its intricate flue structures for heating the cast-iron pans was a crucial part of the salt-working process.26 Much of our industrial heritage has unwittingly been lost. Bad housing and unemployment had a huge impact on family life. Standards of living fell with an inevitability which went far to encourage emigration. For the first time, devastations of plague and famine apart (see pp. 161–3), the population actually dropped. The figures for life expectancy had improved in the first three decades of the century but, in 1931, a man might expect to live, on average,

The Twentieth Century   257

Figure 8.4   North Wynd, Dalkeith, 1937; demolished in the name of progress.

until only fifty-six and a woman to just over fifty-nine and a half. Crucially, the more urban the settlement, the lower was longevity. In larger towns and cities, the overall death rate was ninety to every thousand persons; in smaller towns this figure fell to sixty-nine and in the countryside to sixty-six. In the poorer areas of western Scotland, conditions were even worse: Kilmarnock’s death rate was as high as 114 to one thousand people, Glasgow’s 104 and Coatbridge stood at ninety-nine. For the wealthier east, Dundee’s rate was eighty-seven, Aberdeen’s was seventy-two and Edinburgh’s was as low as seventy.27 Many were dying at this time from what some have called the ‘forgotten plague’ – TB. Once statistics were recorded, it was claimed by some that as many as one in seven deaths might be attributed to TB. Whatever the correct figure, it was a major killer. There would be hope in the early 1940s when penicillin became available for the treatment of infectious diseases but, unfortunately, TB remained resistant. Streptomycin from 1944 was thought to be the answer but it was not until a few years later, when two further antibiotics were added, that TB began to succumb, and by the 1950s most patients could be cured of this devastating disease. Sadly, the recent rise of AIDS has brought with it a similar increase in TB.

258   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Statistics can blandly conceal the misery that was inflicted on too many families by a child’s death. Within poorer households, there was a greater risk of infant mortality, and an increased chance of death amongst young children who became vulnerable while not adequately fed and in close proximity to a multitude of diseases. For children who survived these crucial early years, there was the hope that they would receive a better education than that of their parents. Yet change was slow to come. In 1901, the school-leaving age was raised to fourteen. Plans to raise it further, to fifteen, were first mooted in 1918 and regularly discussed from the early 1930s onwards but were not achieved until 1947. Eventually, in 1972, the leaving age was raised to sixteen. The Education Act 1872 had been a landmark in the provision of schooling for children. For the first time, education was made compulsory for all children between the ages of five and thirteen. Prior to this, provision had been patchy. In Glasgow, 40 per cent of children did not attend school. This Act was reform of a sort but it did not address the issue of secondary education, which remained a preserve of the middle and skilled working classes. And it did little to improve scandalous teacher–pupil ratios which were commonly in the region of one to over sixty. The Education Act 1918 replaced the local school boards set up in 1872 with education authorities, which, it was intended, would run schools more efficiently. And from 1929, education committees were placed under the control of all-purpose local authorities. Again, legislation brought about only partial improvement; the failure to implement the raising of the school-leaving age to fifteen meant that secondary education remained a Cinderella. One real change did arise from the 1918 Act. Roman Catholic schools, which had opted out of the provisions of the 1872 Act, were brought within the state system. These voluntary schools, which catered for one-seventh of the overall school population, and in some Catholic enclaves for as many as one in three children, had teacher–pupil ratios of as high as one to 150. The system was on the brink of collapse in 1918.28 It was saved by being incorporated into the state system but set apart from it. The aims of the 1918 Act were well-intentioned. In reality, however, local authorities found this extra burden difficult to assimilate. To compound such problems, central government support was reduced. In some respects, family life within the home became easier. For a few privileged housewives, primitive washing machines became luxurious possessions, replacing the old-fashioned and hard-worked but efficient ‘posser’, scrubbing board and mangle. A new-fangled electric sweeper, the ‘hoover’, was the envy of most and gas irons were slowly replaced by cleaner electric machines. Women, not all of whom yet had the right to vote, had more time on their hands. Leisure activities began to change. The days of the music hall were being replaced by the attractions of the cinema and, from the late 1920s, with the startling innovation of ‘talkies’. Dance halls, chip shops and ice-cream parlours became the places to frequent, often to the concern of local authorities – idle

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groups, with seemingly too much time on their hands, could stealthily evolve into reactionary forces. Football continued to hold its spectators, with regrettably increasing tribal rivalry. Clandestine pastimes, for some, meant the chance to make a little money – furtive gambling took place in a number of locations, as well as more openly at dog and horse-racing. The efforts of the Society for the Protection of Animals failed to stamp out a favourite sport in mining towns – the long-banned, illicit ‘game’ of cock-fighting (see p. 230). For those with better incomes, tennis and golf became almost ‘archetypal middle-class pursuits’,29 and Scotland’s coastline offered links perfect for golf courses – Montrose, Nairn, Ayr and Gullane were merely a few of the favoured resorts. One leisure activity that was to a certain extent in retreat was the drinking of alcohol. Prohibition and temperance were actively encouraged by the Labour Party, all of whose Members of Parliament, so it was claimed, were totally abstinent. Restrictions on the sale of alcohol were imposed by local authorities, with greater or lesser success. Kirkintilloch was exemplary: it did not have its first public house until after 1945. Large swathes of middle-class suburbia, as in Rutherglen or south Edinburgh, were free of public houses, banned as a result of veto polls. In Rutherglen, where the ward boundary lay along the centre of the main street, the curious result was that one side of the road had virtually all the town’s public houses while the other had none. An emerging change in home ownership came for those who managed to survive the Great Depression and who also saw a rise in real terms of wages, alongside falling prices. Not only was there more privately built property to be purchased but, for some, there was the possibility of owning a modest car, such as the baby Austin. It is significant, however, that in 1930, with the number of registrations for cars and motor-engines in England being 1,813,958, registrations in Scotland were a mere 160,104.30 In real terms, taking into account relative population sizes, car ownership in Scotland was limited to 3.3 per cent of the population, while the figure for England was 4.65 per cent. This slow move to private vehicular transport made accessibility to the countryside more possible. Unplanned development began to creep into the countryside, much to the objection of many lobbyists. About 300,000 houses had been built each year in the 1920s and 1930s, with a peak number of 350,000 in 1936. Out of approximately four million houses constructed in the inter-war years, 90 per cent were low-lying developments in new or existing suburbs.31 There was a new and very significant change to the townscape: ribbon development slipped in as the vision of an out-of-town retreat replaced that of grimy city dwelling. With access to shopping and commodities by car and the availability of electricity and the telephone, all amenities could be enjoyed in a semi-rural setting.32 There were many who took exception to this suburban growth, George Orwell being one prominent detractor. In his novel Coming Up for Air, he wrote scathingly of ‘long, long rows of little, semi-detached houses’, with ‘privet hedge’ and ‘green front door’,

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the ‘Laurels, Myrtles, Hawthorns, Mon Abri, Mon Repos, Belle Vue’ of this brave new world. One of the offsprings of the Garden City movement was the sprouting of bungalows on the townscape, particularly in the 1930s. Originating in India for Civil Service officers, the name ‘bungalow’ having a ‘Bengal’ association, such housing could easily be copied in Britain to provide homes for the socially mobile. Usually more or less identical, spread out in ribbon development on either side of long straight roads leading out of town, they were both an immediate draw for those who could afford to purchase a house and an anathema to those with similar views to Orwell and who saw them as ‘bungaloid growths’. Controversy has continued to this day, but many find bungalows desirable places to live, with their front and back gardens on large plots, usually two public rooms and three bedrooms, and close access to a bus route to the nearby city or town. The Garden City movement had, indeed, created a new way of living, free from the city and the country, but it had also prised open the door to a new form of townscape – a not necessarily welcome suburbia – with alien lifestyles, principles and ambitions.

III.  World War II, austerity and recovery World War II lasted in Europe from 1939 to 1945 and painfully longer for those serving in the Far East. It brought public and private tragedies. Thousands of husbands, brothers and fathers were separated from home, as they had been in the Great War, but this time, wives, sisters and daughters swelled the military ranks. Many were posted abroad; others served on the home front. One of the greatest changes during wartime occurred in the workplace. In 1939, only 20 per cent of women constituted the workforce; by 1945, this had increased to 40 per cent. One important role women filled was in the Women’s Land Army, where the ‘weaker sex’ erected fences, tended animals, planted crops and drove tractors, with various levels of aptitude, assisted by thousands of prisoners of war. Equality, however, was far distant, equal pay unknown and the marriage bar retained in some occupations into the post-war years. Some industries inevitably revealed their conservatism, shipyards being a prime example. Justification for discrimination could be met in all walks of life. Rolls Royce maintained that the industry had problems with twelve-hour shifts as women had to ‘prepare meals for their husbands’, even though the Ministry of Labour maintained that ‘the average woman takes to welding as readily as she does to knitting’.33 This apparent new dawn for women in the workforce in fact had a long history, going back to late medieval times: women in Aberdeen were recorded working beside men as shore porters in the 1490s and even earning equal pay.34 And the mushrooming of virtual one-industry towns in the nineteenth century, such as Dundee with its jute manufacture and Aberdeen and its fish-gutting, had been heavily reliant on female labour.

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World War II differed markedly from World War I: the threat posed by new military technology now impacted on the civilian population. Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Greenock came under bomb attack, thankfully not with the force that hit Clydebank in March 1941; this left thousands homeless and industry stricken. Even if not a direct target, towns had first-hand experience of the cost of warfare. The threat of bombing demanded expansion of the ­emergency services. Extra firemen and first-aiders were recruited. Ayr had an efficient system of emergency workers, reinforced by volunteers; this became the template for the rest of Scotland. The 12,000 part-time auxiliaries boosted the 7,000 police regulars.35 They were responsible for security and maintaining peace on the home front, along with wardens, who checked on matters such as blackouts and conditions in air-raid shelters, and the volunteer ‘army’, the ‘Home Guard’, equipped sometimes with nothing more than garden scythes and spades. Coastal towns lost their scenic settings as they witnessed anti-tank traps set up along the shores. Government regulations were in place and were to be obeyed, and civil defence authorities were established to ensure just that. In some areas, evacuation of children and some women for safety from air attack was considered a wise tactical move. The towns which most experienced this policy were Glasgow and the industrial centres of the west, especially in the Clyde basin, Dundee, Edinburgh and settlements around the Forth Rail Bridge and the nearby Rosyth dockyard, in particular Inverkeithing and Rosyth. Host families were found all over the country. A well-intended precaution, the scheme was not entirely successful, many children without their mothers finding the whole removal stressful and traumatic – bed-wetting increased, siblings were  not always billeted together, accents were different and school life could find the evacuees the butt of jokes and worse. Regrettably, a very few families saw the children as free labour and a means to gain extra ration points (see p. 262). Some children who were extremely unhappy made their way back home, and other families did not take up the option of evacuation, preferring the comforts and familiarity of home with all its potential danger to the prospect of the unknown, supposedly safe countryside. Other evacuees had a happier time, maintaining contact with their surrogate families long after the war finished or even staying with their ‘adoptive’ parents for the rest of their lives. Freedom of movement was restricted, particularly at night, with sirens warning of bomb alerts and shrilling the need to rush for air-raid shelters. Anderson shelters were made of corrugated steel and were half buried into the ground, with extra protection added by piling the dug-out earth on top; after the war, many Anderson shelters in back gardens were converted into garden sheds and the occasional one still functions to this day. A few people were fortunate enough to have more robust and comfortable, concrete shelters, also partially constructed underground. Many homes with adequate floor space acquired a type of metal table – a Morrison Shelter – which offered a level of protection indoors from

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falling debris in the event of a hit. The official designated shelters were often basements in municipal properties or, in Glasgow, underground stations. The ‘blackouts’, with windows taped to help prevent breakage and covered with black cloth or paper when lit up inside at night, meant gloomy evenings. Precautions, such as a ban on street lighting and misleading road signs to confuse German spies, led to accidents and occasional attacks in the dark. Everyone had to carry a gas mask for safety, younger children being encouraged to wear the hideous contraptions with their masks made to look like friendly playmates, such as Mickey Mouse. This idea failed: most children were terrified by them. The urban setting was distinctly unattractive. In town and country, state intervention became the norm. Many industries were nationalised, workforces were conscripted and rationing was brought in for foodstuffs and other essentials, such as clothing and soap. The immediate post-war years brought little respite. The supply of basic necessities remained controlled: even bread was rationed in 1946 and potatoes a year later. This ‘temporary’ measure of rationing lasted longer than anticipated – eggs, soap and petrol came off the ration in 1950 but many basics, such as meat, fats, cheese, sugar, tea and sweets, were still restricted. Tea came off rationing in 1952, sugar and sweets in 1953, and meat in 1954. Families fortunate enough to have gardens dedicated them to rearing hens and growing nutritious food such as spinach. Clothing, being on ration, was simple and basic, reflecting the shortages of wartime and the austerity Britain which followed: many people wore ‘utility’ underwear; and children born during or just before the war were donned in ‘liberty bodices’ and ‘siren suits’. Rationing on clothes began to be relaxed only in 1948–9.36 Meantime, elbow patches were sewn on jackets and jumpers, and cuffs were turned; the life of sheets was prolonged by cutting up the centre, and sewing the two sides together to replace the worn middle. Nylon stockings were newly glamorous and unavailable unless gifted by an American soldier. One solution was to draw a line up the back of the bare leg, sometimes ‘bronzed’ with gravy browning, to give the impression of a smart stocking seam. ‘Making do’ was essential. Some sections of society suffered more than others during the war. Germans who had escaped to Britain when Hitler’s hatred of Jews was beginning to make itself shown were interned. Italians were another group within the community who became ostracised after Italy declared war in May 1940; this prompted violence, especially in Greenock and Edinburgh. Although not a large proportion of a town’s make-up, Italians were distinctive, many of them having come to Britain in the late nineteenth century. A number had occupations as café owners, ice-cream parlour entrepreneurs and proprietors of barber shops. Names such as Vernolini, Crolla, Izzi and Maloco set them apart even though some families had been in the country for fifty or sixty years. Some of the men were exiled to Canada, but the majority were interned and forced into labour on Scottish farms.

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Increasingly, there was a hope that the post-war years would bring a ‘better’ Britain, both within towns and in the countryside. Unlike the aftermath of the 1914–18 War, Britain was to be prepared for the future and that future was to be fairer for all. This was heralded in 1942 with the publication of the Beveridge Report, compiled by the economist and civil servant Sir William Beveridge. It advocated a universal system of social security, the fledgling of the welfare state, which would rid Britain of, as he depicted it, ‘the five giant evils’ – want, disease,  ignorance, squalor and idleness. Two years later, reinforcing this Report, came the commitment of the government to pursue full employment and, along with this, the appearance on the statute book of ‘Rab’ Butler’s Education Act, supporting more equal educational opportunities, including non-fee-paying secondary schools and the raising of the school-leaving age to fifteen. That same year, the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944 was passed, authorising spending of up to £150 million on temporary housing. By April 1945, the Labour Party manifesto, Let Us Face the Future, in preparation for the election that would come at the end of the war, consolidated to a degree Beveridge’s thinking, demanding a new national health service, an urgent, accelerated housing programme and the nationalisation of certain key industries.37 War had brought a major slowdown in house-building. During these years, however, the SSHA had played a sterling role, responding to war-associated requirements for dedicated construction work. Rosyth, Hillington, Kirkwall and Edinburgh all needed homes for naval and aircraft personnel; Greenock and Clydebank were lacking in hostels for munitions and industrial workers. The SSHA stepped in with the necessary buildings that no obvious local authority had provided.38 The year 1945 saw a new mood to ‘build a better Britain’. The Labour Party manifesto summed up the views of many: The nation needs a tremendous overhaul, a great programme of modernisation and reequipment of its homes, its factories and machinery, its schools, its social services . . . Housing will be one of the greatest and one of the earliest tests of a Government’s real determination to put the nation first . . . And housing ought to be dealt with in relation to good town planning – pleasant surroundings, attractive lay-out, efficient utility services, including the necessary transport facilities.39

Whatever the brave intentions, post-war Britain was in limbo, brought on by years of disruption and government indecision and bomb damage in some areas. With decades of punitive reparations to pay, any cash for housing was in short supply. One solution to meet the needs of homecoming troops and the upgrading of pre-war houses was the building of ‘prefabs’. These prefabricated houses were detached, single-storeyed and delivered in sections or kit form so being

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Figure 8.5   A typical post-war ‘prefab’ house, not very attractive but necessary.

quickly erectable on prepared sites, with facilities – electricity, water and sewage systems – already in place (see Fig. 8.5). It was a matter of only days before they could be occupied. With fitted bathrooms and kitchens, sometimes even with built-in fridges, they were readily heated and, with private gardens, became the pride of most of the occupants. However, flimsy walls and single glazing could not always hold in warmth nor exclude outside cold. Concrete, and sometimes wooden, foundations encouraged rising damp. There was as a result a number of cases of bronchitis and asbestosis.40 By 1948, about 157,000 of these ‘temporary’ homes had been erected. This was considerably less than the half million promised by the Churchill Conservative government. Many of these ‘temporary’ prefabs lasted until the late 1960s and, when finally demolished, were missed and remembered fondly by a high proportion of the occupants. Measures were taken to improve housing and meet the lack of facilities suffered in many inner cities. Between the 1940s and the 1960s, the ‘production of modernist buildings and planned environments by state agencies reached its climax’.41 What most people seemed to want was privacy within their homes, a desire heightened by the community life imposed on most, to a lesser or greater degree, during the war years. Significantly, however, according to the 1951 census, a quarter of the population still lived in homes of two rooms or less, and a third still had to use communal lavatories. Half of households did not have a fixed bath, and about one in sixteen did not possess a piped water supply or a kitchen sink.42

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Canongate had become the poor suburb of Edinburgh. In 1946, 80 per cent of families were housed in one or two rooms: even with a kitchen classified as a room, 28 per cent lived in one room, 52 per cent in two rooms. Just over 8 per cent had three rooms. There were eight dwellings in Canongate with four rooms and these housed only a fraction more than 1 per cent of the population. Only three dwellings had the luxury of five rooms. By the 1951 census, 20.6 per cent of the people of Holyrood, the administrative area that included Canongate, still lived at a level of more than two per room. Brewing, printing and engineering had been mostly closed or relocated, so removing valuable avenues for employment in the Canongate area and adding to the air of poverty. It became very clear that Canongate, along with other towns, was in desperate need of a robust housing plan. Much visionary restoration was undertaken by architects Robert Hurd, Ian G. Lindsay and Partners, Basil Spence, Glover and Ferguson, and Frank Mears and Partners. But Edinburgh’s answer for many of its slum dwellers was to continue to remove them to outlying districts. With that went a loss of both closeness and the feeling of community.43 It has been argued that the Scottish Office gave Scotland a ‘quasi-colonial status’, enabling planning decisions to be made on a more local, regional level; housing programmes were put into action more swiftly than in England, with a greater degree of rehousing the poor, particularly in Glasgow. However, with rates set cripplingly high and new rulings on sanitation, private landlords found it too difficult to compete with local authority housing, which would become the norm. Glasgow’s rehousing scheme was aided by the fact that the city was part of the Clyde Valley Regional Plan between 1944 and 1946. This was felt to be ‘a pioneering attempt at regional planning’, with, as its principal consultant, Sir Patrick Abercrombie;44 he was the first Lever Fellow at the newly founded Department of Design at Liverpool University after its endowment in 1909, and a forceful influence on post-war planning. For a time, Glasgow adopted a different policy from Edinburgh, preferring to keep the population within the city bounds. Huge housing schemes were developed on the periphery on greenfield sites, Pollok being an exception. Initially with cottage-style houses, it was a 1930s model garden suburb, developed further in the 1940s; it had a target population of over 40,000, who were to live in three- and four-storeyed flat-roofed apartments. As almost a precursor of the new towns to come (see pp. 266–8), the first residents found totally unattractive the lack of adequate transport to the city centre, the poor and expensive shopping facilities, and the lack of public houses. Glasgow’s housing stock was a byword for substandard. The 1951 census revealed that 50.8 per cent of the city’s houses were dwellings of only one or two rooms. The residential density was 163 people per acre. A comparison with other cities highlights the depth of the problem. In Birmingham the density ratio was forty-eight per acre, whereas that in Manchester was seventy-seven. Both towns felt, with justification, that they had a housing problem. But the state of

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the Hutchesontown district of the Gorbals makes these figures pale into irrelevance – here there were 564 people per acre, 89 per cent of the homes being of only one or two rooms, usually with no bath or lavatory. For the city as a whole it was estimated that over 600,000, more than half the population, needed rehousing.45 Glasgow’s problems encapsulated those faced by many smaller towns, although on a vastly larger scale. There was a deep-seated underlying blockage to a genuine understanding of what was needed. In all towns, housing that would suit the lifestyles of the occupants was what was wanted. Thomas Sharp’s presidential address to the Town Planning Institute in 1945 revealed latent stumbling blocks. He did not deny that people had ‘the inalienable right to know fully what is being planned for them’; what he categorically repudiated was that the people should have ‘actual participation in the act of planning’.46 The planner was above the ordinary man, not his servant; there was no concept that the planner’s role might be to transform the wishes of the people into technical form. The SSHA’s scope was both general housing and that dedicated to the mining industry. In the period 1945 to 1950, 23,000 general-needs houses were erected all over the country, apart from only a few in Glasgow due to Glasgow Corporation’s hostility to the Association. Aberdeen, Ayr, Greenock, Kilmarnock, Clydebank, Coatbridge and Kirkcaldy were the main beneficiaries. During the 1950s, the National Coal Board opened several new pits, mainly in the Central Belt. Once again, the Board looked to the SSHA to provide a fair proportion of the necessary homes.47 The 1950s and 1960s were to see the sprouting in many towns of new estates, usually with no consultation with the intended occupants. Local authorities, pressurised by heavy demand, looked to the SSHA for back-up to ease the pressure placed on them by long waiting lists.48 Where, initially, councils erected small blocks of houses or flats, these were sometimes superseded by high-rise dwellings and tower blocks such as at Wester Hailes in Edinburgh. But it was not until the mid-1950s that the ideal of 30,000 new houses a year was achieved. The SSHA played a significant role. In 1946, two opposing views were proposed in Glasgow. Robert Bruce, the city architect, favoured containment of the population within the city boundaries in high-rise flats. This was opposed by Sir Patrick Abercrombie and Robert Matthew, who would later form the architectural firm of RMJM. They successfully argued in the Clyde Valley Regional Plan for a ‘general policy of housing decentralisation’, with people ‘decanted’, to use the favoured term, into New Towns.49 New Towns would help to satisfy the government’s desire to relocate industries and population and be more economically and socially efficient. The concept of New Towns was set into the melting pot by Abercrombie, and commissioned by the Ministry of Town and Country set up in 1943, and Lord Reith, the former Director General of the BBC. East Kilbride was the first, in 1947, followed by Glenrothes a year later, Cumbernauld in 1956, Livingston in 1962 and

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Irvine in 1966. Although often feeling uprooted from familiar surroundings, the new occupants were given more pleasant surroundings, some recreational facilities and, importantly, considerably better living conditions. Inevitably, there was adverse criticism of this exceptionally costly programme.50 Lewis Mumford, an American planner, argued that, while these New Towns were the product of a reasonable revolt against squalor, they revealed no understanding on the part of the planners of the ethos of a new, modern city. Cumbernauld, built in the second wave of New Towns, received mixed reviews. Four-fifths of the town’s occupants were to come from the overcrowded areas of Glasgow. But built on an exposed, high, windy hilltop ridge, it was expected to house almost three times the ratio of people per acre than had East Kilbride, while the land set aside for this was the smallest of any New Town, at just over 4,000 acres. The concrete town centre, the offspring of the planner Geoffrey Copcutt, was designed to accommodate virtually all of the town’s civic, religious, recreational and cultural activities.51 The central area has now been sold off to private developers, much was demolished in the 1990s, and a new centre, the Antonine, has been added to the remnants of the original. Whether this suits residents any better than what was first built is unclear. However, it has been argued that some of the best examples of residential development were in Cumbernauld, in particular at Seafar to the north. Although, like the centre, in an exposed spot, the Seafar was designed with small courtyards, connected by pedestrian walkways, which offered both privacy and intimacy.52 Even here, however, neglect is visible (see Fig. 8.6). There was, indeed, a dispersal of people but little new industry was introduced in the fledgling towns, many of the inhabitants remaining in their traditional

Figure 8.6   Seafar Development, Cumbernauld. Without proper maintenance, even the better ‘new towns’ show wear and tear.

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city workplaces. The first New Towns must, however, be recognised as a tremendous feat of organisation, planning and hope in a generation trying to come to terms with war damage and bankruptcy. By the middle of the century, the Gorbals area of Glasgow was the most impoverished and overcrowded place in western Europe. Within the inner city, destitute areas were redesigned with massive tower blocks. November 1950 saw the beginning of work on the first of the city’s high-rise flats – Moss Heights. This move proved disastrous, however, with lack of amenities and play areas, isolation from neighbours, vandalised lifts and poor construction. The main areas to be redeveloped were divided into six groups and placed under the care of various architectural and planning teams. Hutchesontown-Gorbals A was the remit of an in-house team of city planners, the riverside area B that of RMJM, and C was allocated to the renowned architect of Coventry Cathedral, Sir Basil Spence. By the end of the 1950s, Area A was completed as a low-rise estate, with largely Scandinavian-influenced three-storeyed flats and pitched roofs. Matthews and Spence, however, felt that high-rise was essential. Area B was opened in 1962. This consisted of mixed development, designed with the tall Swedish ‘point blocks’ in mind alongside terraces of three-storey maisonettes. Few shops were provided and there were just two public houses, one a single flat-roofed building – the Riverside Tavern. As suited the mood of many at this time, there were objections to the presence of even two pubs; others, when the number of pubs was increased to nine, still mourned the forty-eight Gorbals pubs they could once frequent. Changes have since been made, with ‘tacky’ pitched roofs in the 1980s replacing the flat roofs of the original buildings; these, in their turn, have also now been removed and the high walkways have disappeared, Gorbals Riverside being now accessible from only the ground floor. Where the original plans delineated open spaces with trees and shrubs, they are now to some extent occupied by car parks. But much remains of the original design, with some green spaces, a nursery school and other amenities.53 Hutchesontown-Gorbals C was also known as Queen Elizabeth Square or, as many of the locals called it, ‘Alcatraz’, ‘Barlinnie’ or ‘Sing Sing’. Such nicknames speak volumes. Nothing remains of them. The complex, multi-storey blocks with sweeping balconies where, according to the architect, residents could hang their washing like ‘a great ship in full sail’, took so long to complete that the twentythree-storeyed blocks at Royston, commenced by Wimpey at the same time as Area C and with roughly the same number of flats, were completed before Spence’s foundations were finished. Unlike Matthews’ design, there were no lowrise buildings to soften the townscape. The Queen Elizabeth flats were joined by an innovative shopping centre, the Cumberland Arcade, which many of the residents compared harshly with their traditional corner shops. Instead of the 444 shops that the district once enjoyed, there were now fifty-seven.

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Glasgow was to be beset with other high-rise structures, many within the city boundaries. By 1972, 25,000 planned overspill dwellings had been provided, but 48,000 had been built within the city boundaries.54 Most of these were in high-rise flats. Between 1961 and 1968, high-rise blocks of flats accounted for three-quarters of Glasgow’s housing completions. The most notorious was the Red Road estate which, until the Barbican was completed in London, could boast of being the tallest residential scheme in Europe;55 two of the point blocks, containing only four- and five-apartment flats, and consequently a large population of children, had severe and recurrent lift problems and extreme vandalism.56 The lessons of Moss Heights had not been learned. Often poorly constructed, tower blocks brought social problems. Shopping facilities were sometimes not built until the flats were completed, making early residents feel as if they were camping out, and communal lifts, too often left foully dirty, failed to function on many occasions. Other than Spence’s flats, balconies were inadequate for children to play and there were few green spaces. Multiple deprivation became the norm and many high-rise tenements, including the Red Road flats, iconic though they were in many ways, became known for deprivation, crime and suicide. In the years between 1952 and 1964, 382,530 houses were completed in Scotland’s new and old towns. Over a fifth of Scotland’s population moved into new homes, with fixed baths, hot and cold water, and indoor lavatories.57 According to the Parker-Morris Report of 1961, in the UK as a whole, one in every three households had a car and two out of three enjoyed a television. The Cullingworth Report of 1967, however, was damning: despite more than twenty years of government-sponsored home-building, one in three in Scotland still lived in sub-standard housing, unfit for human occupation.58

IV.  Modernisation: new ideals or the demolition ball? Along with new construction work came a desire to sweep away the old and rebuild in a ‘modern’ fashion. In truth, although many slum areas were cleared, there was also wilful destruction of historic properties and areas. This ‘modernisation’ was experienced in many towns. Some splendid buildings, not appreciated by all in authority, were deliberately allowed to deteriorate to the point of essential demolition. One such case was Allanbank House in Dunblane, which met its final demise in the 1960s, having been deliberately left to decay.59 A walk along Dumbarton High Street will find remnants of the medieval town non-existent; some buildings such as the beloved old tavern, the Black Bull, so it is claimed, were deliberately set on fire to benefit from insurance claims. On the north side of the High Street of Linlithgow stood the tall houses used, reputedly, by the French and Spanish ambassadors during the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots. They, and

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Figure 8.7   ‘The Sun’, Golden Cross Café, Linlithgow, destroyed to make way for new flats.

Figure 8.8   ‘The Moon’, Golden Cross Café, Linlithgow, also destroyed.

neighbouring properties, contained many features reminiscent of the nearby palace (see Figs 8.7 and 8.8). These were demolished in order to erect blocks of flats, considered at the time to be worthy of a prestigious Saltire building award but to most current thinking a blot on the historic townscape.60 Their flat roofs began to leak and there was even at one stage a proposal to replace them with pitched roofs in an attempt to blend them more sympathetically into their surroundings (see Fig. 8.9). The building of the St James Centre shopping complex in Edinburgh and the even more brutalist New St Andrew’s House beside it in the mid-1970s had the saving grace of removing an element of slum property but it introduced incongruity on the edge of the New Town. It, in its turn, is to be demolished. Apart from the John Lewis store, the complex is now eerily empty, to be replaced by even more controversial buildings. The proposed new hotel for the site has raised such opposition that some feel its only mitigating factor is that, with the current attitude to the shelf life of a building, it will be demolished within thirty years. Probably of greater sacrilege was the full-scale removal by the University of Edinburgh of the south side of George Square. Built in 1766, it was the first residential square outside the Old Town. It was replaced by necessary, but ugly, library and theatre accommodation and lecture rooms in 1967. The library was another recipient of a building award.61 Much of this could have been achieved with the retention of the façades, a measure not favoured by some, but it might have preserved the ethos of this historic square. Despite its relatively young age, this new library and theatre complex has since required extensive refurbishment.

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Figure 8.9   The Linlithgow flats which replaced the Golden Cross Café and other historic buildings.

Dundee is also a classic case of city improvement that was a tragic disappointment. As early as 1910, an act of architectural vandalism set a trend – the demolition of Dundee’s classic townhouse. The town council argued that the building was unsafe and had the spire removed, asserting that the remaining structure was dangerous. It was further claimed that the demolition would provide work at a time when there was a high level of unemployment in the city. There was much doubt about these claims, concern being shown in many newspapers and even at government level. The council held to the argument that it ‘was of no historical value and of doubtful origin so far as real architecture was concerned’ and demolition went ahead.62 With the benefit of hindsight, it seems that the council’s claims were wholly unfounded and that there were political and financial motives involved. So, by the early 1930s, was destroyed a magnificent building, of a 1732–4 William Adam design which has been described as ‘one of the smartest new civic buildings north of London’.63 This appalling demolition was to make way for a new city square and city chambers – the square so alien to the Scottish townscape that it has been used more than once in films to depict a Soviet parade ground.64 Demolition of the Overgate had probably been mooted during the city improvements of the 1870s, and it came to fruition in the 1960s, so ending a century of the slow removal of old Dundee. A 1952 Development Plan, while

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proposing the removal of the Overgate in favour of a pedestrianised shopping centre, failed to take into account the many medieval and sixteenth- or seventeenth-century structures that would be jettisoned. With the collapse of the jute industry it was hoped to make a fresh start for the city with modern architecture. Preservation was not in vogue. This fresh start was to be embodied in the Angus Hotel and the Overgate shopping centre, built in the 1960s as the first comprehensive town shopping centre of its type in Scotland; one of its main features – and disliked most – were the facings of horizontal concrete panels. Its close proximity to the magnificent St Mary’s Church (see pp. 82–3, 101) was incongruous; and, in the event, with the building of the Wellgate Centre further east, the new Overgate complex was largely abandoned. The hotel and many of the retail units were demolished in the late 1990s, to be replaced with a new Overgate centre, marginally more sympathetic to the historic setting.65 But the old buildings of character have been lost. Edward Heath’s Conservative government made the obtaining of mortgages for house purchase easier from 1967 onwards, so encouraging private ownership. But by the mid-1970s there was a certain volte face. The Labour government, in power from 1974, cut building subsidies, so putting reins on the construction of public and private housing. The Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher, elected in 1979, introduced the right to buy for sitting tenants of three years’ standing in council or SSHA housing. In the next twenty years Scotland moved from having a predominantly public-sector tenant clientele to one of owner-occupiers. Private housing was in greater prominence than it had been since 1925.66 For some, this Thatcher initiative was a boon. An underlying weakness, however, slowly became obvious as successive governments failed to provide social housing to replace those homes which had moved into private possession. The seeds of a major, tragic problem for the twenty-first century – homelessness – had been sown. In spite of this, many towns had expanded by the end of the century. Kirkintilloch, Barrhead and even Haddington, sixty miles away, began to function as overspills for Glasgow, just as Dunfermline, Dalgety Bay, Aberdour and Kinghorn became dormitories for Edinburgh. Maybole and Kilsyth were merely two of the many towns that saw housing developments of varied architectural merit; Musselburgh and others experienced vast housing expansions in the last decades of the century. Too many towns underwent redevelopment that, regrettably, was not always sympathetically treated. Other towns, often at a distance from the Central Belt, felt that their progress was stunted in the post-war years. The car became a symbol of social status as well as a favoured mode of transport. This resulted in still further suburbanisation (see p. 259) but, with growing road traffic, the central authorities failed to formulate an adequate traffic management policy; the main thrust seemed to be to satisfy the needs of road users. This was the age of the motorway. The

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railway system, on the other hand, was failing. Overuse and underinvestment, steam engines having given way to diesel which were often hastily developed and liable to break down, meant that rail transport could not compete with road hauliers. By the early 1960s, the nationalised industry faced an £112 million deficit. The mood of the Conservative government was that trains should run as a profitable business. Ernest Marples, the Minister for Transport, favoured roads and appointed Dr Beeching to assess the viability of rail travel. After only one week’s consultation in April 1961, it was decided that such was the inefficiency of railways that mass closure was justified. Two years later, Beeching’s report, ‘The Reshaping of the Railways’, was made public; the fate of many lines was announced. Throughout Britain, 1,000 stations and 5,000 miles of track were felled by the Beeching axe. Little consideration was given to the impact on the livelihoods of many people and their townships. The smaller towns in the Borders and in the north suffered most, having poorer road systems than the Central Belt. Remote areas of the Highlands found themselves virtually cut off; the railway was their vital link with the rest of Scotland. Time has demonstrated the suffering that came with this amputation. Rethinking in the twenty-first century confirmed the error. In 2008, a small thirteen-mile link between Kincardine, Alloa and Stirling was opened. Annual passenger numbers were predicted to be 155,000. The actual figure turned out to be 416,000. An even greater project was the reopening of the old Waverley Line to the Borders. In September 2015, the thirty-mile line from Edinburgh to Tweedbank in the Borders was opened, serving nine stations en route. This neglected area has a promising future, reopened to tourism and other commercial projects, while smaller settlements have responded to the benefits of the new line: close to Edinburgh is Shawfair. To date, it is the largest urban expansion in Edinburgh and Midlothian, with plans for 4,000 new homes, three new schools and over one million square feet (92,903 square metres) of commercial space.67 Trams and trolleybuses had played a useful role in passenger travel. These, too, gradually disappeared in the name of progress. Many towns later regretted this move. Edinburgh was the prime example. Pressure was put on the City Council and it was eventually decided that certain tram routes should be reinstated. Initially, the intention was to lay lines to connect Leith/Granton and the shore to central Edinburgh and beyond to the airport. Years of delay resulted in 2014 with a tram route of only 8.7 miles, passing from the east of the town to the west and the airport. The initial estimate of cost was £375 million; this rose to £539 million by 2005 and by completion had risen to £776 million, plus more than £200 million in interest to be paid on a thirty-year loan taken out by the Council. The connection with the airport has been greatly welcomed; less so is the chaos that has resulted in central Edinburgh with road traffic subordinated to tramways and a labyrinth of one-way systems not fully comprehended by the public. While escalating costs of construction dogged the Council’s project, of much

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concern has been the distress caused to private businesses, many of them small, lining Leith Walk and nearby. With accessibility reduced or even impossible while works were undertaken to lay tramlines, profits tumbled, for some even to the point of bankruptcy. Staring hardship in the face, owners were then informed that the tramline would be truncated: it would not go down Leith Walk to the shore until further funding materialised. This would not happen: Edinburgh was millions in debt, and by November 2016 the Council faced a further £6.5 million in costs, even before any witnesses were called, in a non-statutory public enquiry to attempt to unravel what went wrong in this expensive debacle. David Mackay, on retiring as chairman of Transport Edinburgh Ltd, called the project ‘hell on wheels’.68 Other modes of transport would impinge on lifestyles. Seaside towns, which had relied on regular visitors and trippers, found themselves losing their old appeal. Cheap flights, longer breaks from work and growing liquidity meant that many families could afford package holidays to seemingly exotic, warm locations. The 1930s tidal pool at Saltcoats, with others such as that at St Andrews, could no longer draw the crowds. The Portobello beaches of today, with their beautiful, regularly cleaned and raked sands, are still playgrounds for local children and dogs accompanied by watchful minders. The fairground piers, the donkeys, the pierrots and even the stunted remnants of outdoor pools are gone, no longer needed. Rothesay, with its Winter Gardens and 1936 competition-winning Pavilion, was a mecca for holiday makers, particularly those from Glasgow who travelled ‘doon the watter’ to the Isle of Bute. Seaside pavilions were popular as the elegant attraction for those who could afford a summer break. The Winter Gardens in Rothesay could house 1,100 but by 1983 it was so unused that the town council intended to demolish it. Public protest and intervention by the Secretary of State saved it, for it to be subsequently converted into a cinema and information centre. A flamboyant example of seaside architecture, with Art Nouveau features, cast-iron lamp standards and handrails, and internal and external promenades, it stands in a deteriorating state, in need of urgent support if it is to survive. The nearby Pavilion, with a rectangular ballroom and auditorium and an elegant dining salon with extensive glazing, also, as in so many seaside resorts, and in spite of its architectural splendour, can no longer attract the holiday makers as it could in its 1930s heyday (see p. 278).69 Where, in the 1970s, two of the most common leisure pursuits were attending football matches and visiting cinemas, pastimes gradually became significantly more home-orientated. This was the result of cheaper television sets and the increasing availability of computers with the multitude of ‘games’ that they have spawned. Football is no longer a participatory sport but, rather, a spectator leisure pursuit, one of the consequences of the increasing disposal of school playing fields, and the decline of the game into a big financial business, with few players representing their locality. In city centres, former bank premises

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and emptying churches gave way to would-be upmarket wine bars and bistros; public houses tend to cling more to the peripheries. The 1990s became the decade of retail therapy and consumerism. Borrowing from financial establishments became easier; credit cards were so readily available that Britain had more in use than anywhere else in Europe. With this came mounting personal debt. What many would consider a loss in the new generation of the 80s and 90s was the loosening of ties within the extended family. The increasing willingness, and necessity, to relocate for new employment, aided by the improving transport system, meant that old family closeness was gradually eroded. Nuclear family life also became to some extent undermined by a startling rise in the levels of divorce. Even as late as the 1930s the family – and even the wider family – had typically been defined by a single residence and location. By the 1960s, different patterns of employment began to break up this single unit and the geographically extended family became a new reality of urban life. In turn, separation of families and lack of homes increasingly became matters for concern. The rise in drug-taking, particularly that of heroin, brought a further destabilising factor to the towns of Scotland from the 1970s onwards. Irvine Welsh’s shocking novel of 1993, Trainspotting, turned into a film three years later, was shot in his native Edinburgh but could equally have been set in any number of urban locations in Scotland. With heroin arrived its henchman – organised crime. Significant for many townspeople was the decline in heavy industry and coal-mining, even with the development of coal-fired power stations, such as Longannet and Cockenzie; they, in their turn, have now disappeared. Docks in Glasgow and Edinburgh, now less productive as centres of shipbuilding and important ports, have been to some extent redeveloped, replaced with luxury flats. High-rise, once considered suitable housing for poorer members of society, have now became desirable upmarket residences for those of comfortable means. In place of traditional industries, there grew a concentration on electronics and the service sectors and, for some eastern towns, oil. Methil in Fife, Nigg in Easter Ross and Arderseir, by Inverness, all benefited from the construction of platforms and associated oil manufacturing. But it was Aberdeen that was to be the real winner, with, at the peak of the oil boom in the 1980s, some 60,000 employed in the oil or oil-related industries. But by the early twenty-first century it was becoming clear that this prosperity was to be short-lived. Foreign investment in electronic businesses was not always beneficial to the Scottish economy, one prime example being the vast factory in Dunfermline proposed by Hyundai, the Korean firm, which, with investment from Scottish Enterprise, was to offer up to 2,000 jobs. Selling out to Motorola in 2000, it was put up for sale within four years.70 Still lying partially empty, it is now becoming a housing estate, adding even more vastly to Dunfermline’s eastern expansion and placing further demands on the sewerage system at St Margaret’s Bay on the

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North Queensferry peninsula. The large Amazon complex now occupies part of the site. The contrast between Glasgow and Edinburgh, the latter with its financial and administrative sectors and consequent relatively high incomes, was marked. It has been calculated that 58 per cent of the poorest postcodes in Scotland were in Glasgow, in contrast to Edinburgh’s 7 per cent and Aberdeen’s none. By 2002, nearly 20 per cent of Glasgow’s population was on sickness benefit.71 Glasgow now shows signs of economic recovery, if not yet matching its 1990 zenith as Capital of Culture when it threw off its persona of a place of post-industrial depression, the home of razor gangs and the city of crime and heroin. As a place that was ‘miles better’, it has now become the city of theatre, art galleries, museums and a Royal Concert Hall, with renewed interest being shown in its traditional shipbuilding skills.72 Dundee has, likewise, seen transformation. The years of indiscriminate destruction of so much of the town’s architectural inheritance, and memory along with it, have now passed. Its future may not lie in its place as the ‘City of Discovery’, so-called after the famous ship Discovery permanently docked in its historic port. Rather, its success lies in the rise of its two universities in close proximity – Abertay and the University of Dundee. The ratio of students to townspeople equals that of Germany’s oldest, and principal, university town  – Heidelberg. Dundee now considers itself a university town.73 Its new growth sector might yet, however, prove to be the production of video games, one of the most recent being Minecraft. This shows signs of becoming a boom industry, and, some predict, might outclass Aberdeen in its oil heyday. One significant factor in the post-war years was the decline in urban demography, particularly after 1971. Aberdeen, Glasgow, Dundee and Paisley all experienced a reduction in population. The one city not to suffer from this effect was Edinburgh, with West Lothian being one of the fastest-growing areas, many of its satellite towns providing affordable homes for commuters to the capital. The decline in population elsewhere was partially offset by immigration from Pakistan and India after partition in 1947. The post-war years also saw a significant increase in the number of Commonwealth citizens coming to the United Kingdom. Immigrants to Scotland had in the past been relatively successfully assimilated into the host community. The exception came after 1999, with the introduction of asylum seekers to Glasgow under a new policy that was an attempt to disperse immigrants from the south of England. The city volunteered to take part in the programme, possibly after its success in the 90s when it housed refugees from Kosovo. Many of the newcomers were housed in the Sighthill area of Springburn in the north of Glasgow, in poor housing conditions and surrounded by extreme deprivation. For some, aggression and racial harassment marred their stay. Others believed that intolerance was whipped up by the manner of political debate on the issue on immigration.74 There is now a ­question mark

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over Scotland’s future after the result of the Brexit vote of 2016. The country’s workforce may well be affected if there are undue clamps placed on the numbers of immigrants permitted to enter, a strange turn of events for a country that had thrived, from the very birth of towns, on the support of foreigners.

V.  Architecture: a mirror of the twentieth century? It has been said that ‘architecture is one of the most certain measures of cultural and social decline’.75 It also reveals the aims and hopes of society. Twentiethcentury buildings reflected both the successes and failures of the times. Rosyth Garden City is a true expression of hope. Adapting the current, some thought fanciful, ideas of the early twentieth century, the town was laid out by A. H. Mottram, offering decent homes to many for the first time in spite of the onset of war (see pp. 248–9). Concurrently, in 1916, the first phase of accommodation for female university students was completed. Suffolk Road Halls of Residence, akin to the Arts and Crafts style and of Craigleith stone, were set around a large lawn on a leafy greenfield site. Women may still not have had the vote but the true status of a very, very tiny elite was gradually becoming acknowledged. The inter-war years would see little spectacular home-building. The Housing and Town Planning Act 1909 had given local authorities power to prepare schemes for new peripheral areas as well as within the core of towns.76 Some towns fared better than others but the general result was low-density estates of grey, cement-rendered council houses. Most were semi-detached or in small blocks of four, divided either vertically or horizontally. With gardens front and back not always well tended, the overall impression was one of depression, which suited the mood of much of these times. Church architecture was more inspired. St Anne’s Roman Catholic Church in Dennistoun, Glasgow, designed by Jack Antonio Coia, set a fine standard. His use of red brick was innovative in 1933, and the interior of oak and smooth plaster gave uninterrupted views of the focal point – the altar – while affording a light and welcoming place to worship. Churches in Maryhill, Greenock and Rutherglen soon developed the Coia themes and influenced much church-­ building throughout the country. Some of the architecture displayed on industrial and public buildings also revealed a more positive attitude. The India Tyre and Rubber Factory at Inchinnan is possibly the most outstanding. Built in 1930, its Art Deco exterior and use of highly coloured glazed tiles still brighten the surroundings and belie the dark mood of the Depression.77 Two buildings that perhaps portray more than others the hopes of the nation as it recovered from the harshness of the previous two decades were designed for quite different purposes. The Rothesay Pavilion on the Isle of Bute, completed in 1938, gave a stylish, welcoming elegance to the holiday resort so favoured by Glaswegians. The dance hall and auditorium offered ready light ­entertainment

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Figure 8.10   The 1930 India Tyre and Rubber Factory, Greenock Road, Inchinnan; the colourful tile-trimmed entrance portal to the building of reinforced concrete finished in dazzling white stucco.

and for those who could afford a little more, the semi-circular buffet was a stylish place to dine (see p. 274). St Andrew’s House in Edinburgh was Scotland’s most important public building. Built prominently atop Calton Hill on the site of the old Calton jail, it is the result of years of wrangling. After pressure for an open competition, Thomas Smith Tait was chosen as architect. His design of the elegant north-facing front elevation with the carving of the royal coat of arms of Scotland has rightly been credited as ‘a celebration of Scots creativity and nationhood’.78 The year of its completion, 1939, would see the onset of World War II. The bleak years that followed brought little novelty in architectural design. With peace came an even greater demand for more homes. One solution was the hastily erected ‘prefabs’ (see Fig. 8.5). Of two types, made of either aluminium or corrugated asbestos, they were to be found all over the country (see pp. 263–4). Of no architectural merit, they at least solved a problem, albeit temporarily.79 Adequate housing remained a problem. Over decades, various solutions were attempted and thwarted. Many disliked the concrete brutalism of the 60s. Buildings of intrinsic architectural merit were, rather, to be found in public and

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Figure 8.11   St Andrew’s House, Regent Road, Edinburgh. This powerful and monumental building, on its prominent site, proclaims its status as the most important public building of the 1930s.

industrial settings. The Wills Tobacco Factory, erected in 1949, is a red-brick quadrangular structure, somewhat reminiscent of 30s design, now converted into open-plan offices; the National Library of Scotland, begun in 1937 to a design of Reginald Fairlie, but halted by war, is a masterpiece of construction, being a steel frame clad in the necessarily fireproof concrete. Completed in 1955, it still offers an invaluable resource to the country. Mortonhall Crematorium is set in a clearing in woodland. Basil Spence, the commissioned architect in 1967, chose flint aggregate masonry blocks to reflect light on the external walls. The two chapels, with their linking entrance and the surrounding woodland, make for a peaceful, contemplative setting. The 1970 BOAC building is a perfect example of modern build in an historic context. On a corner plot on Glasgow’s prestigious shopping area, Buchanan Street, this modern interpretation of nineteenth-century façades fits well in context, avoiding all signs of pastiche. Equally successful, but totally distinct in design and purpose, is Caley House (see Fig. 8.13). Irvine Development Corporation had within its remit housing in the town of Kilwinning. Using the skills of many talented architects, a broad mixture of dwellings to accommodate

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various needs was produced. Designed by Roan Rutherford in 1984, Caley House provides housing and communal facilities for sixty young single people. It, too, respects the vernacular use of materials, design and street pattern, and is one of the too rare examples of a contemporary answer to a pressing need for homes.80 Also well received since 1996 has been the building of Maggie’s Centres. Built in memory of Maggie Jenckz, they are designed to be homes rather than hospitals for the terminally ill and those suffering from cancer. Most patients find the care and intimacy that the homes provide a great support, although there has been criticism of some of the architectural designs, that in Lanarkshire receiving the RIBA Stirling prize, whereas the Centre attached to Ninewells Hospital in Dundee meeting with considerable disapproval. Many felt that the design should offer a welcoming, warm refuge, as at Caley House, rather than an expression of an architect’s eccentric vision. In 1987, a more controversial scheme was completed. This, too, is a modern insertion within an historic setting. Princes Square is a shopping centre set over an empty 1840s cobbled square. With spiral staircases, walkways, a giant metal peacock and internal white pillars, all in an Art Nouveau theme and set beneath

Figure 8.12   The BOAC Building in Buchanan Street, Glasgow, built in 1970, is a fine reinterpretation of the traditional nineteenth-century frontages of its neighbours.

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a vast glass roof, it retains some of the past ambience by the retention of shop frontages. For many, this has proved to be a rewarding shopping and eating experience.81 Outrage arose, however, at the conclusion of the year-long Festival of Architecture in 2016 when it was voted the best building in Scotland. Some argued that ‘Princes Square is not really about architecture but interior design’, others that the choice ‘reflected very badly on the way modern architecture was perceived’ and ‘it is disappointing there is no acknowledgement that architecture is more than a shopping mall’.82 Much preferred by many were two iconic buildings – the National Museum of Scotland and the Scottish Parliament. On a site approved for purchase by the government in 1953 to the west of the Chambers Street Museum, the museum was many years in gestation. In 1985, Lord Bute became the first chairman of the Trustees of the National Museums of Scotland. Meeting opposition from Malcolm Rifkind, the new Secretary of State, who refused to communicate fully with Bute as he felt he could not commit funding to cover the cost of a major new building, an alternative proposal was that private sponsorship should be sought before the government would make any financial commitment. This did

Figure 8.13   Caley House, Howgate, Kilwinning was a much-needed 1984 response to the requirements of housing and communal facilities.

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not please the Trustees; they felt they had not been appointed as fundraisers. By 1987, after an exhibition to raise public awareness and support, curatorial departments were invited to delineate how their displays might be shown in the best light and to select the most important artefacts and icons. No indication was given as to how much space would be allocated. And this factor – lack of space – would dog the project until its conclusion. On 9 March 1987, despite the Trustees’ preference for an architectural competition solely amongst Scottish architects, a decision was taken to hold an international competition. The brief to the competitors was succinct. The museum was to display the many national collections relating to Scotland and was to be enjoyable, understandable and readily accessible for the public. Herein lay another latent problem. The new museum was to be fully integrated with the Royal Museum (Chambers Street Museum), although its structure was to be distinct, with its rounded external features supposedly reflecting old turnpike staircases. On 16 January 1990, Ian Lang, the Minister of State at the Scottish Office, confirmed the government’s plans to provide funding for the structure, but not the fitting out, of a new Museum of Scotland on the Chambers Street site. The interior was striking and, some felt, iconic, but its casting of architectural display at the expense of display of artefacts was a surprise to Trustees and curators alike. Accessibility, up a flight of steps to the Royal Museum entrance, was inadequate and the new entrance to the Museum of Scotland resembled a wind tunnel. This problem was overcome only in 2010 with a redesigned entrance at ground level. A further request appeared in the second-stage brief: Our aim is to ensure that the exhibition relates to the environment outside, both to the immediate environment of Edinburgh, and to Scotland as a whole. We expect there to be many opportunities to do this, literally through windows, visually through photographs and graphics, and metaphorically through context and information.83

The brief also required the design to ‘respect and enhance the strong and distinctive cultural qualities of the capital city of Edinburgh’.84 Whether it achieved this aim or not, it has now become a greater attraction than Edinburgh Castle, as measured in visitor numbers. As the 1980s and 1990s progressed, architecture developed what has been described as ‘a culture of individual competitive display’.85 Spectacle, with the building demanding attention, became for many architects and their clients or patrons the prime motive, with architects and engineers working together to produce individualist and even sensational built displays. Steen Eiler Rasmussen, the author of London: The Unique City, had thrown down the gauntlet as early as 1948 by warning that: ‘The evil comes in when architecture is treated as free art, like music and ballet, with the aim of expressing the special mind of its originator’. It was a warning not always heeded. Even modest buildings and

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Figure 8.14   The New Museum of Scotland, completed in 1998, is prominently built in blonde sandstone, with corner drum reflecting the form of the old Scots turnpike staircase.

­ evelopments can bear witness to a trend for the spectacular and idiosyncratic in d the architecture of Scotland’s towns. Unwise planning decisions within many towns have meant inappropriate expansion, demolition, street signage and lighting. Much of this is the result of a misunderstanding of the past and an attempt to reinvent the urban space. This has been inherited from previous decades. Attempts to redefine the townscape in an ill-judged manner are met throughout the country. One such has been the abortive, and expensive, proposal to revamp George Square in Glasgow. Loved by many for decades, with its statues, relaxing green areas and seating, it offered a relatively quiet calm in the midst of traffic and bustle. The project was axed, with the true reasoning behind the proposal to rip apart this old, iconic square remaining partially obscured. Aberdeen has likewise been saved – from the ‘vision’ of a millionaire philanthropist. Union Terrace Gardens, an even quieter retreat in a hectic city, were to be infilled and raised to street level, affording opportunities for ultra-modern development. The public objected, in particular to the new street level which would destroy old trees and historic gardens. In March 2017, a more modest improvement scheme, costing some £20 million

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rather than £140 million, and retaining the historic valley, was approved by the City Council, with the backing of 94 per cent of those who took part in a public consultation. Historic Scotland (now Historic Environment Scotland) has prevented the demolition of a listed building – Perth City Hall. Perth, while claiming to create a ‘heritage quarter’ – a novel concept – proposed to remove one of its few remaining historic buildings to make way for a civic centre. The vogue to create ‘city squares’ has been a persistent feature of urban planning for at least a century. As has been seen, Dundee demolished its historic core to create a civic square in the 1930s (see p. 271). More recently, this desire may be encountered in many towns. There were proposals on the table that part of the Tower Burn in Dunfermline should be redesigned. The thinking was that the nearby college would be relocated to this central area, which would benefit both town and students. The original purpose of this initiative was to create a city square, something that had never existed in Dunfermline. An understanding of the medieval town, its geography and geology explains why there never was, nor could ever be, an open market area; it was always a linear market town (see p. 24). Edinburgh, too, has entered into negotiations to revamp the capital. Almost indiscriminately, large-scale developments are individually brokered between developers, councillors and planners, with apparently no overall structural plan. To many, these ideas are so out of character in this ancient, beautiful city that the proposed measures might even put Edinburgh’s status as a Unesco-inscribed World Heritage Site at risk.86 That loss would be a tragedy not only for the capital but for the rest of Scotland. Too often, well-meaning but misinformed pressure groups, sometimes backed by blinkered planners, ambitious architects and ruthless developers, fail to understand the intrinsic inheritance of their towns. Edinburgh can, however, boast of a quite splendid building: a prime exemplar of architectural display is the iconic building of the ‘new Scotland’ – the Scottish Parliament complex beside Holyrood Palace. The choice of both site and architect for the new Scottish Parliament building was contentious, although highly supported by the Secretary of State for Scotland and later First Minister, Donald Dewar. Recognition was given to this historic site in an ancient burgh by a lengthy historical and archaeological assessment,87 little of which is reflected in the building. Enric Miralles, a highly esteemed Catalan architect, came to Scotland with distinct ideas of the role of the architect. He believed the prime aim was to set in motion an ideal construct, with no necessity to complete this work in progress (as commented by Mark Wigley, architectural theoretician, Miralles was ‘the gifted architect of the unfinished’),88 and he had firm notions of what he considered a suitable structure. He remembered with affection the upturned boats he came across as a child holidaying on the west coast of Scotland. These he incorporated into his building design, which he felt would also complement the surrounding hills of Holyrood Park. Public opinion varied.

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Some felt a lack of sense of space in the building, and questioned whether it was rather the building and its architect which were demanding attention. Indeed, were architecture and society divorced? Whether the majority of people agreed on the design is now a matter for the past. The interior finishings are irrefutably superb and the essential security measures for those inside and nearby are extremely discreet (although there are belated plans to construct more security measures).The leaking roof and the virtual lack of public transport and resultant inevitable congestion with taxis and tourist buses at the east end of the Royal Mile were initially distinct negatives. But the siting of the parliament building has helped to raise Canongate from a primarily working-class suburb of Edinburgh89 to what many consider a sought-after catchment area.90 A major frustration of this twenty-first-century icon is that many cannot understand the building; it is for them an architectural enigma. Perhaps in thirty or forty years it might be looked upon more fondly, with a greater appreciation of its complexity and intrinsic meaning.

Figure 8.15   The Scottish Parliament, completed in 2004, celebrates the reconvening of the Scots parliament after almost 300 years of absence.

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Figure 8.16   The Pier Arts Centre at Stromness, Orkney, was completed in 2007. The design, by Reiach and Hall Architects, results in a bold, contemporary building that reflects with sensitivity the location and its historic past.

One outstanding piece of architecture deserves to be highlighted and is a fine example of twenty-first-century build. The Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Orkney, reopened in 2007 and houses one of the most important collections of twentieth-century art in the United Kingdom. The original building was an eighteenth-century house fronting onto Stromness High Street, with a ­nineteenth-century storeroom added on the pier behind. To supplement the gallery’s facilities and display area, a ‘shed’ was attached. The result is a striking, modern addition, which blends into the old buildings by day and glows out over the water at night. The heritage of the old stone waterfront of Stromness is enhanced by this modern building that is so much more than a ‘shed’.91 In providing modern facilities in a contemporary and sensitive manner, the footprint of the past has been acknowledged and respected while preserving the present’s best for the future. If architecture is, indeed, a measure of cultural and social decline, Scotland’s towns have displayed not a withering but, rather, a resilience and a reflection of their times, whether good or bad. At worst, it has offered a drabness and depressing uniformity; at best, it is able to give hope for a future which is innovative but respectful of a distinctive Scottish past.

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Notes 11. Reprinted in 1902 as Garden Cities of Tomorrow. 12. H. Meller, Towns, Plans and Society in Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1997), 37–8; T. Hunt, Building Jerusalem: the Rise and Fall of the Victorian City (London, 2004), 318, 320. 13. J. Butt, ‘Working class housing in the Scottish cities, 1900–1950’, in G. Gordon and B. Dicks, Scottish Urban History (Aberdeen, 1983), 240. 14. Meller, Towns, Plans and Society, 39. 15. DNB, Sir Harry Lauder. 16. R. J. Finlay, Modern Scotland, 1914–2000 (London, 2004), 3, 5–7. 17. Ibid., 9. 18. Ibid., 10. 19. E. A. Cameron, Impaled Upon a Thistle: Scotland since 1880 (Edinburgh, 1910), 118–21. 10. Quoted in Butt, ‘Working class housing’, 234. 11. Finlay, Modern Scotland, 46. 12. Butt, ‘Working class housing’, 234–5. 13. Ibid., 237, quoting Glasgow City Archives, C3.3.18, ‘Minutes of Evidence before Glasgow Municipal Commission on the Housing of the Poor, 1903’, 1–2. 14. R. J. Naismith, The Story of Scotland’s Towns (Edinburgh, 1989), 144–5. 15. F. Tindall, Memoirs and Confessions of a County Planning Officer (Ford, 1998), 137. 16. M. Swenarton, Homes Fit for Heroes (London, 1981), passim. 17. Cameron, Impaled, 128–9. 18. A. Midwinter, M. Keating and J. Mitchell, Politics and Public Policy in Scotland (London, 1991), 172. 19. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Coupar Angus: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1997), 32. 20. N. Baxter and F. Sinclair (eds), Scotstyle: 100 Years of Scottish Architecture (1916– 2015) (Edinburgh, 2016), 32–4. 21. Finlay, Modern Scotland, 74–5. 22. Hunt, Building Jerusalem, 339. 23. Finlay, Modern Scotland, 77–8. 24. Butt, ‘Working class housing’, 245. 25. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Dalkeith: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 1998), 41. 26. Tindall, Memoirs, 16. 27. Finlay, Modern Scotland, 117. 28. J. Darragh, ‘The apostolic visitations of 1912 and 1917’, Innes Review, xli (1990), 29–30. 29. Cameron, Impaled, 145.

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30. Finlay, Modern Scotland, 88. The population of Scotland in 1931 was 4,842,554. That of England was approximately 39,000,000, or just over eight times that of Scotland. The exact figure for England is not known as fire destroyed the 1931 census for England and Wales. 31. Hunt, Building Jerusalem, 321. 32. Meller, Towns, Plans and Society, 56–7. 33. Cameron, Impaled, 185. 34. E. P. Dennison, G. DesBrisay and H. L. Diack, ‘Health in the two towns’, in E.  P.  Dennison, D. Ditchburn and M. Lynch (eds), Aberdeen Before 1800: A New History, vol. 1 (East Linton, 2002), 432n. 35. Finlay, Modern Scotland, 178. 36. D. Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945–51 (London, 2008), 121–2, 248–9, 297–8. 37. Ibid., 21. 38. R. Rodger and H. Al-Qaddo, ‘The Scottish Special Housing Association and the implementation of housing policy, 1937–87’, in R. Rodger (ed.), Scottish Housing in the Twentieth Century (Leicester, 1989), 186. 39. F. W. S. Craig (ed.), British General Election Manifestos, 1918–1966 (Chichester, 1970), 97–105, quoted in Meller, Towns, Plans and Society, 69. 40. J. Grindrod, Concretopia: a Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain (Brecon, 2013), 29–30. 41. M. Glendinning, Architecture’s Evil Empire? The Triumph and Tragedy of Global Modernism (London, 2010), 28. 42. Finlay, Modern Scotland, 222. 43. E. P. Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate: a Thousand Years of History (Edinburgh, 2005), 165–6, 171. 44. Meller, Towns, Plans and Society, 76. 45. Kynaston, D., Austerity Britain, 1945–51 (London, 2008), 594–5. 46. Journal of the Town Planning Institute (November–December 1945), 1–5; Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 48. 47. Rodger and Al-Qaddo, ‘Scottish Special Housing Association’, 195. 48. Ibid., 200. 49. Grindrod, Concretopia, 149. 50. M. Horsey, Tenements and Towers: Glasgow Working-Class Housing, 1890–1990 (RCAHMS, 1990), 33–4. 51. Ibid., 296–7. 52. Baxter and Sinclair, Scotstyle, 109. 53. Grindrod, Concretopia, 155. 54. Horsey, Tenements and Towers, 45. 55. Grindrod, Concretopia, 161–2. 56. Horsey, Tenements and Towers, 78. 57. Finlay, Modern Scotland, 238. 58. Rodger and Al-Qaddo, ‘Scottish Special Housing Association’, 252.

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59. Dunblane Cathedral Museum Archives, Box 3, 3/3/vi/i, Notes on Allanbank and Other Properties in Millrow, by courtesy of Gas Board. 60. E. P. Dennison and R. Coleman, Historic Linlithgow: the Archaeological Implications of Development (Scottish Burgh Survey, 2000), 20, 21, 24. 61. J. Gifford, C. McWilliam and D. Walker, The Buildings of Scotland: Edinburgh (London, 1984), 244–5, 251. 62. E. P. Dennison, S. Eydman, A. Lyell, M. Lynch and S. Stronach, Painting the Town: Scottish Urban History in Art (Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2013), 155; The Scotsman, 29, 30, 31 December 1931 and 1 January 1932. 63. C. McKean and P. Whatley, with K. Baxter, Lost Dundee; Dundee’s Lost Architectural Heritage (Edinburgh, 2008), 55. 64. Dennison et al., Painting the Town, 154. 65. McKean and Whatley, Lost Dundee, 209–12. 66. R. Rodger ‘Introduction’, in Rodger, Scottish Housing in the Twentieth Century, 2. 67. The Times, 4 September 2015. 68. BBC Scotland, 30 May 2014, ‘Going off the rails: the Edinburgh trams saga’. 69. Baxter and Sinclair, Scotstyle, 26, 62. 70. Cameron, Impaled, 257–8. 71. G. Bramley, S. Lancaster and D. Gordon, ‘Benefit take-up and the geography of poverty in Scotland’, Regional Studies, 34 (2000), 507–19, quoted in Cameron, Impaled, 244. 72. See Hunt, Building Jerusalem, 347. 73. McKean and Whatley, Lost Dundee, xxvi. 74. Cameron, Impaled, 212. 75. A. Marr, Head of State (London, 2015), 3. 76. F. Tindall, Memoirs and Confessions of a County Planning Officer (Ford, 1998), 137. 77. Baxter and Sinclair, Scotstyle, 45, 40. 78. Ibid., 62–5. 79. B. McEwan, Dunfermline, the Post-War Years (Derby, 2004), 89, 85. 80. Baxter and Sinclair, Scotstyle, 158. 81. Ibid., 80–1, 92–3, 122–3, 130–1, 166–7, 158–9. 82. The Times, 19 November 2016. 83. The New Museum of Scotland, Exhibition Brief, second stage draft, (n.d.), introduction; quoted in C. McKean, The Making of the Museum of Scotland (Edinburgh, 2000), 34. 84. Competition Brief, 1.5. 85. Glendinning, Architecture’s Evil Empire?, 83. 86. The Guardian, 1 November 2015. 87. Holyrood Archaeological Project Team, Scotland’s Parliament Site and the Canongate, passim. 88. Quoted in Glendinning, Architecture’s Evil Empire?, 63.

290   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

89. R. J. Morris, ‘Structure, culture and society in British towns’, in M. Daunton (ed.), CUH, iii, 425–6. 90. E. P. Dennison, ‘Transformation in the Canongate’, in Holyrood Archaeological Project Team, Scotland’s Parliament Site and the Canongate, 289; Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate, 182–6. 91. Baxter and Sinclair, Scotstyle, 210.

Post-script: Footprints to Fragmentation

S

cotland has entered a new millennium. The past one has brought profound changes for the country’s towns. Disease, war, foul weather, neglect, misunderstanding and, at times, greed have all taken their toll. But towns have survived. The seeds of our twenty-first-century towns were first footprints when urban society was created; they can be traced as they germinated and grew, some withering and struggling to survive, others maturing and flourishing. Within these evolving footprints are embedded many constants. The aims and ideals, as far as we can interpret them, of the early townspeople run almost seamlessly, but often in differing guise, throughout the centuries of town life until the present day. What are these constants, and have they flourished or withered? What is being handed on to Scotland’s children and grandchildren – the politicians, architects, planners, teachers, social workers, priests, gardeners and builders – the decision-makers of the future? Memory has always played an important part in town life. Medieval annals may not have reached the ordinary man; they were an important record of the  past for the very few educated and privileged. But gossip around the fireside on a dark night, or at the local inn, kept alive tales from the past. From the seventeenth century there has been a worthy desire amongst local historians to write their ‘town’s history’. By the early nineteenth century, amidst often bewildering change, local histories had become a quest for identity. The search for an understanding of the past is seen to this day in the well-supported local historical societies and heritage trusts. The twenty-first century, amidst another multiple fragmentation of urban life, has seen a vogue of history writing of a fast-disappearing identity: ‘lost’ Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow bestrew publishers’ catalogues.1 Alternatively, albums of old photographs chart the physical disappearance of the built heritage in smaller towns.2 The focus of these works is mostly on the changing townscape, but reactions to them, in the form of blogs or online comments, can put some human flesh on the bones of architectural losses and changes. Blogs have been taken to an institutional level

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by Historic Environment Scotland, backed by Heritage Lottery funding, with Scotland’s Urban Past: your town, your street, your story. The combined weight of heritage publications and projects will prove invaluable to future generations of historians but for the most part they will provide raw data rather than analysis. There is an implicit danger in heritage history. It may carry within it a notion that towns existed in a state of suspended aspic until the townscape was drastically altered or destroyed. What is more likely is that towns were continually subject to demolition, fire, repair, reconstruction or extension into greenfield land. The medieval and early modern town, like the modern city, would have presented a picture of gap sites, rebuild and redevelopment. Typically, for a town to survive it had repeatedly to remake itself. In doing so, it held onto its footprint of governance and planned growth, usually administered in the Dean of Guild Court. Illicit rebuilding or encroachment into the urban space was, or should have been, strictly controlled. In the centuries up to c. 1800, a typical town had a mixed economy because it – and the hinterland which it controlled – had to be largely self-sufficient, whether in terms of food or the other necessities of life. In the nineteenth century, certain burghs underwent a sea-change, becoming virtual one-industry towns. One of the first of these was Paisley, which turned itself into a massive textile manufactory from the 1780s onwards. By the 1880s, Kirkcaldy was a world leader, with six factories manufacturing linoleum; 1890 would see Dundee as ‘Juteopolis’, the major centre of a global industry, eventually with 130 mills employing some 50,000, amounting to over 40 per cent of the workforce.3 The consequences were profound: migrant or immigrant employees, viewed with suspicion by the authorities; a low-wage workforce which had a disproportionate number of women in it; new slums and novel social problems. Yet by the second half of the twentieth century, all of these one-industry towns had failed and reverted to a more standard, mixed economy. The legacy of the social problems which urban industrialisation had inflicted on civic society, however, took longer to heal. Burghs were abolished in Scotland, rightly or wrongly, in 1975. For many people this cavalier step to remove an institution of eight centuries’ standing, rather than drag an apparently moribund system into the twentieth century, was foolhardy. The implications came quickly. Concerns were raised: no burgh meant no burgesses; no burgesses meant no guild members. The gild merchant of many burghs has a long and important history. By the twentieth century this role had changed to one with a solely charitable status, dispensing financial assistance to those in need from the remnants of their ancient coffers. Was all this to be dismissed because of ‘regional reorganisation’? Apparently so. These ancient burghal institutions were removed by those in power, but the ‘powerful’ could not control the mindsets of much of the population. The inevitable result was a withering of institutional memory. Civic amnesia replaced continuity. There was also a host of unintended consequences: reorganisation conflated library and

Post-script: Footprints to Fragmentation    293

archival services, producing a loss of expertise and, in a number of places, an outright loss of historic records in the maelstrom of a chaotic reshuffling of services. Today, one can enter many a town to the welcoming sign of a ‘Royal Burgh’, ‘Historic Burgh’ or even, wishfully, ‘Ancient Capital of Scotland’. Provosts, those once respected urban leaders, no longer exist. There are many erstwhile ‘town halls’ and ‘city chambers’ that still display the full regalia of their abandoned provosts. Some hopeful regions attempt to retain a past that they do not know or understand by retaining the nomenclature of ‘provost’; it is a shallow misinterpretation of something that is now lost. But memory sustains a sentimental wistfulness for a missing fragment of town life. Too often, these sweeping and self-contradictory changes left town dwellers feeling alienated from decision-making. This was a process which had long roots: did the medieval indweller, or even the ordinary burgess, feel that he had any real say in the organisation of his small burgh? The wholesale changes made by government, as has been seen, were implemented in 1975. The sweeping away of town councils and other distinctly locally focused authorities, and the replacing of them with Districts and Regions, brought to an end a system of governance which had centuries of experience. In 1996, all changed again, in a further round of musical chairs imposed by Westminster, when these two new tiers of local government, barely twenty years old, were replaced by a single tier of Unitary Authorities. The final stage in the fragmentation of local accountability came in 2007, when a revised electoral system was introduced, bringing in larger, multi-member wards. The direct link between constituents and councillors, or between a town and its overarching local authority, lay both conflated and dissipated. Throughout these long and confusing sets of reorganisations there was a growing unease about accountability, both of local councils to their electorates and of central government to the chameleon of local governance. There was, as a result, considerable support when the far-reaching McIntosh Report4 of 1999 endorsed the important role of community councils, first established in 1975 as part of its general brief ‘to consider how to build the most effective relations between local government and the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Executive’. For some, community councils have been a success, while others feel that their local community council is wasting its time; that its, and the public’s, views are ignored; and that councillors, as a group, are merely participants in a talking shop. Yet again, there is a fear that decision-making is becoming less democratic, with the real power resting with central government without sufficient reference to the localities, an anxiety sharpened by over eight years of a freeze, dictated by central government, on levels of council tax. There are those who argue that all the talk about greater powers for the Scottish Parliament misses an important issue: devolution is not just for Holyrood but also for the Livingstons, Moffats, Barrheads and Fort Williams of Scotland.

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This feeling of being sidelined, for some, reached a head when an Act was passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2014 stipulating that each child should have a ‘named person’ as their over-reaching carer from birth to the age of eighteen.5 While intended as a commendable safety net for children at risk, particularly in their own homes, this measure was to cover all children and, again, would put extra burdens on local authorities and health boards without providing extra resources. The implementation of this legislation has been temporarily delayed by a legal ruling of the Supreme Court in London, but the issue has polarised wider opinion amongst children’s charities, religious organisations and parental groups. Not only is the town as a unit felt to be fragmented by the loss of its own historic resources; even the smaller historic group – that of the family – is threatened. Others express disquiet over the fragmentation of society by vast suburban expansions. For every half-mile of new build is there not a proportionate loss of a sense of community? In the case of many medium-sized towns, the core that had previously been based on a relatively compact settlement footprint has in recent years slid into a semi-rural suburban sprawl across what was once virgin countryside – virtual new towns but, unlike those of the 1950s, without a dedicated infrastructure. Certainly, new estates form their own new communities, often based around nurseries, schools and libraries. But, with this dissemination, the old sense of togetherness or oneness within the historic town cannot but be weakened. There is quite possibly more loyalty felt for a football club and its colours than for the home town. This is a sad loss; one that ‘communal memory’ tries to overcome. From the time that people started to live together in groups that came to be called, and to function as, ‘towns’, there has been a sense of ‘community’ or togetherness. Although hierarchical until, officially, very recently, urban society has historically tended to function, albeit loosely, in a communal fashion. The town pulled together against outside forces, whether it was an over-intrusive, ambitious neighbour, a marauding enemy or the threat of a rampant disease; it looked after its own in times of dearth and sorrow. Have we lost this today? One telling example is the loss since reorganisation in 1975 of the legacy of the ‘common good’, usually in the form of property or land. Some councils have mislaid or neglected the records of their common good lands; others refuse to acknowledge their existence6 and profit from the sale of common land to private developers. Should we show concern over the many forces that serve, possibly unintentionally, to fragment urban society? Most medium-sized and small towns have lost their own hospitals, medical skills being concentrated in more specialised, but distant, institutions. Greater medical and caring attention may have been achieved in these upgraded facilities but too often this removal has not been reinforced by adequate public transport for patients and visitors. General

Post-script: Footprints to Fragmentation    295

­ ractitioners, along with hospital doctors, are so overworked and hard pressed p that it becomes difficult for a potential patient to be given an appointment. Selfhelp, as in the Middle Ages, is a great resource. Maintaining the peace is an essential constant from the creation of urban life. The local, occasionally much-loved ‘bobby’ has gone. It is the view of government that our communities will be better served by a centralised police authority. Many townspeople do not agree, feeling that the removal of a fully resourced team of peacekeepers from their locality is leading to a less efficient service, with, at times, a dangerously high risk of disaster when police are pulled into a geographic area which is outside their experience. In this issue, as in others, it is damaging when the balance of the needs of a locality and centralised manpower tilts too far in one direction. Care of the less able members of society, whether the sick, the elderly, the poor or the undesirable, has been another constant in our urban history. It was within towns, albeit with a shaky start, that measures were laid down to sustain these groups. Certainly, the treatment of ‘undesirables’ – in the past considered to be the likes of prostitutes, thieves and lepers – could be harsh and lacking in understanding. Politicians would maintain that this is one footprint that has been enhanced beyond recognition. Or, is it possible to argue that there is proportionately as large an underclass today as there was in the sixteenth century when, either side of the Reformation, the poor and disreputable were barred from church services? What of the more general body of the poor? Here, the battle is not yet quite complete. Care of the poor has improved dramatically, particularly since the misery of the nineteenth-century slum days. It seems, however, that we have a distance still to travel. It has been argued that, typically, between 30 and 40 per cent of urban populations in European towns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries should be considered as living below the poverty line.7 Today, the number of children officially recognised as living in poverty remains stubbornly around one in five.8 It is improvement – of a sort. In the space of over four centuries, is progress to be measured as reducing the poor in society from one in three to one in five? Or, might it not be argued that inequality is as manifest as it was at any time between 1000 and 1700? Discrepancies between the rich and the poor are still profound; the result is a manifestly fragmented society. From the outset, our towns were dependent on incomers – ‘foreigners’ – Flemings and Englishmen; later Irish immigrants were a vital workforce in Scotland. In the early twentieth century, Italian families arrived. In more recent years, Pakistani, Indian, Caribbean, African and European immigrants have become a fast-growing part of our urban economy and society. Scotland has, for the most part, thrived on this input but there may be difficult decisions ahead. The potential forthcoming changes to our role within the European Union may challenge the traditional tolerance of incomers – something that is imprinted in Scotland’s history.

296   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

On the face of it, one of the urban success stories must be the modern townscape and the architecture it displays. Old, well-preserved buildings are still admired with affection and many twentieth-century buildings meet the best practice demands of energy efficiency and sustainability. There is now an increasing awareness of the need for considered conservation alongside a recognition of the inevitability of change, a change that has to be managed sympathetically. If this is to continue through this new millennium, people, including politicians, have to be aware of the scales of forces acting on towns. Some of those forces are global – particularly the economic forces. If the national economy weakens, historic towns may be preserved but they will not be properly maintained. If, on the other hand, it strengthens, there may be demands to reconstruct and replace valued buildings. The processes of urban planning are often too fragmented to cope with these pressures. Individual decisions are regularly made without regard to the wider townscape. A series of Scottish towns reinvented themselves in the half-century after c. 1780;9 one notable example was Kilmarnock, which swept away its medieval shambles and narrow wynds and replaced them with distinctive and harmonious new architecture and wide streets.10 And in the decades from the 1830s onwards, a succession of towns, some reluctantly, launched a concerted campaign of civic improvement by adopting the powers of a police burgh. Where, it might be asked, is the same political initiative or civic ambition evident today? The chaotic Edinburgh trams project, still unresolved, reflected an extreme but not untypical example of the flaws of urban planning: a council out of its depth in organising a major infrastructure project and increasingly, and probably unwittingly, out of touch with the feelings and interests of many of its constituents. The pressures of the heritage tourism industry, so important to Scotland, are also global, providing money for enhancement but also sometimes demanding inappropriate levels of access to fragile sites (the little chapel on Lamb Holm is one of the latest to restrict visits because of over-intrusion, theft and vandalism). As early as 1960, architectural commentators were warning of heritage pastiche – a trend which reached its nadir with the building in 1989 of the Scandic Crown Hotel in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, a massive ‘recreation’ of an early modern stone tenement, complete with a baronial-style round tower. Other forces are more local and evidenced in too many towns – inappropriate planning decisions, lack of understanding of an historic town’s past, or pure indifference. Once established and economically viable, the main function of the town was to be a home. This was the very basis, one of the footprints, of the first grouping together of people into a close-knit society that they called their town. Throughout time, the urban dweller has sought to provide as much comfort as possible for the family, its home and its surroundings. Whether it be cobbling to counteract soggy, muddy routeways; combating fire by building in stone rather than wood; placing industrial premises at a distance from residential

Post-script: Footprints to Fragmentation    297

ones; understanding why we should not drink polluted water; coming to terms with new-fangled contraptions like horse-drawn coaches, locomotives, washing machines, televisions, computers and artificial intelligence, the aim has been the same – to achieve for the home and the town pleasant and comfortable environs. It has remained a constant essential component, one of the very raisons d’être of the town. To provide satisfactory homes for all has been an ongoing struggle. It might be reasonably argued that the depths were reached in the industrial slums of the nineteenth century, with overcrowding and homelessness rife. But as recently as the 1950s an appalling percentage of houses were assessed as being unfit for human habitation. Is there room for complacency now? Overcrowding has grown in the last ten years. Serious efforts are being made by a number of bodies to alleviate the desperate crisis of homelessness that we now face. In reality, the lack of affordable housing is shameful. We are not even plastering over the widest crack in our urban societies – the massive fragmentation between those who have a home and those who do not; between those who have and those poorer members of society who do not. Financial support for the less well-off members of society is given at varying levels from central government; this changes according to individual requirements but is often confusing and inexplicable to the recipient. To a certain extent, it seems that central government wishes to leave part of this problem to the communities. Food banks and private support of charities as a means to support the poor and temporarily discomfited, whether or not homeless, is a matter of shame. In the twenty-first century, we are failing. The agenda for an urban historian is double-edged. It should be more than a chronicle of a town’s past but rather less than that of a futurologist, able to point to lessons from previous centuries which should be avoided in the future. Yet detecting the footprints and the discontinuities of past generations can shed light on the successes and failures in the urban experience. As such, at first sight it may seem that our towns have little in common with those of our twelfth- and thirteenth-century forebears. Urban society has expanded tremendously; and new technologies, most particularly those of the twentieth century, have led to a more leisured but hectic pace of life. But many of the original basic principles of viable, supportive communal living – the footprints – still, or should, hold true today. We have achieved a great deal; and we have failed. The last two centuries in particular have brought the greatest fragmentation; industrialisation, transport facilities, expanding new estates and, perhaps most of all, modern technology have made this perhaps inevitable. This last has opened up a world unimaginable to past generations. Our children’s horizons will be wider than ours, as they should be; they may ignore the footprints, the memories, of the past; once lost, they are irrecoverable. The changes over the next millennium will be even greater. Towns will evolve, as they have always done; they will fragment further

298   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

for good and for bad. The lithographer Thomas Sinclair left Scotland in 1833 feeling, it seems, more than a little jaundiced with the state of the country. He expressed his concerns in his cartoons just before his departure (see Figs 6.9, 6.10 and pp. 189–90). It is perhaps salutary to wonder whether he would draw equally derisive images now and, if so, why. Or will Scotland move forward with an awareness of the pitfalls, failings and successes – the footprints and the ­fragmentations – of the past?

Notes   1. Birlinn publishers, based in Edinburgh, has produced ‘lost’ books on East Lothian, Banff and Buchan, Inverness and Perth in addition to the four large cities.   2. Amberley Press, based in Stroud, has published on Dunfermline, East Kilbride, Elgin and Hawick as well as a large number of English towns ‘from old photographs’.   3. J. Tomlinson, Dundee and the Empire: ‘Juteopolis’ 1850–1939 (Edinburgh, 2014), passim.   4. The Commission on Local Government and the Scottish Parliament (1999).   5. The named person scheme was part of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014.   6. A. Wightman and J. Perman, Common Good Land in Scotland: a Review and Critique (Inverness, 2005), passim.   7. P. Clark (ed.), Country Towns in Pre-industrial England (Leicester, 1981), 10, 54–64.   8. Precise figures for the percentage of the poor in Scotland, even in the early modern period, are difficult to find because poor relief was handed out only sparingly. One of the earliest censuses showed that 1,750 out of a population of about 4,500 were in receipt of poor relief in Perth in 1584 but this was during a plague outbreak. In 2014–15, 22.2 per cent of children in Scotland were officially recognised as living in poverty: see Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland.   9. R. J. Naismith, The Story of Scotland’s Towns (Edinburgh, 1989), 91–103. 10. See E. P. Dennison, S. Eydman, A. Lyell, M. Lynch and S. Stronach, Painting the Town: Scottish Urban History in Art (Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2013), 306–9, for David Octavius Hill’s celebration of the new Kilmarnock, rebuilt between 1802 and 1836.

Appendix: Population Statistics – a Select List

T

he population figures for 1801 onwards are based on the ten-yearly series of official census records. The data for 1755 derive from the survey conducted by the Rev. Alexander Webster, published in abbreviated form in J. G. Kyd (ed.), Scottish Population Statistics including Webster’s Analysis of Population 1755 (SHS, 1952). Care has to be taken, however, to distinguish between burgh and parish, which is not always evident in Webster’s returns; where doubt exists or there is an element of implausibility no figure has been listed. Where figures are cited, they are likely to overestimate by some extent the size of the burgh itself. The figures for Glasgow include the Barony parish, together with Govan and Gorbals. The figure for Paisley in 1755 includes only the burgh as the expansion of the town across the river in the Abbey parish came only after c. 1780. The figure for Abbey parish in 1755 was 2,509, giving a combined total of 6,799. That for 1801 includes both the burgh and the Abbey parish. The same criteria about burgh and parish apply in citing the data for 1691, which derive from a mathematical calculation based on hearth tax returns. These are as summarised in I. Whyte, ‘Urbanisation in early modern Scotland: a preliminary analysis’, Scottish Economic and Social History, 9 (1989), 21–37. There are minor, and more correct, variations in a similar exercise based on hearth tax returns: M. Lynch, ‘Urbanisation and urban networks in seventeenth century Scotland: some further thoughts’, Scottish Economic and Social History, 12 (1992), 24–41. The figure for Edinburgh in 1691 is an approximate one, based on the evidence collated in H. M. Dingwall, Late Seventeenth-Century Edinburgh: a Demographic Study (Aldershot, 1994). It and the subsequent figures include Leith and Canongate. These figures may be at variance with some in contemporary reports and estimates or figures used or calculated by modern historians. This highlights the intrinsic problems of devising precise population figures. Population figures before 1691 are notoriously difficult to guess. The ‘long century’ between 1500 and 1650 did see an increase in numbers but, before this time, apart possibly in the case of Edinburgh, people in towns would have numbered only a few hundred (see pp. 15, 32, 44n.106, 52).

300   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Town Glasgow Edinburgh Aberdeen Dundee Paisley Hamilton Dunfermline Kirkcaldy Ayr Perth Inverness Kilmarnock Greenock Stirling Falkirk Dumfries Galashiels Arbroath Elgin Alloa Dumbarton Kirkintilloch Barrhead Linlithgow Forfar Dalkeith Montrose Lanark Peebles Stornoway Cumnock Coupar Angus

1691

1755

1801

1851

1901

1951

2001

18,000 37,000 12,000 8,000 1,700 2,750 1,650

31,700 57,195 15,600 12,400 4,290 3,815 8,552 2,296 2,964 9,000

81,048 82,560 26,992 26,084 31,179 5,911 9,980 3,248 5,492 14,878 8,732 8,079 17,458 5,271 8,838 7,288 844 9,186 4,345 5,214 2,544 1,600 439 2,557 5,165 3,706 7,975 2,260 1,500 760 1,112 2,416

345,148 191,303 71,973 61,449 47,952 9,630 8,577 5,093 9,115 13,721 9,969 19,201 37,436 9,361 8,752 11,107 5,919 8,302 5,383 6,676 4,590 6,342 6,069 4,071 9,311 5,086 14,328 5,304 1,982 2,440 2,759 2,972

775,561 394,898 153,503 182,982 79,363 32,725 25,250 34,079 28,697 35,854 44,313 34,165 68,217 18,403 29,280 15,516 13,615 22,398 8,407 11,555 19,985 10,502 9,855 4,279 11,397 6,797 12,427 5,367 5,266 3,885 5,367 2,704

1,089,767 466,761 182,729 177,340 93,711 40,174 44,719 49,050 42,377 40,487 28,107 42,123 70,190 26,962 37,535 26,222 12,496 19,511 10,624 13,436 23,702 14,826 12,971 3,929 9,981 8,786 10,762 6,209 6,013 4,954 6,705 2,666

599,650 464,990 196,670 147,710 76,220 53,200 50,380 49,460 47,190 47,180 46,870 46,350 43,690 36,440 35,810 33,280 25,547 23,640 22,980 20,390 19,950 19,630 17,620 13,370 13,206 11,566 10,845 8,253 8,065 5,602 3,165 2,190

3,350 3,700 1,800 3,250 3,250 1,300 775 1,326 950

3,200 1,800 3,500 1,650 1,350

4,403 3,800 3,951 3,932 4,500 998 4,517

1,480 987

2,450 3,500 4,150

1,413

Bibliography

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302   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations The letter n following a page number indicates an endnote abbeys Arbroath, 18 Coupar Angus, 87, 88, 99 Dunfermline, 10, 78, 83, 84, 85, 87, 87, 90–1, 91, 100 Inchcolm, 100 Kelso, 64 Kinloss, 18 Lindores, 99–100 Melrose, 55, 84, 85, 89–90, 94: Melrose Abbey Complex (Sorrell), 89 abbots Arbroath, 32 Coupar Angus, 87 Dunfermline, 14, 32 Melrose, 90 see also commendators Aberdeen, 8–9, 115 arcades, 118 archive, early, 1 bailies, 44n107 beggars, 163 bomb attacks, World War II, 261 cathedral, 78 churches, 186: St Maria ad Nives, 78; St Nicholas, 78, 79, 83, 89, 102, 158 Civil War, 139–40, 141, 145 Convention of Royal Burghs, 110–11 crafts, 3

customs revenues, 47 death rate, 258 defences, 140 Description of New and Old Aberdeen, 1661 (Gordon), 139 famine, 163–4 feu-ferme status, 35 fish gutting, 260 gilds, 70n1 health, 62, 160 holy fairs, 141 housing, 29, 33, 266: Aberdeen Association for the Improvement of the Dwellings of the Labouring Classes, 221–2 infirmary, 184 inheritance law, 60 Jacobites, 152 King’s College, 67 law and order, 33 leper house, 62, 63 lighthouse, 100 market cross, 152 May revels, 69, 70 Mechanics’ Institute, 226 Menzies family, 29, 33, 89, 110–11 mint, 53 National Covenant, 139 oil, 274 open spaces, 232 overcrowding, 251

plague, 162 plaiding industry, 116, 140 population, 170, 275 porters, 59, 260 poverty, 210 power, 37 Reformation, 88–9 St Ninian’s Chapel, 100 schools, 161, 227 settlement, early, 16 slum clearance, 222 syphilis, 66 tax assessment, 115 tofts, 24–5 tolbooth, 158 trade, 9, 13, 114 tramway, 194 Union Street, 183 Union Terrace Gardens, 283–4 University, 67, 78, 175 Victoria Lodging House, 221, 222, 223 water supply, 217 Aberdour: overspill, 272 Airdrie church schools, 227 expansion, 200 overcrowding, 251 alcohol, 229, 259 ale houses, 229 bistros, 275 drinking culture, 177, 229, 230, 259 ‘grog shops’, 177

330   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Airdrie (cont.) inns, 172 licensed premises, 189, 229 public houses, 229, 230, 259, 265, 268, 269, 275 taverns, 177 wine bars, 275 aldermen, 32, 34, 77; see also provosts ale, 57, 72n42 consumption, 68–9 houses, 229 price, 50, 51 see also beer Alexander I, King, 9 Alexander II, King, 9, 28 aliens, 170; see also asylum seekers; foreigners; immigrants; migrants Alloa: expansion, 179 Alloway: May revels, 69 almshouses, 67, 147; see also hospitals; maisons dieu aluminium, 278 Alva: expansion, 211 Alyth: market, 15 animals by-products, 49 cruelty to, 189, 230, 259 cock-fighting, 177–8, 230, 259 grazing, 128 health hazards, 160, 171 livestock, 52–3: cattle, 56, 162, 164, 171; goats, 116; pigs, 48, 49, 212, 232; sheep, 56, 162, 164 slaughter, 48–9, 56, 61, 117, 171 see also cattle markets, fleshmarkets; meat markets; slaughterhouses Annan castle, 18 decline, 221 taxation, 115 Anstruther parish, 80 public houses, 230 townscape, 256 Arbroath abbey, 18 coal, 175 harbour, 16

law and order, 32 linen production, 165 stenting, 140 trade, 13 archaeological evidence, 4, 7–8, 8, 9, 10, 24–5: diet, 57; disease, 61–2; ecclesiastical buildings, 92; fastenings, 58, 59; gaming counters, 68; house construction, 27–8; household items, 54, 55, 56, 56; housing conditions, 60–1; medication, 67; medieval money economy, 53; musical instruments, 50; shoes, 58, 58; standing, 123, 125 archery, 68, 69–70, 178; see also wappinschaws architects Abercrombie, Sir Patrick, 265, 266 Adam, William, 130, 183 Baxter, John, 124, 125 Bell, Samuel, 99, 125, 183 Bruce, Robert, 266 Coia, Jack Antonio, 277 Lorimer, Sir Robert, 254 Matthew, Robert, 266 Miralles, Enric, 284 post-World War II, 265 Rasmussen, Steen Eiler, 282 and restoration, 265 RMJM, 266, 268 Rochead, J. T., 234 Spence, Sir Basil, 268, 279 Tait, Thomas Smith, 278 Thomson, Alexander ‘Greek’, 240 architecture Arts and Crafts, 277 and civic improvement, 296 classical, 183, 240 domestic, 223 drawing-board, 183 Festival of Architecture (2016), 281 Free Scots Renaissance, 236 Georgian, 240 Gothic, 191, 236, 240

nineteenth-century, 231–41 RIBA Stirling prize, 280 Scottish Baronial, 236 seaside, 274 twentieth-century, 277–86: brutalism, 278–9; churches, 277; competitiveness, 282–3; housing, 277; World War II effects, 278 twenty-first century, 286 Victorian, 232 see also architecture; buildings archives, 1–4, 293 National Archives of Scotland (now National Records of Scotland (NRS)), 3–4 art galleries, 235, 254, 275 Arts and Crafts movement, 241 arts centres, 286, 286 assembly rooms, 177, 235 asylum seekers, 275 asylums, 62, 184–5, 228 Auchinleck, 10 Ayala, Pedro de, 26 Ayr, 121 archive, 1 citadel, 146, 147 emergency workers, World War II, 261 fair, 65 gilds, 70n1, 73n51 golf course, 259 housing, 28–9, 266 May revels, 70 National Covenant, 139 Prospect of the Town of Air from the East, 1716 (Slezer), 147 settlement, first, 16 St John’s parish church, 147 tolbooth, 177 trade, 15, 53 babies see children backlands, 36, 36, 56, 61, 118 banks banking houses, 237, 240 borrowing, 275 savings banks, 230

Index   331

Barrhead, 209 Burgh Chambers, 236 burghal status, 209 cholera, 214 gas lighting, 220 overcrowding, 251 overspill, 272 sewage, 219 water supply, 219 working conditions, 198–9 Bathgate: trade, 113 bathing resorts, 79, 178 beaches, 21, 22, 23, 79, 143, 193, 274 Gullane, 259 Kirkcaldy, 21, 79, 22, 23, 143 Nairn, 193 North Queensferry, 193–4 Portobello, 194, 274 baxters see trades: bakers Beaton family of Balfour, 114 Beeching, Dr Richard, 191, 273 beer, 57, 69, 72n42 brewing, 57, 59, 195: Abbey Brewery, 201, 202; Blair’s Brewery, 201; Younger’s, 200–1 see also ale; bistros; grog shops; inns; public houses; taverns Begg, the Rev. Dr James, 215–16 beggars, 48, 162, 163, 214; see also vagrants Bell, George: Day and Night in the Wynds of Edinburgh, 212 Bell, Dr Joseph, 214 Berwick, 11 ‘Assise Regis Willelmi’, 3 ceded to England (1296), 11 Court of the Four Burghs, 37 craft fraternities and guilds, 14, 70n1 fire, 25 market, 53 mint, 53 trade, 13, 53 women, 59 billeting of troops, 163 Civil War, 140–1, 142, 144, 147, 149

Jacobite rebellions, 152, 154, 155–6 bishops, 32 Dumbarton, 176 Dunblane, 92 Edinburgh, 172 Glasgow, Archbishop of, 97 Linlithgow, 31 Moray, 9 St Andrews, 14, 38n3, 113 bistros see under alcohol Blackness Civil War, 147, 149 customs office, 113 bleachfields, 181, 195 Borrowstouness (Bo’ness), 112, 113 Bowden: market, 113–14 bread consumption, 56 ovens, 36, 54, 56 price, 50–1, 162 quality control, 35, 50–1 Brechin Civil War, 140 market, 113 Mechanics’ Institute, 226, 227 trade, 14, 15 bridewells, 183–4; see also prisons bridges, 16 Clyde Bridge, 131 Bridge of Dee, 217 Dunblane, 16 Forth Rail Bridge, 193, 261 Galashiels, 198 Glasgow, 17 Inverness, 16, 17 Linlithgow, 124, 142 Musselburgh, 10 Nairn, 115 Paisley, 181 Provan Mill Bridge, 190 Tay Bridge, 191 brothels see prostitution Broughty Ferry: commuting, 193 Bruges: trading links, 82 buildings arcades, 31, 118, 185, 268 cleansing, 252 conservation, 296 construction, 21, 27–9,

157, 158: aluminium, 278; asbestos, 278; brick, 194, 277, 279; cement, 253, 277; corrugated steel, 261 decoration, 237, 278, 295 demolition, 4, 29–30, 31, 94, 126, 128, 129, 131, 147, 149, 173–4, 177, 191, 200, 225, 252, 256, 269–70, 271 ecclesiastical, 18, 21, 29, 103; see also abbeys; cathedrals; chapels; churches; friaries; monasteries; priories façades, 158, 173, 232, 270, 272, 280 forestairs, 29, 172, 221 heritage pastiche, 296 high-rise, 268, 269 historic context, 279–81 industrial, 277, 279; see also factories; mills listed, 284 modernist, 264 multiple occupancy, 232 multi-storey, 25, 232–3 municipal, 235–6, 241 public, 183–5, 235, 277, 278–9 regulations, 156, 181 restoration, 265 roofs: alterations to, 36: flat, 228, 265; glass, 281; pitched, 268; slate, 50, 87, 157, 158; stone, 232, 236; thatched, 157, 158, 197; tiled, 29; timber, 99–100 steel framed, 279 vandalism, 95, 191, 268, 269, 271, 296 see also architecture; houses; housing burgage plots, 25, 32, 36, 41n58, 97; see also tofts burgesses, 7, 9, 14, 15–16, 31, 36 burgess rolls, 3 and church maintenance, 82 communitates villarum, 35, 45n125 and Company of Scotland, 164

332   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

burgesses (cont.) and death, 82 and decision-making process, 293 and entertainment, 69 female, 59–60 and National Covenant, 138–9 obligations, rights and privileges of, 120, 122, 185–6 burgh laws ‘Assise Regis Willelmi’, 3 ‘Constitutiones Regis Willelmi’, 40n32 Improvement Acts, 189 ‘Leges Burgorum’, 1, 37, 40n32, 44nn107, 110, 60 ‘Statuta Gildae’, 1, 3 burghs abolition, 4, 292–3 administration, 60, 292 of barony, 10, 15, 110–15, 117, 120, 122, 123, 133nn2, 3, 134n21, 209 of barony and regality, 113, 123, 126, 133n2, 134n21 boundaries, 35–6 and competition, 115, 117 corporateness, 34–5 councillors, 188, 293 councils, 3, 44n107 definition, 11 early, 11–16 ecclesiastical, 32 economic rights and privileges, 13–16, 113 establishment, 11, 13 feu-ferme status, 35, 45n128 head courts see under courts jurisdictions, 15, 120, 133n2 law and order, 32–4; see also burgh laws layout, 21 legislation, 209 location, 12 new, 110–15, 111, 119–22 officers: aldermen, 32, 34, 77: appreciatores carnium, 35; bailies, 32, 33, 35, 44n107,

70, 102; birlawmen, 34; common clerks, 35; dempsters, 35; ‘gangand assize’, 35; liners, 32, 35–6, 45n131; provosts, 32, 77, 121, 293; sergeands, 32, 35; wine and ale tasters, 35, 51 parliamentary, 209 planning, 35 police, 209, 220, 296 political impact, 13 ports, 27, 172 post-Reformation, 101 and Reformation, 85–6, 87, 88–9, 90, 100, 101, 103 royal, 9, 37, 39n15, 48, 111–12, 114–15, 126, 209: Convention of Royal Burghs, 36, 112, 116, 117, 120–1, 122, 133n3, 138, 142, 164 seals, 34–5 see also tolbooths; townhouses; townscape burials, 61–2, 77, 99, 130; see also graveyards Burntisland, 112 housing estates, 256 famine, 162 parish church, 99 Burrell, John, 131, 180 Cadzow, 18, 128 castle, 42n67 see also Hamilton cafés, 31, 262, 270, 271 Calvinism, 100, 101, 160 Campbell’s Almanac, 196 canals, 192 Forth and Clyde, 141, 192 candles, 54, 156, 220 church, 34, 83 making, 117, 118, 157 Canongate, 10 boundaries, 21 brewing, 200–2; Abbey Brewery, 201, 202 cattle market, 172 children’s home, 226 coach travel, 172 Holyrood, 265: Chronicle of Holyrood, 57; Holyrood Park, 284;

Holyroodhouse, 152, 153, 186, 201, 202 Horse Wynd, 202, 211 immigration, 211 Institution for the Education of Deaf and Dumb Children, 226 and Jacobites, 153 lay-out, 9 Magdalene Asylum, 184–5, 228 Scottish Parliament building, 201, 202, 228, 281, 284–5, 285 slums, 211–12, 265 tolbooth, 158 trade incorporations, 185–6, 187 Cardross: parish church, 94, 95 Carnegie, Andrew, 175; see also Dunfermline Carnegie Trust castles, 29 Annan, 18 Cadzow, 42n67 Dalkeith, 65, 124 Dumbarton, 19, 94 Dunbar, 9 Edinburgh, 152, 153 Gordon, 125 Inveraray, 126 Lews (Stornoway), 127 Nairn, 9, 18 Perth, 18 and settlement, 18 Stirling, 16 Stranraer, 120, 121 see also citadels cathedrals Dunblane, 16, 21–2, 84, 91, 92, 92, 177–8 Old Aberdeen, 78 see also bishops cattle markets, 172 Canongate, 172 Edinburgh, 172 Forfar, 236, 237 see also fleshmarkets; meat markets Cawdor, 115 céli Dé, 113, 134n19 Chadwick, Edwin: Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population, 212

Index   333

Chalmers, Roderick: ‘The Edinburgh Trades’, 185, 186 chapels, 21–2 Aberdeen, 100 Dunbar, 9 Forfar, 99 Gaelic, 189 Garioch, 114 Lamb Holm, 296 Mortonhall Crematorium, 279 Musselburgh: Loreto Chapel, 100 Stranraer, 120 chaplainries, 82, 104n15 charities, 170, 229, 292, 294, 297 Charles I, King, 138, 140, 141 Charles II, King, 142 Charles Edward Stuart, Prince (The Young Pretender), 152, 153, 154, 155 children education, 207n112, 226, 258: pre-Reformation, 80; see also schools employment, 180, 196, 198–9, 207n110, 226–7 evacuation, 261 and families, 199 Friendly Societies and, 226 in high-rise flats, 269 infants, 82, 145 Institution for the Education of Deaf and Dumb Children, 226 mortality, 61–2, 179, 214, 258 orphans, 48, 82, 226 play, 177 poverty, 295, 298n8 protection of, 252, 294 smallpox, 161 toys, 68 tuberculosis, 66–7: spine of a child with healed tuberculosis, 66 weaning, 62, 74n72 World War I, 249 Chronicle of Holyrood (1154), 57 Chronicle of Lanercost (1256), 57

Church chaplainries, 82 Church of Scotland, 188, 227 civilising influence of, 83 and the Disruption (1843), 186, 215 and education, 80 eighteenth-century, 186–7 emotional ties with, 83 Episcopalian, 93, 138, 163, 228 Free Church of Scotland, 215–16, 227 jurisdiction, 33 kirk sessions, 3, 88, 89, 101, 116, 149, 152, 189 Non-conformist, 215, 216 parishes, 78–85 and poverty, 163 Presbyterian, 163, 215 Reformation, 85–103 Reformed, 91, 100 and religious festivals, 103 role, medieval, 82 Roman Catholic, 189 routine, medieval, 77–8 see also Calvinism churches altars, 64, 82–3, 85, 86, 87, 90, 91, 95, 102, 104n15, 107n96 architecture, twentiethcentury, 277 attendance, 101, 163 bells, 78, 82, 83 burials, 77, 130 despoliation of, 86 and education, 227–8 masses, 82 meeting houses, 215 overcrowding in, 102 post-Reformation building of, 99 and poverty, 186–7 ‘privy kirks’, 86 relics, 83, 95, 107n96 St Anne’s RC Church, Dennistoun, 277 saints: cults, 101; relics, 77, 83, 95, 107n96 segregation in, 102 see also cathedrals cinemas, 258, 274 Trainspotting, 275 citadels, 146, 147

cities, 211 City Chambers, 236, 240–1, 271, 293 death rate, 257 deprivation, 210–11, 212, 264, 266 diseases, 213 education, 227–8 environmental damage, 191 housing, 221–5 migrants, 188 overcrowding, 252; see also slums pilgrimages to, 83–4 planning, 241 populations, 171, 179, 211, 265 shopping, 237 suburbs, 193 trams, 194–5 see also Garden Cities civic identity, 4, 101, 183, 185, 291–2 civic improvement, 158, 160, 164–5, 170–8, 181, 183, 209–10, 213–14, 216–17, 219–25, 229, 232, 242, 283–4, 296–7: Improvement Acts, 189 civic society, 188–9, 292 Civil War, 139–52 battles, 141, 142, 144, 145 billeting of troops, 140–1, 142, 144, 147, 149 defences, 149 Engagement, the, 141 mortality, 145 National Covenant, 140 New Model Army, 145 and place names, 141 stenting, 140 Whiggamore Raid, 141 class conflict, 254; see also social unrest cleaners, 48, 61, 160 cleanliness, 54, 56, 61, 158, 160, 171, 178, 209, 215, 216, 218, 221, 253, 274; see also houses: sanitation; hygiene clearances, 122–7, 180 Cullen, 126 Dalkeith, 123–5 Edzell, 126

334   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

clearances (cont.) Fochabers, 125–6 Hamilton, 130–1 Inveraray, 126 Roxburgh, 122–3 Stornoway, 126–7 climate Little Ice Age, 162 and plague, 65 and sea bathing, 193 see also weather clocks, 56, 78, 131, 183 clothes medieval, 56, 57, 58, 59 World War II, 262 Clydebank bomb attack, World War II, 261 house building, 263, 266 overcrowding, 251 coal exports, 112 imports, 175 mining, 53, 111, 112, 199–200, 254, 266, 275 and munitions production, 250 price, 151 purchase of, 49–50 stenting, 156 transport, 192 see also miners coastal towns, 14, 18, 48, 61, 193, 259, 261; see also ports; seaside resorts Coatbridge church schools, 227 death rate, 258 expansion, 200, 211 housing, 266 overcrowding, 251 Police Act (1850), 209 Cockburn, Henry, Lord, 191, 201, 211 commendators Dunfermline, 90, 91 Culross, 93–4 Melrose, 93–4, 97–8 see also abbots communications, 195 blogs, 291–2 improvements to, 171, 177, 232, 248 mail, 171 overland, 48 telephone, 259

see also newspapers; televisions; transport communities community councils, 293 and homelessness, 297 Irish, 231; see also immigrants; migrants Italian, 262; see also immigrants; migrants memory, 294 privacy, 264 sense of community, 4, 78, 84, 265, 294 welfare, 232 see also Garden Cities; suburbs commuting, 192–3, 194 Company of Scotland, 164 concert halls, 177, 276; see also music halls consumerism, 275 cotton manufacture, 180, 181, 196, 199 muslin, 165 councils, 34, 44n107, 216, 241, 293, 294, 296 burgh, 34, 35, 70, 77, 86, 95, 97, 99, 121, 122; see also burgesses City, 273–4, 284 community, 293 privy, 37, 88, 90, 93, 114, 144 town, 3, 45n124, 61, 70, 80, 82, 88–9, 90, 93, 100, 101, 102, 112–13, 117, 129, 131, 143, 147, 149, 153, 154, 155–6, 157–8, 171, 175, 176, 177, 188, 189, 216, 217, 222, 229, 241, 266, 271, 274, 293 Coupar Angus abbey, 87, 88, 99 Cumberland Barracks, 152 fair, 15 horse market, 254 monastery, 87, 99 parish church, 88, 94 population growth, 179 post-Reformation, 99 poverty, 162–3 railway station, 191 settlement, early, 18 trade, 15

water supply, 219: wells, 217 courts, 35 burgh, 32–3, 34, 35, 60, 78, 93, 121, 122: Court of the Four Burghs, 37 Court of Session, 217 ecclesiastical, 33 gild, 1, 160, 190, 241, 292 head, 34–5 magistrates’, 152 Sheriff, 33, 220, 236 Supreme Court, 294 Covenanters, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144 National Covenant, 138–9 Cowdenbeath football club, 231 overcrowding, 251 craft fraternities and guilds, 14, 47, 48, 185 cordiners (shoe makers), 49 and death, 82 fleshers (butchers), 38, 51, 101, 172 fullers, 57, 82, 217 glovers, 95, 96, 116 leather workers, 49 processions, 77 records, 3 and water supply, 213 see also gild merchant; trade incorporations Crail development, 21 housing, 256 plague, 162 Crawford: lead mining, 53 credit cards, 275 Crieff fair, 65 crime, 33, 83, 213, 216, 269, 275, 276 nightwalking, 33 see also law and order; vandalism Cromwell, Oliver, 143, 144, 151 Cromwell, Richard, 151 Culdees see céli Dé Cullen: relocation, 126 Culloden, Battle of, 154, 155 Culross, 112 Bruce, Sir George, 111–12 Civil War, 147 coal-mining, 111–12

Index   335

heritage, 256 Prospect of the House and Town of Culross, 1693 (Slezer), 112 salt-panning and maufacture, 111, 112 trade, 15 cults, 69–70 Cumbernauld, 266 Seafar Development, 267, 267 Cumnock, 10, 16 education, 175 population growth, 179 privileges, 209 water supply, 216 Cupar, 15, 139 curfews, 33–4, 78 currencies coins, 42n67, 66, 126 exchange rate, xvii, 51, 161, 163 foreign, 53 see also silver customs revenues, 14, 20, 35, 47–8, 113 payment, 21, 110, 120, 121–2, 236–7 petty, 15 Dalgety Bay, 272 Dalkeith, 16 animal slaughter, 117 bridges, 124, 125 Civil War, 144–5 clearance, 123–5 High Street, 123, 123, 125, 235 housing, 125, 234–5, 256 Musselburgh Road, 123, 123, 124 North Wynd, 256, 257 open spaces, 232 Palace, 124 Park, 123, 124 plague, 65–6 ‘Plan of Dalkeith, 1770’ (Lesslie), 125 Plan of Dalkeith, 1822 (Wood), 124 population, 179 routeway, 16, 124, 124, 125 St Nicholas parish church, 87–8, 144, 145 textile production, 116 townscape, 123–5

dancing, 70, 177, 277–8 David I, King, 8–9, 11, 13, 14, 38n4, 90, 113 David II, King, 35 death attitudes to, 82 Church’s role, 82 Civil War battles, 141, 144, 145 Friendly Societies, 226 gild members, 48 infants, 62, 214, 258 from leprosy, 64 perinatal, 61–2, 214 from plague, 65 and poverty, 212, 214 from smallpox, 161 statistics, 258 World War I casualties, 250, 251 women and, 60 see also burials; graveyards defences, 25–7 ditches, 9, 26, 27, 140, 146 fences, 27 gates, 27, 45n130 stone, 25, 26, 146 walls, 25–6, 27, 146, 147 see also castles; citadels Defoe, Daniel, 118, 158, 221 democracy, 34, 248, 293 decision-making process, 293 see also councils; electoral system; franchise deprivation, 64, 140, 144, 161, 210, 212, 247, 250, 251, 269, 275; see also poverty diet, 56–7, 161, 214, 215; see also food Dingwall ‘kirseth’, 31 tolbooth, 158 diseases AIDS, 258 asbestosis, 264 cholera, 212, 213, 214, 220 dysentery, 164 influenza, 164 leprosy, 62–7 measles, 164 pneumonia, 164 and poverty, 158–9 smallpox, 161, 171, 179

syphilis, 66 tuberculosis (TB), 66–7, 251–2, 258: spine of a child with healed tuberculosis, 66 typhus, 160, 164, 213 venereal disease, 66, 185 see also plague divorce, 275 docks, 236, 248, 252, 261, 275 dormitory towns, 234–5, 272 Dornoch, 26 Douglas family, 94 dovecots, 56–7 drainage, 174–5, 212, 213, 214, 217, 219, 220 drink production, 118; see also ale; beer drug-taking, 274 Dublin, 32 trade, 53 Dumbarton arcades, 118 brewing, 200 Broad Meadows, 18–20, 175 castle, 19, 94 churches, 94 customs revenues, 47 football, 231 glassworks, 200, 201 hygiene, 171 immigrants, 31 industrialisation, 200 Levenford House, 234, 234 Levenford House Lodge, 234 library, 176 May revels, 70 modernisation, 269 National Covenant, 139 plague, 160 schools, 160–1, 175–6 shipbuilding, 48 shipyards, 201 topographical position, 13, 18–19, 20 Town of Dumbarton, 1818 (Clark), 201 water supply, 219 Dumfries, 16 arcades, 118 famine, 162 housing estates, 256

336   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Dumfries (cont.) May Games, 69 trade, 53 Dunbar, 9, 39n15 assembly room, 177 castle, 9 church, 9 Civil War, 143–4 ‘Cotton Manufactory’, 226 defences, 26 fair, 65 fire precautions, 158 fleshmarket, 171 gas lighting, 221 harbour, 79, 151 Improvement Acts, 189 Lauderdale House, 183 parish church, 78, 79 Plan of Dunbar, 1830 (Wood), 98 ‘Railway Baskets’, 192 Reformation, 97 regulations, town, 1 schools, 175, 175–6 slaughterhouses, 171 trade, 9–10 Dunblane Allanbank House, 269 bishop’s palace, 92 bridge, 16 cathedral, 16, 84, 91, 92, 92, 177–8 cock-fighting, 177–8 Dunblane on a Rainy Day (Lockhart), 21, 24 fairs, 52–3, 116 ford, 92 High Street, 21, 22 houses, medieval, 29 Leighton Library, 176 literacy, 176 markets, 53, 116 market cross, 91–2 modernisation, 269 Prospect of the Town of Dunblane (Slezer), 92 settlement, early, 21 Dundee, 10, 165 ale houses, 229 almshouse, 147 bread, 50 burgesses, 36 building improvements, 158 chaplainry, 104n15 churches: St Andrew’s,

183; St Mary’s, 78, 79, 82–3, 85–6; South Church, 101 civic square, 284 Civil War, 145, 146–51 coal, 49–50, 175 Corpus Christi procession, 77 crafts, 3 customs revenues, 47 death rate, 258 evacuation of children, World War II, 261 fortifications, 27, 146 Greyfriars friary, 85, 99–100 housing, post-World War I, 254 jute manufacture, 200, 250, 260, 292 literacy, 80 Maggie’s Centre, 280 meat market, 51 Mechanics’ Institute, 226 modernisation, 271–2 ‘Narrows’, The, 172 overcrowding, 102, 251 plague, 162 poverty, 210 Prospect of the Town of Dundee from the East, 1693 (Slezer), 146 railway, 191 Reformation, 85–6 schools, 147, 160–1 Scrymgeour family, 83 Seagate, 172 settlement, 19, 21 Spalding family, 82, 83 stenting, 140 tofts, 25 tolbooth, 99–100, 147 townhouse, 183 trade, 13, 14–15 Trades Hall, 183 Universities, 276 urbanisation, 170 video games industry, 275 water supply, 213 wells, 16 Wishart Arch, 172 Dunfermline, 11 abbey, 10, 78, 83, 84, 85, 87, 87, 90–1, 91, 100 ale, 51 arcades, 118

bleachfields, 195 Burgh Court, 78 Carnegie Trust, 242, 247 church, 8 City Chambers, 236 civic square, proposed, 284 coal mining, 53: colliers, 118 communitates villarum, 35, 45n125 dormitory town, 272 electronics industry, 274 famine, 162 fires, 157 football, 231 gas lighting, 220 Gild Court Book, 1, 2, 46n140, 69, 80–1, 81 gilds, 70n1: gild merchant, 68–9 government, medieval, 37 industrialisation, 195 law and order, 32 layout of town, 16, 284 linen manufacture, 195 literacy, 80–2 market place, 24 May revels, 70 mill lade, 85 parish, 79 plague, 162 planning, 242 Prospect of the Town and Abbey of Dunfermline (Slezer), 91 Reformation, 90, 95, 97 Registrum de Dunfermelyn, 10, 14 Sanctuary House, 159 sanitation, 218–19 schools, 157, 175, 226–7 tofts, 25 tolbooth, 157 trade, 14, 48 treaty with Philip IV of France (1296), 35 viaduct, 242 water supply, 83, 217–18 West Port, 172, 173 dungheaps, 29, 176, 213, 219 Dunning, fair, 65 Dysart, petty customs, 15 East Kilbride cotton industry, 196

Index   337

New Town, 266, 267 photographs, 298n2 economy and conservation, 296 early modern, 113, 116–17, 140, 151, 161, 164–5, 170, 180–1 medieval, 14, 47–8, 53, 84 mixed, 292 one-industry, 79, 180, 260, 292 post-Union, 164–5 post-World War I, 254 Edinburgh, 11, 18, 21 animal slaughter, 117 anti-Italian expression, World War II, 262 arcades, 118 archives: National Archives of Scotland (now National Records of Scotland (NRS), 3–4 bailies, 44n107 billeting of troops, 153 bomb attacks, World War II, 261 Botanical Gardens, 177; see also Physic Garden breweries, 200 Canongate see separate entry Castle, 152, 153 cattle market, 172 churches: communion, 103; St Giles, 102; St Nicholas, 141; ‘privy kirks’, 86 classical architecture, 183, 240 cleanliness, 159–60 coach travel, 172 commuting, 193 courts: Court of the Four Burghs, 37; gild court, 1 crafts, 3 customs revenues, 47 death rate, 258 defences, 25 development, twenty-firstcentury, 284 diseases: bronchitis, 264; cholera, 212; see also plague docks, 275 drainage, 175 Enlightenment, the, 175

evacuation of children, World War II, 261 export trade, 47–8 financial/administrative sectors, 275 fish trade, 117 food riots, 164 gilds, 73n51, 185 Heart of Midlothian football club, 231 housing, 212, 221, 223–4, 229, 266: Colonies, 224; Co-operative Dwellings, 222–4, 224; construction, 29, 263; rehousing, 256 Improvement Scheme (1867), 225: legislation, 225 infirmary, 153, 228 Jacobites, 152–3 Lawnmarket, 153 leper house, 62 libraries: National Library of Scotland, 279 licensed premises, 229 market cross, 194 May revels, 69, 70 ‘Meadows, The’, 174–5 mint, 53 modernisation, 270 Montrose’s execution, 142 museums: National Museum of Scotland, 281–2, 283 National Covenant, 139 New Town, 183 open spaces, 232 overcrowding, 251 Physic Garden, 177, 191; see also Botanic Gardens plague, 116, 162 population, 211, 275 poverty, 210, 212 Princes Street, 239: Princes Street Gardens, 175, 191; Princes Street with the Commencement of the Building of the Royal Institution, 1825 (Nasmyth), 239 railways, 175, 191: Waverley Station, 191 Reformation, 87, 101

religious artefacts, 95, 97 retail houses, 237, 239 Royal College of Physicians, 177 Royal Mile, 172 St Andrew’s House, 278, 279 St Giles’ Day riot (1558), 86 Scandic Crown Hotel, 296 schools, 80, 227: School of St Luke, 185 Scottish National War Memorial, 254 Scottish Parliament, 281, 284–5, 285, 293 slums and clearances, 225, 265 smallpox, 161 social reform, 216 social segregation, 212 Surgeons’ Hall, 177 taxation, 188 tofts, 25 tolbooth, 100, 187 trade, 13 trams, 194, 273, 296 Trinity Church, 191 University, 149, 175, 194 urbanisation, 170 weaving, 116–17 education children, 226: dame schools, 160–1; girls, 160–1; workers, 207n112 Church and, 80 legislation, 228, 230, 258, 263 moral, 226 nurseries, 268, 294 secondary, 258 workers, 180 see also Mechanics’ Institutes; schools; universities Edward I, King of England, 35 Edzell clearance, 126 planned burgh, 119–20 Pourtraicte of ye new citie of Edzel, 4 Septb, 1592 (Lindsay), 119

338   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

electoral system, 263, 293; see also democracy; franchise Elgin arcades, 118 Civil War, 141 defences, 27 gilds, 70n1 Greyfriars church, 93 National Covenant, 139 open spaces, 232 photographs, 298n2 tax assessment, 115 View of Elgin (Pont), 28, 93 emergency services, 261; see also fires emigration, 255, 256; see also migration employment children, 196, 198–9, 207n110 domestic, 212 families, 274 seasonal, 252 World War I, 250, 251 World War II, 260 see also workforce engineering, 211, 250, 254 Enlightenment, 175, 185 environment built, 252; see also architecture; townscape and disorder, 215 Historic Environment Scotland (HES) (formerly Historic Scotland and The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland), 4, 284, 291–2 ‘Honourable the Society of Improvers’, 174–5 planned, 264; see also planning trees, 253 estates, 117, 120, 126, 127, 131 housing, 212, 256, 266, 268, 269, 275, 277, 294, 297 monastic, 53, 87

factories, 118, 156, 195 carpet, 250 Factory Commission, 198 and heritage, 257: India Tyre and Rubber Factory, Inchinnan, 277, 278; Templeton’s, Glasgow Green, 240, 240; Wills Tobacco Factory, Glasgow, 279 power-loom, 196 and railways, 192 stocking, 181 working conditions, 198–9 see also foundries; mills fairs, 134n21 Ayr, 65 Bowden, 113 Coupar Angus, 15 Crieff, 65 Dunbar, 65 Dunblane, 52–3, 71n16, 116 Dunning, 65 Forfar, 51–2 Foulis, 65 Haddington, 65 holy, 141 Kennoway (Fife), 114 Leslie, 65 Linlithgow, 149 Mauchline, 141 Melrose, 52, 71n16 Nairn, 115 new burghs, 110, 115 non-burghal, 113–14 plague legislation, 65 St Andrews, 65 Falkirk industrialisation, 195 population, 180 famines, 57, 64, 126, 161–5 ferries, 128, 131, 193 fires, 25, 54, 156–8 buckets, 157, 158 coal, 154 engines, 157, 158, 220 firemen, 261 machines, 157 and modernisation, 269 fish herring, 151, 179, 192, 252 shellfish, 57 trade, 53, 117 fishwives, 177, 178

fleshmarkets Dunfermline, 171 Musselburgh, 171 see also meat markets; slaughterhouses flooding, 18–19, 20, 175 Fochabers: relocation, 125–6 food, 54–7 Bovril, 215 bread, 50–1, 56, 162 cereals, 56: wheat, 50, 51, 56 dairy products, 57: butter, 178, 254 fish, 57 food banks, 297 hygiene, 178 markets, 49 oatcakes, 56, 162 preservation of, 54, 56 price control, 50, 163 production, 118 rationing, 254, 262 riots, 164 shortages, 254 storage, 61 swans, 57 vegetables, 57: beans, 164; peas, 164 see also cafés; diet; famines; harvests; icecream parlours; meat fords Dunblane, 92 Glasgow, 16, 17 Fordun, John of: Chronica Gentis Scotorum, 8 foreigners, 9, 14, 25–6, 51, 53, 83, 117, 277, 295; see also asylum seekers; immigrants; refugees Forfar, 10 Civil War, 140–1 fair, 51–2 fire, 25, 158 fuel, 175 Jacobites, 152 leisure, 177 linen production, 165 Loch, 175 markets, 14: cattle market, 236, 237 Mechanics’ Institute, 175 open spaces, 232 parish church, 78, 99 population growth, 179

Index   339

Sheriff Court House, 236 stenting, 140 Town and County Hall, 235–6, 236 water supply, 219 Forres, 114–15 National Covenant, 139 Fort George, 152, 156 Fort William, 156 foundries, 200; see also iron; steel fountains, 235 franchise, 189, 258, 277; see also electoral system friaries, 21–2, 24, 29, 67, 80 Dundee, 85 Inverkeithing, 93 Perth, 86 post-Reformation, 101 Reformation, 93 Friendly Societies, 226 Froissart, Jean, 13, 28, 43n92 fuel gas, 209 oil, 274 peat, 29, 54, 156, 157, 175 see also coal funerals, 82, 122 Fyvie, 15 Galashiels, 196–8, 197 bridge, 198 Dam, 197 Lucy Sanderson Home, 248 mills, 195, 197 World War I, 250 gambling, 68, 178, 231, 259 Garden Cities, 242, 247–8, 260 gardening, 177, 230 gardens, 230, 253, 262, 277 public, 283; see also parks gas lighting, 174, 185, 209, 220–1, 262, 283 Geddes, Patrick, 242, 247 gild merchant, 14 charitable status, 292 church support, 82, 90, 95 feast, 69 market control, 47–53 processions, 77 Robin Hood rituals, 70 townscape control, 117–19

see also craft fraternities and guilds girls see under children Glasgow, 21 arcades, 118 architecture, 240 asylum seekers, 275 BOAC building, 279, 280 bomb attacks, World War II, 261 bridge, 17 building improvements, 158 burgh court, 33 Candleriggs, 156 Capital of Culture (1990), 275 church schools, 227 City Chambers, 241 cleanliness, 160, 252 closes, 210 cock-fighting, 230 commuting, 193 Corporation, 224 cotton factories, 199 death rate, 258 deprivation, 275 disease, 213 docks, 275 education, 258 fires, 156–7 ford, 16, 17 George Square, 283 glassworks, 200 Gorbals, 242n2, 266, 268 house construction, medieval, 29 housing, 224, 229, 253–4: high-rise flats, 269; overspill, 269, 272; rehousing, 256, 265; tenements, 232 immigrants, 275 industrialisation, 195 law and order, 32 leper house, 62 lodging houses, 224 lunatic asylum, 184 National Covenant, 139 open spaces, 232 overcrowding, 251, 265–6 population, 170, 181, 211, 242n2, 266, 275 poverty, 162, 210, 275 Princes Square shopping centre, 280–1

protection of religious books and records, 97 public houses, 229, 265, 268 railways, 191 Royal Exchange, 254 Royal Infirmary, 213 St Anne’s RC Church, 277 settlement, early, 16, 18 shipbuilding, 275 smallpox, 161 social segregation, 212 strike (1915), 250–1 suburbs, 183 sugar refining, 118 Templeton’s Factory, Glasgow, 240, 240 tramways, 194 underground railway, 262 University, 175 View of (Pont), 17 water supply, 57, 217 Wills Tobacco Factory, 279 World War II, 261, 262 Glasgow Past and Present, 212 glassworks, 118, 200 Glenrothes New Town, 266 Goatmilk (Gatmilk), shire of, 14 Gordon, James, of Rothiemay, 29, 114 Description of New and Old Aberdeen, 1661 (Gordon), 24, 63, 139 plan of Edinburgh, 172 Govan population, 170, 242n2 rents, 250 grain, 56 harvests, 162, 164 imports, 161 stockpiling, 140 trade, 113, 164–5 graveyards, 99, 171; see also burials Great Depression, 255 Greenock anti-Italian feeling, World War II, 262 bomb attacks, World War II, 261 churches, 277

340   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Greenock (cont.) Custom House, 236: The Custom House, Greenock, 1820 (Salmon), 238 glassworks, 200 housing, 266, 255 lodging houses, 225 Mechanics’ Institute, 226 overcrowding, 251, 255 population, 180–1, 236 temperance movement, 226 guilds see craft fraternities and guilds Gullane: resort, 259 Haddington customs revenues, 47 dame school, 160–1 fair, 65 market place, 25 May revels, 69, 70 overspill, 272 parish, 79 Hamilton churches, 129–31, 130 common greens, 128–9 development, 130–1 ferry, 128, 131 fires, 157–8 flooding, 18 football, 231 Hietoun: slow disappearance, 128–33 house of the secretary to Duchess Anne, 233 ‘Map of Hamilton, 1781’ (Barns), 132 museum, 233, 233 Nethertoun (Cadzow), 18, 42n67, 128, 131 overcrowding, 251 Palace, 128–9, 131, 132, 180 parish, 79 Plan of the Town of Hamilton, 1819 (Wood), 132 population, 179–80 school, 129, 129 settlement, early, 16, 128 tolbooth, 128, 131, 132 valuation roll, 129 Hamilton family, 31, 53, 56, 181

Anne, Duchess of Hamilton, 128–30 Hanoverian regime, 152, 153 harbours, 16, 111, 126, 164, 179; see also ports harvests, 161 failures, 57, 140, 162, 163, 164; see also climate Hawick cock-fighting, 230 photographs, 298n2 textile production, 250 health, 60–7 children, 61–2 dental problems, 67 factories, 199 first-aiders, 261 labour force, 210 malnutrition, 164 Medical Officers of Health, 225 medication, 67 National Health Service, 263 pregnancy, 163, 185 Public Health Act (1875), 225, 242 seaside resorts, 194 and social reform, 216 women, 62 see also diseases; hygiene; welfare state Helensburgh: growth, 193 Henry VIII, King of England, 94 heritage destruction, 242 ‘heritage quarters’, 284 history writing, 291–2 industrial, 257 and modern architecture, 286 publications, 292, 298nn1, 2 trusts, 291 see also architecture Hill, David Octavius, 298n10 View near Provan Mill Bridge Looking West, 1831, 190 Hillington: house-building, 263 hinterlands, 14, 15, 53, 56, 80, 110–18, 119, 164, 172, 183, 292

homelessness, 254, 261, 272, 297; see also vagrants horses, 52, 53, 194 markets, 254 racing, 177, 178, 259 transport, 191, 259 see also stables horticulture, 177; see also gardening hospitals, 149, 185, 294–5 almshouses, 67 infirmaries, 153, 184, 213, 228 leper houses, 62, 62–4, 63 lunatic asylums, 184 Magdalene, 184–5, 228 maisons dieu, 67 medieval, 67 see also Maggie’s Centres hostels, 263 hotels, 213, 270, 272, 296 houses building, 263 chimneys, 157–8 council, 277 eighteenth-century, 183 fire risk, 156 ‘Homes for Heroes’, 252, 253 improvements, 158, 225 interwar, 259–60 lavatories, 264, 266, 269; see also water closets legislation, 263 market repletion, 173 medieval: building materials, 28–31; chimneys, 54; cleanliness, 60–1; clearance, 125; construction, 27–30; cooking, 54; fires, 54; floors, 61; food preservation, 54; furniture, 54, 56; ovens, 36; sanitation, 61, 61, 62; thatched, 28, 29, 158; towers, 126; wooden, 84 naming and numbering, 209 ownership, twentiethcentury, 259, 272 post-World War II, 195 prefabs, 263–4, 264 preservation, 256

Index   341

privacy, 235 roofs see under buildings sanitation, 218–19, 265; see also drainage; hygiene semi-detached, 252, 259–60, 277 stone, 156, 157 terraced, 252, 277 villas, 233 water closets, 211, 213, 221, 229, 251 water supply, 217 windows, 233 wooden, 156 housing affordable, 297 apartments, 265 associations: Scottish Special Housing Association (SSHA), 252, 263, 266 bungalows, 260 Colonies, 224, 224 council, 253–4, 265–7, 272 Cullingworth Report (1967), 269 estates, 212, 256, 266, 268, 269, 275, 277, 294, 297 feuing system, 232–3, 253 flats, 233, 266, 268, 269, 270, 274 high-rise, 274 legislation, 222, 224–5, 252 low-rise, 268 middle class, 233–5 overcrowding, 101–2, 211, 222, 237, 251–2, 255, 297; see also slums overspill, 269, 272 post-World War II, 266–72 prefabs, 278 public, 253, 254 rates, 233 rents, 221, 222, 250–1 reports, 253, 269 right-to-buy, 272 roofs see under buildings Scandinavian influence, 268 schemes, 265

Scottish National Housing Company, 252 social see housing: council temporary, 263 tenements, 196, 200, 223, 232, 235, 251–3, 269 two-storeyed, 253 Victorian era, 210–14, 221–5, 228 and wealth, 217, 232, 234–5, 252 workers’, 190, 221–2, 241–2, 253, 255, 265: Aberdeen Association for the Improvement of the Dwellings of the Labouring Classes, 221–2; Committee on the Provision of Dwellings for the Working Classes 253 World War I, 250 see also Garden Cities; houses; suburbs Howard, Ebenezer, 241–2, 248, 253 To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, 247 hygiene, 60–1, 159, 160, 209–10, 252 aquamaniles, 56, 60 see also cleanliness ice-cream parlours, 258, 262 illegitimacy, 60 immigrants/immigration, 31, 161, 211, 275–7 African, 295 Caribbean, 295 English, 31, 295 European, 31, 295 Irish, 170, 189 Indian, 295 Italian, 262 Pakistani, 295 see also migrants Inchinnan: India Tyre and Rubber Factory, 277, 278 industrial relations, 254 ‘combinations’, 59, 199 strikes, 199, 250; General Strike (1926), 254 see also trade unions

industrialisation, 170, 181–3, 195–202 espionage, 196 and fragmentation, 297 patents, 196 and specialisation, 200–1 industries carpets, 250 decline, 274 electronics, 274 fishing, 47, 254 Garden Cities, 248 jute, 200, 250, 260, 292 linoleum, 292 mining, 179, 254: coal, 47, 53, 111, 112, 199–200, 266, 275; lead, 53, 111, 112; silver, 53 munitions, 249–50 nationalisation, 262, 263 oil, 274 plaiding, 116, 140 salt, 53, 56, 112, 256 steel, 250, 254 stockings, 163, 180, 181 sugar refining, 118 see also linen; cotton manufacture indwellers, 32, 122, 293 inns see under alcohol Inveraray: clearance, 126 Inverbervie: water supply, 217 Inveresk, 7, 10, 144 Inverkeithing, 112 Civil War, 145 Greyfriars hospitium, 93 harbour, 16 trade, 13, 15 wells, 217 Inverlochy: citadel, 146 Invernairn, 9; see also Nairn Inverness, 11 bridge, 16, 17 citadel, 146 Civil War, 141 Culloden House, 155 flood defences, 175 housing estates, 256 Jacobites, 152, 155 ‘Leges Burgorum’, 44n110 liberties, 44n110 May revels, 69 National Covenant, 139 religious artefacts, 95 tax assessment, 115

342   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Inverness (cont.) trade, 117 View of (Pont), 17 Ireland food from, 162 migrants from, 138, 162, 170, 187, 189, 211, 212, 213, 237, 295 militia from, 140–1, 142 see also Ulster iron, 192, 195, 200, 217, 254; see also foundries Irvine gilds, 70n1 National Covenant, 139 New Town, 267 trade, 15, 53 Jacobite rebellions, 152, 155 James IV, King, 52, 66, 78, 83 James V, King, 65–6 James VI, King, 120 James VIII, King (The Old Pretender), 152 Johnstone: cotton industry, 196 jurisdictions bailies, 32 burghs, 15, 120, 133n2: burgh courts, 33 Church, 33 criminal, 33 Guild Courts, 190 towns trade, 15, 120 see also courts Kelso abbey, 64 famine, 162 market, 113 market place, 218 monastery, 64 water supply, 217 Kenneth MacAlpin, King, 9 Kennoway: market, 114 Kettins, 15 Killearn: church elections, 73n62 Kilmarnock civic identity, 183, 296 death rate, 258 football, 231 housing, 266 industrialisation, 195

Mechanics’ Institute, 226 overcrowding, 251 population, 181 rebuilding, 298n10 Kilrennie: taxation, 115 Kilsyth battle, 141 cholera, 214 Civil War, 140–1 gas lighting, 221 housing development, 272 overcrowding, 251 parish church, 78–9 water supply, 216 Kilwinning: Caley House, 279–80, 281 Kinghorn dormitory town, 272 parish, 15 textile industry, 195 Kinloss, 18 Kintore, 15 Kirk see Church of Scotland Kirkcaldy banking houses, 237, 238 beach, 21, 22, 23, 79 dame school, 160–1 harbour, 164 High Street, 238 housing, 266 jute manufacture, 200 Kirkcaldy from the North, 1838 (Anon.), 143 market place, 24 Plan of (Wood), 22 Raith Rovers football club, 231 St Bryce’s Church, 78, 79 settlement, early, 21 shipbuilding, 48 trade, 14, 142–3 Kirkcudbright: trade, 18, 53 Kirkintilloch, 16 alcohol restriction, 259 gas lighting, 220 overspill, 272 parish church, 79 routeway, 16 water supply, 218 Kirkwall: house-building, 263 Kirriemuir, 15 Knox, John (Protestant reformer), 86, 103

labour force see workforce Labour Party, 248, 250, 251, 259, 263 Lanark archive, 1 Court of the Four Burghs, 36 customs revenues, 47 liners, 45n131 open spaces, 232 population, 180 see also New Lanark law and order, 32–4, 35, 177, 295 punishments, 34 see also courts; laws; police laws brieve of right, 32 byelaws, 35 inheritance, 60 poor, 213 see also burgh laws; legislation lead for churches, 83 mining, 53, 111, 112 Leadhills, 112 leather, 117, 195 clothing, 49, 58: buckles, 59 fire buckets, 158 hides, 56, 57 scabbards, 49, 50 shoes, 57–8, 58 workers, 49, 117 see also tanners/tanning legislation alcohol, 229 education, 228, 230, 258, 263 housing, 222, 224–5, 252, 263 plague, 65 planning, 277 police, 209, 225 sewerage, 219 see also law and order; laws; regulations leisure, 67–70, 177, 193, 229–31, 258–9, 274–5; see also cinemas; dancing; music; promenading; sports Leith breweries, 200

Index   343

citadel, 146 dame school, 160–1 tourism, 178 urbanisation, 170 Leslie: fair, 65 libraries, 176, 226, 227, 235, 270, 292–3, 294 National Library of Scotland, 279 licensed premises see under alcohol lighthouses, 100 Lindores Abbey, 99–100 Lindsay, David, 11th Earl of Edzell, 119–20, 126 Lindsay, Sir David: ‘Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estatis’, 69 linen, 143, 165, 181, 195; see also osnaburgs Linlithgow, 16 arcades, 118 Archbishop Hamilton’s house, 31 bridge, 124, 142 Civil War, 142, 146–51, 147 Convention of Royal Burghs, 112–13 Cornwall family of Bonhard, 31 Court of the Four Burghs, 36 customs revenues, 47 defences, 147, 149 fair, 149 flats, 270, 271 fleshmarket, 171 gallows, 149, 151 gas lighting, 213 Golden Cross Café, 31 Hamilton Lands, 31 High Street, 173 hospital, 149 House of the Knights Hospitaller, 29–31, 30 hygiene, 171 Jacobites, 153–4 leper house, 64 library, 176 market cross, 149 modernisation, 269–70 ovens, 56 Palace, 69, 154 parish church, 87, 147, 149 Peel, The, 147, 150

‘Plan of Lothian and Linlitqvo’ (Blaeu), 124 prenatal burials, 61–2 priory, 87, 93 railway station, 191 Reformation, 87 sewage, 219 statue of St Michael, 95 tolbooth, 149 townhouse, 151 linoleum manufacture, 200, 292 literacy, 80, 82, 83, 103; see also education; libraries; Mechanics’ Institutes; schools living standards eighteenth-century, 158–60 medieval, 28, 54, 56, 61 nineteenth-century, 210–15, 232 Reformation, 3 post-World War II, 263–9 see also cleanliness; hygiene; housing Livingston New Town, 266 local government, modern, 248, 293 Districts, 293 Local Government Boards, 217, 252 McIntosh Report (1999), 293 Regions, 293 see also councils local history, 291 municipal histories, 3, 239 see also archives Lochmaben, 18 taxation, 115 water supply, 217 lodgers, 252 lodging houses, 212, 221, 222, 223, 224 looms, 179, 195–6, 198 lunatic asylums, 184 luxury goods medieval, 51, 54, 56, 58 modern: computers, 274, 297; televisions, 269, 274, 297; washing machines, 258, 297 see also cars; silver; wine

Magdalene homes, 184–5, 228 Maggie’s Centres, 280 mail, 171, 177 Mainard the Fleming, 21 Major, John (1467–1550), 43n82 Malcolm I, King, 9 Malcolm III, King, 8, 10 Malcolm IV, King, 11 market crosses, 21, 51, 56, 119–20, 152, 171, 230 removal or resiting, 7, 91–2, 149, 172, 194 market places, 24–5, 118, 173, 218 markets, 13–14, 47, 48–9, 49 Alyth, 15 Berwick, 53 Brechin, 113 cattle, 172, 236, 237 Dunblane, 53, 116 fish, 57 flesh, 171 food, 49 Forfar, 14, 237 and gild merchant, 47–53 horses, 254 hygiene, 171, 221 Kelso, 113 Kennoway, 114 Linlithgow, 171 Melrose, 114 Nairn, 115 new burghs, 110, 115 non-burghal, 113–14 plague legislation, 65 quality control, 35, 50–1 regulations: forestalling of, 33, 51, 186: regrate, 51 repletion, 156, 172 Roxburgh, 113 St Andrews, 113 specialisation, 118 Stranraer, 122 trons (weighing machines), 21 women and, 59 marriage, 82, 102 Mary, Queen of Scots, 87, 88, 94, 97, 100, 269 Mary of Guise, Queen Regent, 86

344   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

Mauchline, 10 Battle of Mauchline Muir, 141 ‘Holy Fair’, 141 May revels, 69, 70 Maybole, 10, 121 and Episcopalianism, 138 gas lighting, 220 housing development, 272 meat market, 171 water supply, 216 meat markets, 48–9, 171, 221; see also fleshmarkets; slaughterhouses preservation, 56 quality, 35, 51 rationing, 254, 262 Mechanics’ Institutes, 175, 226, 235 medicine medieval, 67 penicillin, 257 study of, 177 vaccinations, 161 meeting houses see under churches Melrose, 11, 16, 18 abbey, 55, 84, 89–90, 93–4: Melrose Abbey Complex (Sorrell), 89 archaeological evidence, 55 Fastern’s E’en Ba, 230, 231 Harmony Hall, 183 market, 114 market cross, 230 monastery, 18, 84 parish, 79 post-Reformation, 97–8 poverty, 162 Scare Thursday Fair, 52, 71n16 memory, 276, 291 ‘communal’, 294 institutional, 292–3 merchants, 7, 11 free-trade agreements, 14 literacy, 80–1 marks, 81 poor relief, 165 and trade, 13, 95, 116 see also gild merchant Methil: mining, 112

middens, 25, 36, 61, 62, 219, 221 middle class, 187, 212, 233–5, 259 migrants, 252, 295 Irish, 162, 170, 187, 189, 211, 212, 213, 237 migration, 164, 170, 189, 197, 255; see also immigrants/ immigration military camps, 178 Millport, 193 mills, 84, 87, 116, 123, 149, 180, 181, 195, 196, 198; see also factories mints, 53 ‘model’ towns see New Lanark monarchy: restoration of, 151 monasteries, 18, 21–2, 84 céli Dé (Culdees), 113, 134n19 Coupar Angus, 87, 99 Dunfermline, 100 estates, 53, 87 Kelso, 64 Melrose, 18, 84 see also abbeys Montrose customs revenues, 47 dame school, 161 golf course, 259 harbour, 16, 164 High Street, 173, 174, 185 market place, 24, 25, 173, 174 plague, 162 stenting, 140 townhouse, 235 trade, 13, 14–15 Montrose, James Graham, 5th Earl of, 140, 141–2 Moray, James Stewart, 1st Earl of, 31, 94 mortality, 252, 257–8; see also death Motherwell expansion, 200, 211 overcrowding, 251 Moyness, 115 munitions production, 249–50

museums, 275 National Museum of Scotland, 281–2, 283 music churches, preReformation, 97 eighteenth-century, 177 instruments: bone pipe/ recorder, 50; Scots fiddle, 178 minstrels, 70 music halls, 249, 258 Musselburgh, 10 Civil War, 144 fire buckets, 158 Fisher Row, 118 fishers, 118 fleshmarket, 171 football, 178 golf, 178 horse-racing, 178 housing, 235, 272 Jacobites, 153 leather workers, 117 leper hospital, 62 library, 176 Links, 178 manse, 176 market place, 24, 25 Pinkie House, 153, 154 poverty, 162 pump well, 173 Roman bridge, 10 routeway, 84 salt industry, 112 sands, 178 schools, 176 settlement, early, 16 shooting, 178 textile production, 116 tolbooth, 100 Nairn, 9 baths, 193 bridge, 115 castle, 18 cholera, 214 Civil War, 141–2 Collector’s Close, 222 fairs, 115 fires, 158 garrisons, 155–6 gas lighting, 220 golf course, 259 layout, 18 market, 115

Index   345

middle class housing, 235 Nairn Academy (Rose’s Academical Institution), 175, 176 population growth, 179 reading room, 193 streets, 221 tax assessment, 114–15 tolbooth, 155 tourism, 193 View of (Pont), 19 Neilston: textile mills, 198–9 New Galloway: taxation, 115 New Lanark, 180 ‘co-operative socialism’, 196 cotton manufacture, 180 New Towns, 170, 247, 266–8 Newbattle: coal mining, 53 Newmilns, 10 newspapers, 193, 220 Edinburgh Review, 177 Inverness Courier, 220 Scotsman, The, 187, 216 Scottish Standard, 202 Witness, The, 216 see also journals; periodicals Newstead by Melrose aerial view, 8 trade, 7 North Berwick: growth, 193 North Queensferry, 175 resort, 193–4 schools, 100 notaries public, 80, 81 oats, 56, 126, 161, 164 oligarchy, 37–8, 189 Orwell, George: Coming Up for Air, 259–60 osnaburgs, 165, 179; see also linen ovens, 36, 56 Oxgang, 16 Paisley, 181 Abercorn, James Hamilton, 8th Earl of (‘Improver’), 181 bridge, 181 civic identity, 183 Civil War, 141 drainage, 220 George Street, 181

industrialisation, , 181–3, 195 licensed premises, 177 overcrowding, 251 plague, 162 Plan of Paisley, 1828 (Wood), 181, 182 Plan of the Town of Paisley and Suburbs, 1781 (Semple), 181, 182 population, 181, 275 schools, 161, 227 street names, 181 suburbs, 183 textile production, 117, 165, 181, 196, 199, 292 water supply, 83, 220 parishes, early, 21, 79–80 boundaries, 78, 103n4 parks, 247, 253 Partick, 170, 250 paupers, 216; see also beggars peat, 29, 54, 156, 157, 175 Peebles almshouses, 67 defences, 25 May revels, 70 medieval women, 59 settlement, early, 18 Penicuik: textile mill, 196 penitentiaries see Magdalene homes Pennant, Thomas, 83 periodicals, 177; see also newspapers Perth, 11, 13 archaeological evidence: 50, 50, 58, 59, 61, 61, 68, 68 castle, 18 church schools, 227 citadel, 146 City Hall, 284 Civil War, 145 craft fraternities and guilds, 14, 70n1, 95, 96 craft town, 116 customs revenues, 47 defences, 26 development, 21 elites, 101 ‘Gildrie Book’, 1 hygiene, 60 Jacobites, 152 literacy, 82

mint, 53 open spaces, 232 origins, 9; proto-urban settlement, 10 plague, 162 poor relief, 298n8 railways, 191 Reformation, 86, 101 St John’s parish church, 95 social tensions, 86 suburbs, 183 tofts, 25 trade, 13 Philanthropic Society, 184–5 pilgrimage, 83 Pittenweem, 47, 80, 230, 257 plagues, 64–6, 74n78, 140, 160, 162 Black Death, 64–5, 74n78 Mandeville, Sir John de: ‘Ane Tretyse Agayne the Pestilens’, 64 planning, 4, 21, 35, 126, 181, 183, 241, 242, 247, 248, 263 and civic improvement, 296 Clyde Valley Regional Plan, 265 and expansion, 283 legislation, 277 Town Planning Institute, 266 plays, medieval, 70; see also theatres police, 209, 212, 295 auxiliaries, World War II, 261 legislation, 209, 225 lodging house inspection, 224–5 police commissioners, 209, 213, 219, 220 and social unrest, 254 political power, 248 political reform, 189–90 pollution, 57, 171, 201, 213, 216 population, 15, 52, 101–2 birth rate, 164 censuses, 211, 251, 265, 298n8 decline, 164, 276

346   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

population (cont.) growth, 170, 178–81, 211, 275 and industrialisation, 195, 196–7 and plague, 162 stagnation, 179–80 statistics, 32, 44n106, 103n4, 164, 179, 242nn2, 3, 257–8, 288n30; New Statistical Account, 183; Statistical Account of Scotland, 1791–1799, 89, 179 Port Sunlight, 241–2 porters, 59, 260 Portobello, 178, 193 beach, 194, 274 ports (medieval gates), 27, 119 ports (trading), 52, 122, 180–1; grain, 164–5; occupations, 48 Portsoy, 118 potatoes, 126, 131 pottery, 55, 56 poverty, 275 and care, 295 children, 295, 298n8 and churches, 186–7 and civic society, 188–9 and death, 82, 258 and disease, 213–14 and education, 80 environmental conditions for, 215 and famine, 162–3 and industrialisation, 196 Poor Law Enquiry (1843), 214 and reform, 216 relief of, 163–4, 170 statistics, 298n8 support for, 297 Victorian era, 210, 212 see also beggars; destitution; underclass; vagrants power stations, 274 Prestonpans, 112 battle of, 153 Mellis’s buildings, 256 Prestwick, 193 prices, 151, 196, 254 inflation, 51

priories Dunfermline, 8 Linlithgow, 87, 93 South Queensferry, 93 prisoners of war Civil War, 144 World War II, 260 prisons, 183–4 Stranraer, 121 tolbooths, 34, 149, 171 see also bridewells privacy, 36, 125, 127, 129, 235, 267 privies, 219; see also water closets processions, religious, 68, 77–8, 80, 86, 101; see also religious holidays promenading, 178 prostitution, 33, 153, 185, 228 Protestantism, 85, 87–8, 103, 163 provosts, 32, 77, 121, 293; see also aldermen public houses see under alcohol railways, 190–5 bridges, 191, 193 companies, 191, 192–3 Edinburgh, 175 embankments, 191 Glasgow to Garnkirk, 190 and industry, 192 labour force, 190 late twentieth-century, 273 stations, 190, 191, 273 suburban, 233 tunnels, 190 twenty-first century, 273 rates: rateable value of property, 209, 213 rats, 57, 65, 160 Rattray: decline, 123 reading rooms, 193; see also libraries recreation see leisure; sports reform, burgh, 188, 214–29 Burgh Reform Acts, 209 and environment, 248 Reform Act (1867), 213 Scottish Social Reform Association, 216

Reformation, 3, 85–93 aftermath, 93–103 destruction of heritage, 93–7 impact on townscapes, 97–103 Lords of the Congregation, 81, 86, 87, 88, 90, 94 nobles’ role, 100 religious buildings, 86–93; iconoclasm, 86, 95, 96, 97 social tensions, 86 refugees, 162 religious holidays, 102–3; see also processions religious houses, 18; see also friaries; monasteries; priories Renfrew population density, 220 trade, 53 reservoirs, 218, 219 residential areas, 195; see also suburbs Restenneth: parish church, 78, 99 roads A94, 191 medieval, 13 motorways, 272 ribbon developments, 259 routes, 252 traffic, 172, 173, 221, 272, 273 turnpike, 177 see also routeways; streets Robert I (Robert Bruce), King, 14, 35, 90 Robin Hood: cult of, 69–70 Rosyth: dockyard, 236, 252, 261 Rosyth Garden City, 248, 252, 253, 261, 263, 277; Village, 252 Rothesay Rothesay Pavilion, 277–8 textile production, 196 Winter Gardens, 274 routeways, 10, 296 Aberdeen, 78 Bowden, 113 Dalkeith, 16, 124, 124, 125 Dunfermline, 84 Jacobite, 152 Kirkintilloch, 16

Index   347

Linlithgow, 16 Musselburgh, 84 Roxburgh, 11 clearance, 122–3 Court of the Four Burghs, 37 craft fraternities and guilds, 14, 70n1 decline, 122–3 fire, 25 gilds, 14, 70n1 market, 113 mint, 53 settlement, 16 trade, 13 wool trade, 53 Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), (now Historic Environment Scotland), 4 Ruskin, John, 241 Rutherglen church building, 277 liberties, 11 temperance movement, 259 trade, 53 St Andrews burgage plots, 7–8 charter, 7 fair, 65 Holy Trinity parish church, 86 immigrants, 31 Kinrinmund, 7 market, 113 market cross, 7 National Covenant, 139 pilgrimage, 83 Reformation, 86, 103 settlement, early, 18, 21 University, 175 West Port, 27, 172 St Monans, 257 salt, 53, 54, 56, 112, 256 saltpans, 111, 112, 112 Saltcoats harbour, 112 sea bathing, 193, 274 Sanquhar defences, 26 schools, 80 taxation, 115

schools, 184, 294 ‘adventure’, 227 board, 258 burgh, 175, 228 church, 227–8 dame, 160–1 Dumbarton, 160–1, 175–6 Dunbar, 175–6 Dundee, 147 Dunfermline, 157 Edinburgh, 80 Episcopalian, 228 fees, 228 grammar, 80 Hamilton, 129, 129 industrial, 126 leaving age, 258, 263 Musselburgh, 176 North Queensferry, 100 parish, 228 public, 228 ‘ragged’, 126 Roman Catholic, 228, 258 Sanquhar, 80 secondary, 263 song, 80 Scottish Executive, 293 Scottish Parliament, 201, 202, 228, 281, 284–5, 285, 293 self-help, 226, 295 Selkirk, 211 council, 45n124 servants, 22, 48, 60, 189, 211 settlements early, 16 pre twelfth-century, 9–10 sewage, 212, 213, 214, 218, 219, 274; see also water closets shipbuilding, 48, 143, 200, 201, 250, 254, 260, 275 shipping, 143, 151 shoes: medieval, 57, 58 shops barber shops, 262 chip shops, 258 department stores, 237, 239 garden suburbs, 265 Improvement Acts, 189 market repletion, 173 shopping centres, 268, 272, 280–1 silver belts, 58

mining, 53 money, 53 silverware, 56, 81 Sinclair, Thomas, 298 ‘Mechanics of an Ancient Burgh going to Church to claim the Superiority of their Seats’, 187, 187 A Residenter in an Ancient Burgh on his Way to procure a Burgess Ticket, 1830, 185–6, 187, 187 slaughterhouses, 171, 209; see also cattle markets; fleshmarkets; meat markets slums, 211–12, 222, 225, 255, 265, 292, 297 Smollett, Tobias, 19, 176 soap manufacture, 49, 241 rationing, 262 social problems, 101, 189, 215, 225, 248, 269, 292, 294–5 social security, 263 social unrest, 152, 189, 196; see also class conflict socialism: co-operative 196 sources annals, 291 archives, 1–4, 293 charters, 7, 8–10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 28, 38n3, 39n15, 97, 115, 216: ecclesiastical, 89–90, 94, 97; market, 113 chronicles, 8, 9, 13, 57 council minutes, 3, 69, 154, 155 diaries, 4 drawings, 148, 159, 194 engravings, 85, 91, 92, 112, 146, 147, 201, 224 journals, 131, 177, 212 maps, 4, 18, 19, 21, 26, 27, 27, 103n4, 132, 181 memory, 276, 291, 292–3, 294 municipal histories, 3, 239 newspapers, 171, 187, 196, 202, 216, 220 notarial protocol books, 3 oral, 137n78 periodicals, 177

348   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

sources (cont.) photographs, 4, 291, 298n2 tax rolls, 3, 114–15 South Queensferry drinking establishments, 230 priory, 93 spinners, 199 spinning mills, 195 sports archery, 178 cock-fighting, 177–8, 230, 259 dog-racing, 259 football, 177, 178, 230–1, 259, 274, 294 golf, 177, 178, 194, 230, 259 horse-racing, 177, 178, 259 medieval, 68 shooting, 177, 178 tennis, 259 squares, 183, 270, 283, 284 market, 173, 217 stables, 87, 94, 144, 147, 172 staple goods, 48, 53; see also hides; wool steam power, 196 boats, 229–30; engines, 199 steel, 279 stenting, 140, 156 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 202 Stirling, 11 bailies, 44n107 castle, 16 church schools, 227 churches, 186 Civil War, 145 Convention of Royal Burghs, 138 courts: Court of the Four Burghs, 37; gild court, 1 defences, 25, 26 gilds, 70n1 law and order, 34 literacy, 82 middle class housing, 234 National Covenant, 139 plague, 162 Reformation, 87 rights and privileges, 115 settlement, early, 18

stone, 194 arcades, 118 assembly rooms, 177 defences, 25, 26, 146 houses, 29–31, 54, 128, 156, 157 paving, 19 reuse, 98–9, 181 roofs, 232, 236 Stornoway, 117 assembly room, 177 clearance, 126–7 famine, 126 fort, 146–7, 148 harbour, 126 Lews Castle, 127 Lews estate, 127, 127 Matheson family, 127–8 population growth, 179 St Lennan’s church, 146 schools, 126 trade, 126 Stranraer, 120–3 Adair family of Kinhilt, 120, 121, 122 burgh court, 121, 122 Castle of St John, 120, 121 football, 231 housing, middle class: Ann House, 183, 235; Dunbae House, 183, 184, 235 market, 122 market cross, 120 poverty, 121 prison, 121 tolbooth, 120, 121 townhouse, 183 trade, 121–2 streets avenues, 253 cleaning, 209, 221 cobbling, 61 crescents, 253 lighting, 174, 185, 209, 220–1, 262, 283 naming and numbering, 221 pavements, 209, 221, 252 pedestrianisation, 27, 272 signage, 283 see also roads; routeways Stromness Pier Arts Centre, 286, 286 water supply, 217

suburbs, 24, 99, 182, 183, 193, 194–5, 200, 233–4, 259, 265, 272, 294 sundials, 78, 183 Tain, 117 cholera, 214 Civil War, 142 fires, 158 housing estates, 256 pilgrimage, 83 religious artefacts, 95 tolbooth, 158 View of (Pont), 27 taverns see under alcohol taxation, 114–15, 134n3 arrivistes, 188 council tax, 293 Hearth Tax, 3, 179 impost, 200 local, 233 Poll Tax, 3 and poor relief, 163 seventeenth-century, 138 tax rolls, 3 see also stenting technologies, modern, 297 temperance movement, 226, 229, 259 tenurial system, 41n58, 180 textile production, 116, 179, 180–1, 195, 197, 198, 212, 250, 254, 292; see also cotton manufacture; linen production; weaving theatres, 270, 275, 276; see also music halls; plays timber see wood time: monitoring of, 78; see also clocks; sundials tin, 192 tobacco, 118; Wills Tobacco Factory, Glasgow, 279 tofts, 24–5, 24, 28, 131, 143; see also burgage plots tolbooths, 21 Aberdeen, 158 Ayr, 177 conversion, 235 Dingwall, 158 Dundee, 99–100, 147 Dunfermline, 157 Edinburgh, 100 Hamilton, 128, 131

Index   349

Linlithgow, 149 Musselburgh, 100, 171 Nairn, 155 as prisons, 34, 184 siting of, 119 Stranraer, 120, 121, 183 Tain, 158 see also townhouses touns, 7 tourism, 178, 296; see also travel towns councils see separate entry evolution, 297–8 functions, 296–7 town halls, 293 townhouses, 149, 151, 153, 183, 235, 271; see also tolbooths townscape changing, 232–42 and civic identity, 123–5, 183, 239 improvements, 158, 170–8, 241 and industrialisation, 197–8 interwar, 259 medieval, 16, 19–25 and modernisation, 270 redefinition of, 283 Reformation’s impact on, 97–103 success of, 296 trade, 9, 13, 47–8 cattle, 164 coal, 112 coastal, 9–10, 48, 53 Cromwell’s legacy, 151 exports, 47–8, 53, 94, 111, 112, 113, 117, 192, 196 and famine, 163 fish, 53, 117 hinterland, 14, 53, 56, 113, 114 imports, 47, 51, 53, 56, 57, 58, 80, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 126, 161, 175 inter-town rivalry, 14–15, 117, 120 jurisdictions, 15, 120 local, 14; see also markets monopolies, 14, 113, 120, 199 Nine Trades, 213 overseas, 13, 47, 48, 51, 53,

115, 117, 118, 196; wine, 51, 53, 57 pilgrims, 8 war and, 161 wool, 53, 56 trade incorporations, 185–6, 187 Incorporation of St Mary’s Chapel, 185 see also crafts trade unions ‘combinations’, 199 Trades Union Congress, 248 trades bakers (baxters), 38, 48, 51, 56, 59, 80, 101, 116, 254 tanners/tanning, 49, 57 see also craft fraternities and guilds; leather traffic see under roads Tranent: mining, 200 transport, 230 buses, 194; trolleybuses, 273 carriages, 172, 178, 191 cars, 259, 269, 272; car parks, 268 coaches, 172; mail coaches, 233; stagecoaches, 177 ferries, 128, 131, 193 and fragmentation, 297 Garden Cities, 248 garden suburbs, 265 horse-drawn, 191, 233 omnibuses, 233–4 steamboats, 229–30 trams, 194–5, 273–4, 296 underground railway, Glasgow, 262 see also canals; commuting; railways; traval Traprain Law, 7 travel, 172 air, 274 sea, 192–3; steamboats, 229–30 see also canals; commuting; railways; transport Ulster, 164 underclass, 48, 83, 187,

295; see also beggars; poverty; vagrants unemployment, 255, 257 Union (1707), 152 universities, 175; see also under Aberdeen; Dundee; Edinburgh; Glasgow; St Andrews urbanisation, 158, 170–202, 211 vagrants, 153, 162, 163, 187, 209; see also beggars vici, 7 Victoria, Queen, 217, 240 volunteers, 228, 261 wages factories, 196, 199 handloom weavers, 207n105 porters, 59 and rents, 221 rise in, 259 World War I, 250 Wanlockhead: lead production, 112 wappinschaws, 68, 138, 157; see also weapons warehouses, 200 wars and famine, 163 War Memorials, 250, 254 Wars of Independence, 11 see also Civil War; World War I; World War II waste, 160, 217, 219; see also sewage water closets, 211, 213, 221, 229, 251 latrines, medieval, 61, 61 lavatories, 264, 266, 269 privies, 219 urinals, 220 water power, 196, 198, 199 water supply, 57, 61, 83, 171, 177, 209, 211, 212, 214, 216–19, 264 aqueducts, 213 conduits, 84, 217 waterworks, 218 see also drainage; wells wealth, 3, 37, 54, 56–7, 58, 60, 70, 78, 82–3, 91, 95, 193, 196, 212, 232

350   The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns

wealth (cont.) housing, 217, 232, 234–5, 252 weapons: displays see wappinschaws manufacture, 249–50 weather, 50–1 bad, 57, 58, 61, 64, 94, 163, 164 see also climate weavers, 180, 195, 198, 199, 207nn105, 110 weaving, 116–17, 181, 195 Webster, the Rev. Alexander: Scottish Population Statistics, 179, 299 weights and measures, 50–1, 122 welfare state, 263 wells, 16, 25, 36, 61, 147, 171, 173, 177, 213, 214, 217, 218, 219, 235 healing, 70 holy, 103 whaling, 143, 191, 220 Whitekirk: shrine of Our Lady of the Hamer, 83 Whithorn, 10 pilgrimage, 18, 83 Wick: Pulteneytown, 179, 183, 217 Wigtown Convention of Royal Burghs, 120–1 weights and measures, 122 William I, King, 9, 11, 44n110, 113 William III, King, 163

wine fountains, Linlithgow Palace, 154 gild feasts, 69 imports, 51, 53, 57 medicinal use, 214 tasters, 35 wine bars, 275 Wishaw: overcrowding, 251 women as carers, 160 emancipation, 248, 251, 258, 277 gild membership, 73n51 health, 62 housewives, 258 literacy, 80, 82 medieval, 34, 48, 57, 59–60, 62, 66, 73n62, 102 mortality, 258 occupations, 59, 212, 292 post-Reformation, 102 pregnancy, 163, 185 and prostitution, 33, 153, 185, 228 and sport, 178 status, 160 teachers, 160–1 textile production, 198, 212 university students, 277 violence against, 160 widows, 48, 59, 60, 82, 91, 224, 226 World War I, 250–1 World War II, 260, 262 wood arcades, 117–18 church interiors, 277 defences, 26–7

fuel, 54 household goods, 55, 56 houses, 27–8, 29, 84, 156 sale of, 122 tolbooths, 157, 158 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 197, 221 workforce casual, 210 children, 180 housing, 221 migrant, 116, 197, 211, 252, 255, 277, 292 post-Reformation, 116, 162 post-World War I, 255 rural, 116 women, 250–1, 292 World War II, 260 workshops, 25, 36 World War I impact of, 248–51 recruiting, 249 women, 250–1 World War II, 260–2 air-raid shelters, 261–2; Anderson shelters, 261; Morrison shelters, 261–2 anti-Italian feeling, 262 architecture, 278 bomb attacks, 261 civil defence, 261 employment, 250, 251 emergency workers, 261 evacuation, 261 gas masks, 262 housing, 278 prisoners of war, World War II, 260 rationing, 262