Innholdsfortegnelse for November-December 2023 i History Scotland

In April this year, the author, Stirling Council’s archaeologist, conducted an archaeological watching brief on works associated with a new lighting system at Stirling Old Bridge. The works, which spanned a week, identified potential remains of the medieval bridge mill which may have 12th-century origins, and the remains of Scotland’s last surviving bridge gate. Stirling Old Bridge is perhaps the third bridge of six at this broad spot. It is often said that Stirling is the brooch that holds together the two parts of the country. Stirling’s role in two of Scotland’s most important battles -Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn - and its location between the two major medieval and post-medieval cattle markets at Crieff and Falkirk underline its strategic and economic significance. Medieval origins It seems probable that the first…

A general introduction to Bell and his life appeared in a previous issue (‘That Honest and Intelligent Traveller’, History Scotland, May/ June 2005), but this article aims to look at some other aspects of Bell’s life that have since come to light. First, though, for new readers, a brief summary of Bell’s career. Born in 1691, John Bell was the son of Reverend Patrick Bell, former Church of Scotland minister at Port of Menteith. Patrick Bell had been removed from the pulpit in 1689 for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, thus revealing his Jacobite sympathies. In 1685 he had inherited the estate of Antermony, near Kirkintilloch. John Bell grew up at Antermony and studied medicine at Glasgow University. He left Scotland in 1714 for…

In the final hours of 14 October 1691, a periwigmaker named Peter Chrystie meandered along to Dundee’s mercat cross from a nearby inn to ‘drink the health’ of the recently ousted King James VII, whose birthday it was. Climbing onto the cross, Chrystie then encouraged passers-by to join his celebration. A scuffle broke out as Chrystie ‘fell foull’ of his audience, who clearly felt far more loyalty to the new post-revolution regime established under King William and Queen Mary. Amidst the ensuing fracas that led to his arrest, Chrystie was badly beaten and some of his own drinking companions from earlier that evening even attempted to strangle him with his own cravat. As historical incidents go, Chrystie’s drunken antics seem far from momentous. Indeed, despite the grave tone of the…

Based in Ayr, the society sees its brief as wide-ranging, covering all aspects of Ayrshire history. Since March 2020, all lectures have been held on Zoom.We were, we think, quick to understand that this was going to be the norm for some time. One of the great benefits of this method of delivery is the ability to reach out to people at a distance from Ayr, and not merely from the far corners of the county.We have had viewers from the USA, mainland Europe and Australia. Equally, we are able to schedule speakers from overseas, especially,the US and Canada. We also offered our meetings to members of our southerly neighbour organisation, Dumfries & Galloway Natural History & Antiquarian Society, and this has become a regular two-way exchange. Any member of…

Rait Castle, just outside Nairn, had the honour of having a boat named after it. In my perusal of local newspapers for mentions of the castle, I came across many references in the 1920s and 30s in both the Scottish and English press to a vessel of that name and the amount of white fish (cod, halibut, but especially herring) landed at Nairn, Banff, Inverness and elsewhere in Scotland and England over the years. Rait Castle is often mentioned as the bestfished boat (i.e. bringing home or landing the largest catch.) According to the Scottish Built Ships website, Rait Castle was a fishing drifter built in 1912 by Rose Street Foundry & Engineering Co. Ltd in Inverness at the Thornbush shipyard.The first owner was J. M. Main Sen. et al…

Every year, on 11 November, dignitaries and veterans gather in northern France and Belgium to commemorate the tens of thousands of Canadians and Newfoundlanders who fell there. Meanwhile, more than 700 miles to the north, a much smaller group will gather – with no less solemnity – in the small town of Rothes on the banks of the River Spey. They are here to remember 23-yearold George White from Ontario, 24-year-old Joseph-Henri Berthiaume from Montreal, and 30-year-old Garfield Eby from Edmonton. What were they doing here in this beautiful, but comparatively obscure, corner of the British Isles? It is fair to say that if people knew their story, they would never again view the epic movies, or the dramatic newsreel footage, of the GreatWar in northern Europe in the same…

ON-SITE EVENTS Cramond Roman for excavations, 1 November Martin Cook of AOC Archaeology reveals what the 2008 excavations at the Roman fort revealed, following the 1997 discovery of an 1,800-year-old sculpture at the fort in Edinburgh. sarts 7.30pm. Entry £2. 23a Fettes Row, Edinburgh EH3 6RH John Orr and the history of the Scottish Naval and Military Academy, 20 November Scottish Genealogy Society talk by Rosslyn Macphail. Starts 7.30pm. Free to SGS members, small donation from non-members. E-mail: scotsgenpublicity@scottishgenealogy.com Augustine United Church Centre, 41 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1EL Raeburn’s Edinburgh, until 26 November This exhibition at The Georgian House marks the 200th anniversary of the painter Henry Raeburn’s death by mapping his life and times in Edinburgh through the people he painted. The Georgian House, 7 Charlotte Square,…

SPECIAL ISSUE: SCOTL AND BETWEEN REVOLUTION AND UNION: 1689-1707 The relationship between itinerant communities and the Scottish early modern state was fraught with difficulties. In Scotland, much like other early modern states, Gypsy, Roma and Travellers were often perceived as the embodiment of social non-conformity and the ostensible source of a wide range of social, moral and legal problems that the government sought to control or eradicate. Consequently, a disproportionate level of fear and anxiety was directed towards the mobile population, who were often denounced as carriers of disease, sowers of sedition, or idle vagabonds who lacked the moral fibre required to live in a civil, Christian society. ‘Egyptians’, as the Roma were typically called, were conceptualised within a stereotypical framework of vagrancy and criminality, subject to state-driven marginalisation, all…

It is summer about a century ago, and the Registrar General for Scotland has arranged a special occasion for his smartly-dressed staff. 71 men and women of the temporary Census Office, who have been working on the returns of the Scottish Census held on 19 June 1921, are gathered outside George Heriot’s School in Edinburgh. This striking photograph captures a unique group of workers who were employed on the highly technical challenges of converting vast quantities of raw census information into usable statistics. Although the staff were not a crosssection of Scottish society, they reflect the state of the public service after the Great War, and they fall into four distinct groups, each with an interesting story to tell. Front and centre sits the somewhat formidable figure of Dr James…

An Orcadian Odyssey: a memoir Bryce Wilson Orkneyology Press, (Orkney, 2022) pp.218 Hardback, £24.99; paperback, £15.99 ISBN: 9781915075017 What do you get if you cross a memoir with a journey through time, landscape and memory? An odyssey. And in this instance, a wonderful book that celebrates a cornucopia of Orcadian treasures. Bryce Wilson’s personal Orcadian odyssey reflects his deep love for Orkney, its history and people, and his friends. A memoir is not about the author; it concerns events selected from that person’s life strung together chronologically or thematically. Events that wander, that may appear unconnected, plucked rather than chosen, perhaps randomly; events that are personal yet explore far-reaching ideas; events that may pass overt or subtle comment on society. Whatever a particular memoir includes, it is invariably an intimate…

Established in 1997, Kilmartin Museum in Lochgilphead, Argyll, has been closed for several years, undergoing a major redevelopment. The new facility offers visitors the chance to experience a much larger exhibition space, a creative area which can be used to deliver and participate in cultural activities, an accessible research and learning facility, and a ‘fit-for-purpose’ education space. The re-opening also marked the moment that the recently recognised Nationally Significant Collection of 22,000 prehistoric artefacts (half of the museum’s collection) was placed on display for the first time. The award was given to the collection in 2019 while the museum itself was closed and the story of life in the area over thousands of years has now been brought to life through a variety of objects juxtaposed with graphic recreations and…

SPECIAL ISSUE: SCOTL AND BETWEEN REVOLUTION AND UNION: 1689-1707 From Robert the Bruce to Mary, queen of Scots, we are used to thinking of the history of Scotland as inextricably bound with the lives and times of its kings and queens. By the time of the revolution of 1688-90 and the union of the parliaments of England and Scotland in 1707, some degree of royal authority had passed to the Scottish parliament, to the privy council and to elite actors in the Scottish political theatre, and even to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland. But these were not decades of parliamentary democracy and the wishes of the monarch and his or her close advisers were key to setting the political agenda. How do we assess this agenda-setting by…

At 2am on Sunday 4 February 1700, Scotland’s privy council held an emergency meeting. A huge fire had broken out late the previous evening in the city’s Meal Market on the north side of the Cowgate, spreading rapidly up the hill to Parliament Close. As the principal organ of Scotland’s government, the privy council sat in Edinburgh and was responsible for implementing the orders of crown and parliament. The fire represented an immediate risk not only to the physical safety of people, their homes and livelihoods, but also to the very business of government. Some of the council’s registers and papers were kept in Parliament House, where it met regularly; various council members also had lodgings in the area, which would have held further papers and correspondence. All of this…

In the Firth of Forth off the coast of North Berwick lies the Bass Rock, a prominent and well-known volcanic plug which is today more popular with swarms of birds than people, save for the occasional day tripper. But this has not always been the case. It had been fortified since the Middle Ages and was used by James I (r.1406-37), for instance, to house disaffected magnates. During the 17th century, the Bass Rock was again utilised by different regimes: firstly, the Cromwellian government used its offshore and defensible location to store records in the 1650s, before it came into the possession of Sir Andrew Ramsay, Lord Abbotshall, who served as lord provost of Edinburgh in the 1650s and again after the restoration of the monarchy. In 1671, the island…

Preparations are in hand for the Scottish Local History Forum (SLHF) AGM which will be held via Zoom on 30 October. Any individuals or member(s) of affiliated organisations are welcome to attend and can arrange to do so via the SLHF website: www.slhf.org. Trustees are currently reflecting on events offered earlier in the year and taking account of feedback from attendees. In April, the conference theme was ‘science engineering and technology’, which covered topics ranging from the rise and fall of corrugated iron buildings in Scotland to the use of electricity as a medical treatment in the 18th century. Our summer event took place in August with a visit to both of Dundee Heritage Trust’s museums at Discovery Point and Verdant Works. Full reports appear in SLHF journals and in…

One of my regular tasks for the Scottish Genealogy Society is to keep an eye on new datasets released by the commercial genealogy websites. Whilst FindMyPast only release new information on Thursdays, this is not the case with Ancestry; updates can happen any day of the week and it is only by going into ‘recently added and updated collections’ (https://bit.ly/ ancrecent) that one can see what has been added or updated in the past few months. A recent addition that caught my interest is ‘UK and Allied Countries World War II Liberated Prisoner of War Questionnaires 1945-46’. Several of my relatives had been taken prisoner of war in World War Two, for the most part as members of the 51st Highland Division at St Valéry in 1940, with a few…