Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2024 i History Scotland

A silver casket believed to have been owned by Mary, queen of Scots has undergone fresh conservation work ahead of going on tour to Kirkcudbright and Stirling. It is thought that the casket was given to Mary by her first husband, François II of France, and came to Scotland with her in 1561 after his death in 1560. Her inventories from this time list multiple examples of precious jewellery and other such valuable objects. A casket first appears in the records following Mary’s arrest in 1567 by the rebellious Confederate Lords, when it is discovered in the hands of Lord Bothwell’s servant. It was brought before the Scottish privy council, where its lock was struck off to reveal its contents. Precisely what these were at that moment is unknown. However,…

In late summer 2023 Heritage & Archaeological Research Practice (HARP) joined forces with the Ancrum and District Heritage Society (ADHS) to investigate the remains of a former Bishop’s Palace (of the bishops of Glasgow) located in an agricultural field at the eastern end of the village of Ancrum in the Scottish Borders. We were joined by a team of international students from North America, Australia and Europe who were taking part in a field school to hone their archaeological skills. Volunteers from ADHS and the local community also had a chance to take part in the excavations, and a visit from pupils from Ancrum Primary School was facilitated by Archaeology Scotland. But what were we hoping to find? Ancrum in historical documents 19th century translations of the cartularies of Glasgow…

The 1872 Education Act (Scotland) introduced a range of new duties for teachers, including a formalised curriculum, compulsory attendance up to thirteen, and extensive annual reporting on performance of the scholars by new local school boards, and by His Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI). A national system of teacher training was developing. The weekly entries in the logbooks of Baligarve Public School for 1880-1925, which are preserved in the Isle of Lismore Museum Archive, give unique insights into how a schoolmaster tackled the challenges of these years, emerging with the respect of the community in spite of his lack of Gaelic. James Thomson Wilson was born on 10 August 1852 into very modest circumstances in the village of Southmuir near Kirriemuir, Angus. His mother, Elizabeth McNicol, was a linen weaver and, according…

This is the story of an ill-starred romance against the background of a colonial war, which emerges from an archive collection in National Records of Scotland. Some 30 years ago, I was cataloguing papers of the Waring of Lennel family.There was some political material relating to Walter Waring, a Liberal and later Conservative MP, but most of the letters were to his wife, Lady Clementine Waring.They seemed at first what one of my older colleagues dismissed as ‘women’s correspondence’, by which he meant trivial. But I quickly realised this was a significant collection. Many of the letters were from the First World War, when Lady Clementine, against her husband’s wishes, turned the family home, Lennel House, into an auxiliary hospital for officers. Several who convalesced there wrote to her after…

Personal stories behind Second World War maps A new display at the National War Museum in Edinburgh Castle explores the purpose, importance and personal significance of military maps in the Second World War. Between 1939 and 1945, over 36 million photographs and 342 million maps were produced by the British armed forces alone. However, the many maps and photographs in the exhibit have changed purpose from their original use. No longer a vital tool in directing troops or devising a plan for escape, they are now mementos and memories, kept alongside medals and photographs, acting as a marker to say, ‘I was here’. Amongst the more unusual objects is a silk dress made from escape and evade maps, on loan from Worthing Museum and Art Gallery. Fabric maps were issued…

Music is increasingly recognised as an important part of our health and wellbeing. It has the power to transport us away from everyday stress and anxiety, and is used in innovative programmes designed to improve both mental and physical health. Although modern ‘music therapy’ can be traced to the 1940s, the connection between music, health and wellbeing dates back much further. In the 19th century, as public provision for mental health was put in place via large scale networks of psychiatric hospitals, music emerged as a key feature. At the Crichton Royal Institution just outside Dumfries in 1841, concerts became the foremost entertainment for patients. The resident physician, William Browne, records that the Dumfries brass band performed several concerts during the winter to around 50 patients. In the summer, however,…

The collection presents a new way of examining the significance of Mary, queen of Scots. What insights did this approach reveal? The collection brings together scholars from across a wide range of disciplines - history, art history, Scottish literature, and media, heritage and museum studies – to focus on Mary’s cultural afterlife – it starts with Mary’s death. It focuses on how Mary has been remembered in not just text and literature but in art, objects, commemorative items and even buildings. It reveals that, while Mary had only a very short personal reign as a queen, her cultural impact over centuries has been far more important than her brief political impact as queen of Scots. One key way Mary has endured is in her image. Its iconography of black dress,…

Evidence indicating that Brodick Castle was protected by an early 17th century drawbridge has been uncovered by the National Trust for Scotland during a programme of conservation work. Blocked vertical slots above the entrance to the castle’s battery were identified during repointing work to its exterior. These are thought to be the location for the chains used in the operation of a drawbridge. Further confirmation of the drawbridge was discovered in the Arran castle’s documented accounts, where an entry recording the purchase and transportation of timbers from Irvine in 1608 suggests these would have been used in the construction of the traditional defensive structure. Derek Alexander, Head of Archaeology at the National Trust for Scotland, said: “We’re excited to share the discovery… The amazing piece of history was revealed while…

Dr Murray Cook and Dominic Farrugia uncover the secrets of Stirling’s historic burgh wall, from its strategic construction in the 16th century to its sur vival amidst changing landscapes Archaeology is of course the study of the past through the objects and structures left behind. Sometimes discoveries come from the turn of a spade or even a page but just occasionally from turning a corner on a winter’s walk. The royal burgh of Stirling was established in around 1124 by David I to help secure the Forth crossings and to bind the newly acquired southern Scotland to its older core to the north. The importance of Stirling to Scotland is reflected by its burgh walls, which are famously the best preserved in the country. They were designed and built in…

In 2022, Edinburgh University Press published what must be the definitive edition of Allan Ramsay’s once hugely influential pastoral comedy and ballad opera The Gentle Shepherd.The product of years of detailed research and assiduous editing by Steve Newman and David McGuinness, it reproduces the text along with analysis of all the sources and other material. Ramsay’s romanticised tale of 18th century rural life is now little known and rarely performed. However, in the 1700s it was hugely popular, enjoying hundreds of performances all over the UK, particularly in London. Even throughout the 19th century, The Gentle Shepherd remained a popular work for performance in provincial towns and villages throughout the Scottish Lowlands, in English cities and even overseas in the US, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In August 2022,…

The elephant which died in Dundee in 1706 had, as we have already seen in the first part of this study, travelled far and wide for two decades. She had delighted and astonished audiences all across Europe with her tricks, and had passed through the hands of at least five different keepers. Along the way, she had shared the stage with other performers – mostly of the human variety, but also from the animal kingdom. Her last months had probably not been happy ones: she had had to endure the rigours of a Scottish winter, tramping across weary miles north and south; and it would appear that she was malnourished most of the time. Small wonder that she collapsed from exhaustion that evening of 26 April more than three hundred…

If there is one industry that most family historians had relatives involved it was farming.You may have had farmers or form workers. Sometimes in the census they are described as agricultural workers (male and female) or the occupation might be specifically given as farm grieve, cattleman, ploughman etc. In my own family history, I have either direct ancestors or siblings of ancestors who held all these rolls. So how do you go about researching their employment? Edited by T.M Devine, Farm Ser vants and Labour in Lowland Scotland 1770-1914, first published in 1984, and Ian Levitt & Christopher Smout’s The State of the Scottish Working-Class in 1843, published in 1979, are both excellent guides to Scottish farm workers employment. From the statutory records and census returns you may obtain the…

Latest investigations by National Trust for Scotland archaeologists at Culloden Battlefield have recovered a wide range of artefacts, including a buckle they believe to be from the shoe of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who led the 400-strong Camerons regiment into the battle. NTS archaeologists unearthed large quantities of musket balls, grapeshot and an intriguing damaged buckle, thought to belong to leading Jacobite, ‘The Gentle Lochiel’, injured in the battle. The large number of musket balls and grapeshot unearthed by the conservation charity’s archaeologists and volunteers in a small 60 sq m area close to the government frontline vividly illustrates the intensity of the fighting on the Jacobite right wing. The charity revealed the findings, made during test pit excavation and metal detecting, as it marked the 278th anniversary of the…

In the second half of the 18th century, estate maps became popular mediums for Scottish landowners to physically and literally ‘unearth’ possible avenues for the socio-economic transformation of their estates. Surveyors had become rapidly professionalised in Scotland and offered their expertise to landowners seeking to commercialise their estates by building enclosures, increasing their rents, or maximising the productivity of their land. These changes were known as ‘improvements’, reflecting landowners’ entrenched belief that commercialising their estates would help achieve economic progress for the nation as a whole. In 1772, surveyor William Morison was hired to survey the estate of Lochiel, one of the estates annexed by the British crown a few years earlier following the defeat of the final Jacobite rising of 1745-6. The government wanted to use this opportunity to…

Scotland’s coastline has witnessed countless shipwrecks with vanished cargoes and a terrifying loss of life. Most of these very personal seafaring tragedies are long forgotten, but occasionally there exists a memorial or plaque recording major disasters or local parishioners lost at sea. Much rarer are any reminders of the smaller shipwrecks, sadly a very common occurrence in a 19th-century maritime nation. In the northern half of St Mary’s churchyard in Whitekirk, East Lothian is a memorial headstone recording the burial of six mariners, the crew of a Hartlepool collier. The men, most of whom hailed from the north-east of England, drowned in a shipwreck off the Lothian coast in March 1865 during a particularly heavy storm. Over time all six were washed ashore, finding a final resting place in this…

As the Second World war entered its second year, there was a timber shortage in Britain. Before hostilities, Britain had imported 95 per cent of its timber, but as the war progressed and the enemies invaded traditional suppliers or jeopardised the transportation of wood via the U-boat threat, home-grown timber cutting had to be expanded. This article concerns the employment of men of the British Honduran Forestry Unit (hereafter BHFU), who were brought to Scotland to cut timber, and their reception by local people and the authorities in Berwickshire. During the war, thousands of people moved to the rural counties of Berwickshire, Roxburghshire and Selkirkshire. These included prisoners of war, evacuees, munition workers, militar y personnel at an RAF base, Polish troops and timber workers from Australia, New Zealand, Ireland,…

Sewage is released into Scottish rivers more than 30 times a day, being once every 48 minutes or nearly 11,000 times a year. It is a hideous poisonous stink annoying ecologists, swimmers, anglers, rowers and everyone wishing to enjoy the mindfulness afforded by glorious free flowing water tumbling towards the sea. Pollution can also come from other sources: agricultural fertilisers, chicken farm excrement and industrial waste. Demands for pollution to cease are common, as are calls for better regulation and enforcement. Affording such protection to nature is not, of course, a new issue. As far back as August 1866, the court of session heard one especially significant environmental protection case, focused on the River North Esk. The pursuers, landowners with deep historic antecedents, insisted on the right to enjoy pure…