Abstract
These three volumes allow the reader to explore the role of towns in Scotland's historiography at national, regional and local level. The regional assessment benefits from essays which examine wider matters such as rural settlement patterns (Dixon), shielings and common pastures (Winchester), and even language and names (Edmonds and Taylor), thereby providing the urban chapter (Ditchburn) with a contextual framework generally lacking in the other two books. These latter are particularly urban in focus, rarely treating with matters such as hinterlands and resource acquisition. It is worth starting with Stringer and Winchester's volume which owes its publication to a conference organised in Durham in 2012 by the late Richard Britnell. This had the aim of exploring ‘shared elements in the development of socio-political institutions, landscape and agriculture on either side of the Anglo-Scottish border before the onset of the Wars of Independence in 1296’. The book's various chapters, as well as pointing out problems associated with such an exercise (there is for example no standardised cross-national terminology of settlement forms while research agendas in England differ from those in Scotland) nevertheless explore, through historical and archaeological assessment, a socio-political situation likely to foster early urban growth. Study of early medieval ‘Middle Britain’ is a reminder that Scotland's towns developed within an international context and that benefits can accrue from thinking across modern borders which were far less concrete concepts to our forebears. This well-edited and indexed book is a comprehensive volume with the above chapters augmented by others on law, governance and jurisdiction (Stringer), dioceses, cults and monasteries (Burton), parishes and churches (Oram), lords and tenants (Britnell), and fortifications (Dixon and Abraham). The whole has a very useful and thoughtful introduction by Keith Stringer. Dennison's overview of urban development traces its origins to the same period as that covered by the assessment of ‘Middle Britain’. She points out, for instance, that Aberdeen was flourishing as an international trading town early in the twelfth century, ‘long before burghal status was granted’; its enjoyment of a free ‘hanse’ was recognised c.1180 but had existed since at least the time of David I. David pursued a general west European policy of granting burghal status and his burghs were mostly located on or near the east coast, providing useful places for trade with both English and continental partners (pp. 11––13). Indeed, this mercantile aspect of early burghs is stressed by Dennison who is keen to show that ‘constitutional liberties and obligations [were] intended to reinforce existing economic rights’. Dennison, as befits someone closely associated with the Scottish Burghs Survey of Historic Scotland (now Historic Environment Scotland), utilises archaeology, geography, geology and place-name evidence amongst other disciplines to explore the evolution of towns. Her book abounds with details of interest; on pages 80–3 alone she notes evidence for the growth of literacy in towns, links donation to the church with wider concerns such as trading links with Bruges (gild merchants in Dundee and other towns supported an Altar of the Holy Blood, emphasising links with Bruges, the cult centre); and notes the importance of pilgrimage sites at Tain, Whithorn and St Andrews, the last benefiting not only from piety but as a destination for Flemish miscreants seeking to avoid fines (something which is obviously reiterated in the St Andrews volume). A combination of traditional documentary and cartographic sources with landscape survey is particularly telling in Dennison's assessment of urban change following the Reformation and subsequent physical enhancement of social differentiation. In Dunbar she isolates probable post-Reformation elongation of urban tenement plots with former ecclesiastical land ‘cannabalised’ for development (p. 97 and fig. 3.10); at Dalkeith she follows documentary clues for the ‘bizarre layout’ of the present High Street/Musselburgh Road system with truncation of the medieval urban plan illustrated by visible archaeological evidence of blocked house windows and doorways fossilised in the later ducal park wall (pp. 123–5 and figs. 4.5–4.8); and, to show the process of such physical social differentiation continuing into the nineteenth century, she explores the case of Stranraer, a town deliberately separated by a boundary wall and afforestation, at the cost of its traditional cattle pasture, from the newly built Lews Castle of the Matheson family (pp. 126–7). Dennison's volume is handicapped, of course, by the scope of her overview, the range of material available, and the length of the period under discussion. Commendably, when she stops in the twenty-first century, her last image (fig. 8.16) is the splendid Pier Arts Centre of 2007 in Stromness, this modern ‘shed’ addition acknowledging ‘the footprint of the past . . . while preserving the present's best for the future’. It is an appropriate observation of the essential and continual dynamic of urban development which is well explored in an accessible, excellently referenced and evidence-rich book. If a further mark of a good book is the number of questions that it raises, then Medieval St Andrews: Church, Cult, City is indeed a good book. Unfortunately, some of the questions are irritating ones: why is there so little discussion of the topography of St Andrews with so little help to the reader who is not familiar in detail with the local geography? Why is ‘the form and area’ of a possible pre-burgh settlement apparently ‘considered’ in figure 1.2 when this figure is merely a sketch entitled ‘St Andrews in the Viking Age’? Why is this caption the only reference to the Vikings in the book even though the image depicts a possible but undiscussed Viking Age port well away from the later medieval harbour? Why do the editors allow one essay to state that the clerical and university population probably accounted for some 15 per cent of the population (Ditchburn, p. 102) while another suggests 10 per cent or more (Ewan, p. 133) without either seeking agreement or a discussion in a footnote? There are numerous other instances of lack of coordination and poor illustration. The book is therefore less of a fully edited set of papers and more of an omnium gatherum covering aspects of the medieval city. The cathedral and its associated buildings and people fares well; the development of the site as a focus of Christian activity from the eighth to the twelfth centuries is cogently laid out by Taylor's assessment of the documentary evidence; Fawcett discusses the ecclesiastical architecture with his customary authority and clarity; Turpie explores likely strategies adopted in the later medieval period to counter waning pilgrim interest in the shrine; Ditchburn charts the ecclesiastical year as experienced by the city; and Campbell argues persuasively that the topography of medieval St Andrews as a whole may have been a deliberate attempt to reflect ‘Rome made manifest’ in Scotland. The city is well served by Ewan's account of everyday life, utilising both documentary and archaeological evidence. However, the lack of a firm editorial hand is again clear; her references both to archiepiscopal rabbit warrens (p. 127) and to secular housing (p. 131) are essentially contradicted by Hall and Smith (pp. 177 and 179 respectively) in the essay on the archaeology of St Andrews. A footnote discussion would have been useful as would an editorial note to explain the inclusion of the 25-page gazetteer of archaeological interventions, a list which is most probably already out of date given likely new interventions on development sites. The short archaeology chapter itself reads as if it was added as a sop to the discipline; it contains much data but little discussion while raising interesting questions; St Andrews, practically alone among North Sea trading sites, seems to have eschewed omnipresent German stonewares. Why? Perhaps this reader is missing the point. The volume is actually full of very good things, nearly all well referenced, and covering a commendably broad range of topics – including a detailed discussion of the medieval maces of St Andrews University (Luxford, in the best-illustrated essay of those presented here). The book is therefore a terrific quarry for those approaching the archaeology and history of the city. It highlights what is known; it raises questions; it suggests future routes of enquiry. It is unfortunate that readers need to determine this for themselves. The editorial introduction is essentially a summary of the information that follows in the various essays and the volume lacks a concluding editorial assessment. Any researcher on St Andrews, however, will nonetheless need this book close by. The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1111/1468-229X.13074.
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