Monuments Record Research Articles

From Beyond the Devil's Beef Tub: A Note from Dumfries and Galloway

T h e S c o t t i s h G e o r g i a n S o c i e t y ( s g s ) was founded in Edinburgh 50 years ago in response to Edinburgh University proposals for demolishing George Square and rebuilding modern university facilities. The building industry at that time was recovering from the loss of architects and skilled tradesmen during the war years. In South-West Scotland, local government, in those days, was in the hands of the county councils of Dumfriesshire, the Stewartry and Wigtownshire, the large burgh of Dumfries and 15 small burgh councils, each a housing authority in its own right. With staff shortages, some of the early post-war housing schemes were based on pre-war designs made available by the rias, and housing layouts were prepared by consultants like Frank Mears from Edinburgh, who was also planning consultant to Dumfries Town Council and Dumfriesshire County Council at the time when planning committees were set up under the 1948 Planning Act to establish development control. The Planning Act introduced the control of buildings of architectural and historic interest. The Scottish Development Department, responsible for planning in Scotland, initiated the survey of buildings to be listed guided by Ian Lindsay as Chief Investigator with private architects making local surveys in different parts of the country. In South-West Scotland, draft lists became available in the late 1950s and 1960s but the first list to become statutory in Dumfries and Galloway was the one for Dumfries Burgh issued in 1972. The sgs soon established itself to comment and make representations on proposals relating to listed buildings. Carnsalloch House north of Dumfries, designed by Isacc Ware in 1758, had received grant for repairs, was for sale and was in danger of demolition. Terregles House, west of Dumfries, and No 6 Bank Street, in the town, were also at risk. So, Colin McWilliam came to photograph these buildings (Figure 7.1). Carnsalloch was saved thanks to John Gladstone of Capenoch who was a Regional Correspondent of the sgs. He persuaded the Cheshire Home Foundation to acquire the house, but unfortunately, now after 40 years, it is again on the market and very much ‘at risk’. Terregles House and No. 6 Bank Street were demolished. Colin McWilliam’s photographs are in the National Monuments Record of Scotland (nmrs) of the Royal Commission and the eighteenth century rainwater head in lead from Bank Street is in the Dumfries Burgh Museum. Building control was in the hands of the Dean of Guild Courts in the towns and a

Peatland Archaeology in Northern Ireland: an evaluation

A desk assessment has been carried out to identify archaeological sites and findspots in peatland locations in Northern Ireland, in order to estimate the potential for further archaeological fieldwork. Sites in or under blanket, raised, fen and marsh peat have been considered. The majority of sites have been identified from information contained in the Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record (NISMR). In addition, all NISMR site locations have been examined in relation to areas of extant peatland, enabling additional sites to be recognised. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs provide further details about sites and finds known from peatlands in the early 19th century. Museum and published catalogues have also been examined to estimate the quantity of finds recovered from peatlands. The combined sources suggest that there are more than 1,000 archaeological sites and 763 findspots currently known from Northern Ireland's peatlands. The majority of the sites are associated with blanket peat, reflecting the greater extent of this peat type in Northern Ireland and the prevalence of stone monuments there. Sites in raised bogs are less well known, tending to be of timber, and are possibly under-represented in the record. Other lowland peat types probably preserve a range of archaeological sites but survey has not yet been conducted in these environments in Northern Ireland.

A preliminary survey of Gasr Shibna, Benghazi

AbstractThis paper provides a preliminary record of a recently damaged Roman farm and late Roman fortified building (gasr) located in the eastern suburbs of Benghazi. The remains of the farm buildings are briefly described, together with the more substantial remains of the gasr. The site was truncated during the building of a new road, with further damage occurring during the construction of a major water main and the building of new houses. The plight of Gasr Shibna and other sites threatened by development in the outskirts of Benghazi is discussed, with the conclusion that these sites are representative of the ongoing, rapidly increasing and widespread destruction of Libyan cultural heritage by development across the country as a whole. The paper concludes with an appeal for the development of a stronger, well-resourced Department of Antiquities, the establishment of a National Sites and Monuments Record to assist with the curation and protection of ancient sites and improved planning legislation to ensure that future prosperity is not being secured at the cost of Libyan heritage.

Architectural Accessions to the National Monuments Record of Scotland 2004

Architectural Accessions to the National Monuments Record of Scotland 2004

Architectural Accessions to the National Monuments Record of Scotland 2004

Architectural Accessions to the National Monuments Record of Scotland 2004

Peddie & Kinnear's endowed schools: Morrison's Academy, Crieff and Morgan's Hospital, Dundee

Charles Kinnear — a star pupil of David Bryce — joined the thriving architectural practice of John Dick Peddie about 1854, and formed a partnership with him in1856, in order to develop the designs for Edinburgh's Cockburn Street. The approval with which that project was received, even while under construction, resulted in along series of commissions for private houses and public works in Scottish styles. This paper discusses the partners' two great endowed schools, Morrison's at Crieff and Morgan's at Dundee, which they designed when they were still young men. It has been published to celebrate the restoration of Morgan Academy after its devastation by fire in 2001. In that restoration the original drawings for the executed scheme, now held by the National Monuments Record of Scotland, played an important part. However, from a historical perspective, the exceptionally complete survival of drawings for the four earlier schemes provide a unique insight into the development of the design, from the Scots baro...

Sites and Monuments Records and Historic Environment Records in England: is Cinderella finally going to the Ball?

Sites and Monuments Records and Historic Environment Records in England: is Cinderella finally going to the Ball?

Peddie and Kinnear's Hydropathics

Peddie and Kinnear designed three of the great hydropathics, Dunblane, Craiglockhart and Callander. Although their life-spans as curative institutions were remarkably short, as a building type they represent the genesis of the Scottish leisure industry. Using the drawings in the Dick Peddie and McKay Collection at the National Monuments Record of Scotland, this paper traces their development, with special concentration on changes in the treatment rgime, and on the finances of the companies that built them.

Architectural Accessions to the National Monuments Record of Scotland 2002

Architectural Accessions to the National Monuments Record of Scotland 2002

James Shearer and the Dunfermline Advisory Town Plan, 1946

The cataloguing of the Shearer and Annand Collection at the National Monuments Record of Scotland has focussed attention on James Shearer as an architect. His role as a town planner has yet to receive similar posthumous recognition. Through an evaluation of his major planning achievement, the Dunfermline Advisory Town Plan of 1946, this paper aims to explore Shearer's planning theories, the attention they received, and their effect on the future of Dunfermline.1

Trophies and tombstones: Commemorating the Roman soldier

This paper explores the commemoration of the Roman soldier both in peacetime and in war. Hundreds of tombstones and funerary monuments record the life and death of Roman military personnel, but the vast majority of these monuments appear to commemorate soldiers who died in camp rather than on the battlefield. How were the victims of warfare disposed of and in what ways were the graves marked and the loss of life recorded? In comparison with the Greek world there seems to have been little desire to record the individual sacrifices made in Roman warfare. Triumphs and trophy monuments were methods of recording victories but not the true carnage of battle. Here this public, cleaned-up image of warfare is placed alongside the practicalities of disposing of the dead and the sense of public loss. The paper also evaluates the extent to which individual identity (as celebrated by peacetime military tombstones) was subsumed to the state in times of conflict and then explores the few exceptional occasions when 'war memorials' that commemorated and named the dead were constructed.

Getting it together on-line: HEIRNET and Internet-based resource discovery tools for the Historic Environment

This article looks at the possibilities, opportunities and the difficulties of bringing together content about the historic environment on the Internet. Based on the experiences of HEIRNET (the Historic Environment Information Resources Network - a network of organisations from across the heritage sector) it looks at initiatives that are exploring the evolution of an integrated information environment in which archaeologists might interact with resources drawn from different organisations. HEIRNET was formed in 1998 in recognition that increasing numbers of individuals and organisations are creating valuable information resources about different aspects of the historic environment and that both conservation managers and researchers faced difficulties in accessing these resources. HEIRNET has responded with a number of initiatives. The creation of an Internet-based register of historic environment information resources is intended to help users to discover potentially interesting resources and, by providing up-to-date contact details, to help people to make use of those resources. HEIRNET members have also been working together to explore the development of a web-portal for the historic environment - HEIRPORT. This portal exploits computer communications technology to enable users to carry out simultaneous searches of four geographically separate databases: the Archaeology Data Service, the National Monuments Record for Scotland, the Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network and the Portable Antiquities programme. This article looks at what is involved in developing these resources - the metadata, the communications protocols used and the importance of co-operation between individuals and communities. This article will particularly interest: * People who are interested in accessing heritage datasets for research * Heritage organisations, Museums and Libraries considering making data sets available through web-portals * People who are interested in inter-operability Key points: * Collection level description and historic environment data sets * Using the Z39.50 communications protocol * Open Archives Initiative metadata harvesting * Inter-operable systems and people * On-line examples of web-resources

Gerard Baldwin Brown (1849-1932): the recording and the preservation of monuments.the recording and preservation of monuments

Account of the life and work of a pioneer in the preservation and restoration of ancient monuments.

Architectural Accessions to the National Monuments Record of Scotland 2001

This selective annual summary ofarchitect-related additions to the collections of the National Monuments Record of Scotland (nmrs) is intended to highlight the availability of key source material as it enters the public domain. This collaboration of the Society and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments ofScotland (rcahms) began with Architectural Heritage X, which in turn followed on from the list provided in Rebecca M. Bailey's Scottish Architects' Papers: a source book (Rutland Press, 1996). The arrangement follows that set out in the nmrs publication A Guide to the Collections (1991), which describes acquisitions between 1941 and 1991. Four collections of general interest to researchers should also be noted, all of which contain unpublished information: the files of the Buildings of Scotland Research Unit covering Argyll and Bute (Accession Number: 20011150); nadfas Records of Church Furnishings for the Church of the Holy Rude, Stirling (Accession Number: 20011101) and the Church of the Good Shepherd, Edinburgh (Accession Number: 20011201); a photographic collection relating to the research work on garden buildings by Dr Scott Cooper (Accession Number: 20011198) and further files relating to the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes (Accession Number: 20011200). The summary includes collections acquired by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (rias) which are held in the nmrs, as well as material that has come to the nmrs through the Scottish Architects' Papers Preservation Project (sappp). A comprehensive list of architectural and archaeological accessions to the nmrs is published at the end of every government financial year (April—March) in the rcahms Annual Review that is available from the nmrs. While some of the collections listed have not yet been catalogued, all are available by appointment with Veronica Steele.

Drawings on the Past: The Edinburgh College of Art (1906–15)

Alistair Rowan was Principal of Edinburgh College of Art from May 1990 to December 2000 and one of his first public lectures after his appointment related to the college building, covering both political and architectural aspects of its history.1 Inspired by his association and that lecture, this paper employs the cache of drawings of the College in the Dick Peddie ScMcKay Collection at the National Monuments Record of Scotland to document the evolution of its design and to offer an insight into the requirements of a complex building project at the turn of the twentieth century.

Comparison of the maritime Sites and Monuments Record with side‐scan sonar and diver surveys: A case study from Rathlin Island, Ireland

AbstractRathlin Island, off the north coast of Ireland, has a history of settlement and seafaring from the Late Mesolithic period to the present day. The maritime Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) for Rathlin indicates many wrecking incidents. In 1999, a reconnaissance side‐scan sonar survey confirmed the presence of 46 targets of possible archaeological potential around Rathlin Island. Thirteen of these anomalies were positively identified as shipwrecks. Of the remaining 33 targets, nine were dived on in order to ground‐truth the geophysical data. A successful and rapid methodology of ground‐truthing side‐scan sonar data for archaeological purposes was developed. The results confirmed the presence of a Danforth Anchor at one site, while the remaining anomalies were identified as geological features. The results from the side‐scan survey and diver‐truthing exercise enhanced the existing maritime SMR. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

PATOIS: Information architectures, learning, and teaching for the historic environment

The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) is funded by JISC and AHRB to support research, learning and teaching with high quality and dependable digital resources. Since its foundation in 1996, the ADS has made available online a whole range of digital data sets that have been used within research and teaching. The diverse and growing catalogue of data sets includes the National Monuments Record of Scotland, back‐runs of the Council for British Archaeology Research Reports and the Archway Table of Contents and Journal Locator tools. It includes discrete but extensive archives from archaeological fieldwork and research.

Architectural Accessions to the National Monuments Record of Scotland 2001

Architectural Accessions to the National Monuments Record of Scotland 2001

Architectural Accessions to the National Monuments Record of Scotland 2000

Architectural Accessions to the National Monuments Record of Scotland 2000

English Hospitals, 1660-1948: A Survey of Their Architecture and Design (review)

This study is the elegant façade of a much greater building. It is based on a survey of English hospitals carried out between 1991 and 1994 by staff of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England. Three teams of two investigators based in different parts of the country compiled an archive containing information on some two thousand hospital sites, many of them now only map references to long-demolished institutions. The survey covered the entire range of hospital types, including the buildings of the armed forces. Each site was entered in a database, and an associated file was created containing a brief report, Ordnance Survey maps, available documentation, and photographs both early (some very early) and modern (including aerial). The archive is publicly accessible at the National Monuments Record Centre, Swindon, Wiltshire. A county-by-county list of the sites appears as an appendix to this volume.