Scottish Burghs Research Articles

Campbeltown Speaks: Small-Town Cinema and the Coming of Sound

The popularity of cinema from its earliest days in small-town settings emphasises the importance of local circumstances in explaining the medium’s success. This article employs surviving business records relating to the Picture House in the Scottish burgh of Campbeltown to explore aspects of cinema-going peculiar to that corner of rural Argyllshire, including a propensity, hitherto unidentified among Scottish audiences, to support the productions of the British film industry. Beyond this, the Picture House has a broader significance. As a monopoly provider of commercial entertainment to an enclosed market, it offers telling insights into a key point of transition for cinema, that from silent to sound film. Placed in the context of national trends, documented by data relating to the taxation of entertainments, Campbeltown provides compelling evidence that the advent of the talkies marked a fundamental discontinuity in the history of the medium at all levels, from the local to the national.

Decretum fuit per burgenses: a fresh perspective on law-making in the medieval Scottish burghs

Historians have long been aware of a text purporting to contain decisions made by the burgesses of four Scottish burghs: Berwick, Roxburgh, Edinburgh and Stirling. This text is internally dated to 1295 or 1296 and purports to lay down rules governing succession to deceased burgesses, some of which have echoes in modern Scots succession law. The text of the decisions has attracted little study, in part because of its complex manuscript tradition. This article draws on important recent work on the Scottish legal manuscript traditions, to explore the transmission of the decisions and what they meant to those who first articulated them. In the process, it also asks about the interaction between the manuscript traditions that transmitted the legal texts and the traditional customary practices of Scottish burghs. These questions may have some bearing on how historians understand the development of the Scottish legal tradition during the medieval period.

The Evolution of Scotland's Towns: Creation, Growth and Fragmentation. Edited by E. Patricia Dennison. Edinburgh University Press. 2018. xvii + 350pp. £24.99.Northern England and Southern Scotland in the Central Middle Ages. Edited by Keith J. Stringer and J. L Angus.Boydell Press. 2017. xvi + 369pp. Price not stated.Medieval St Andrews: Church, Cult, City. Edited by Michael Brown and Katie Stevenson.

The Evolution of Scotland's Towns: Creation, Growth and Fragmentation. Edited by E. Patricia Dennison. Edinburgh University Press. 2018. xvii + 350pp. £24.99.Northern England and Southern Scotland in the Central Middle Ages. Edited by Keith J. Stringer and J. L Angus.Boydell Press. 2017. xvi + 369pp. Price not stated.Medieval St Andrews: Church, Cult, City. Edited by Michael Brown and Katie Stevenson.

Scottish Burgh in the Second Half of the 18th Century (Based on the Minutes of the Elgin Burgh Council)

In this article the researcher analyzes the ties of the burgh of Elgin with the political centre of Great Britain and points out the degree to which burgh life changed in the second half of the 18th century. The burgh rarely came to the attention of historians, and the studies dedicated to the burgh of Elgin contain no theoretical interpretation of observed facts. The authors share the opinion that during the hundred years after the conclusion of the Act of Union the burgh was past its days of prosperity, however, despite downturn it was far from its demise. The basis of the research is formed by the minutes of the burgh council. They share business character and mostly contain decisions taken by the local authorities. Historians make only limited use of the minutes rarely analyzing them. This source allows the researcher to conclude that interactions between Elgin’s local authorities and British central authorities were limited. The minutes reflect Elgin’s contacts with local nobles far more often. Moreover, the article underlines that the local legislation had no overhaul in the second half of the 18th century and developed extensively. The changes in the burgh were not radical either. Notably, the limited transformation of the burgh was most likely driven by lack of funds, since the local population was interested in improving the burgh. For instance, local nobles sporadically gave only a part of the funds necessary for construction works, and the rest was covered by voluntary contributions from the citizens of the burgh.

Cinema for the Common Good: Municipalisation and Mass Entertainment in Early Twentieth-Century Scotland

In the years during and immediately after the first world war, a number of Scottish burghs considered extending their range of activities to take in the provision of entertainment by means of the cinema, the most significant mass entertainment medium of the early twentieth century. In doing so, they sought to make use of a particular Scottish institution, the common good fund. This article explores the thinking, political, economic and cultural, behind this marked expansion in public enterprise. It examines in detail the working of businesses where full responsibility for cinema operations was assumed, paying particular attention to matters of pricing, programming and the disposition of profits, noting also the factors which made this experiment in municipal trading short-lived. Although largely abandoned by the early 1920s, municipal cinema provided a model for more sustained local initiatives and exemplifies Scotland's deep and varied engagement with the moving image across the twentieth century.

The Development of School Libraries in Scottish Burghs Before 1872: A Preliminary Study

The Education (Scotland) Act of 1872 consolidated the provision of education in all types of school in all areas of the country, but particularly in urban areas, many grammar schools, high schools, and academies were already well established. Although libraries had been included from early times in such educational establishments as cathedrals and monasteries and in their subsequent grammar schools, hitherto little has been known about their existence. A preliminary survey of available sources shows that although only glimpses are sometimes afforded, there is more accessible information than was previously thought. From the seventeenth century onwards, libraries became more prevalent in a variety of urban schools, and details can be gleaned about book stocks, buildings, and finance. Following suggestions included in this basic survey, it should be possible to pursue more detailed research into aspects of their administration.

Introduction: communities, courts and Scottish towns

ABSTRACTThis short essay sets the context for the special section on communities, courts and Scottish towns. Scottish burgh records generally, and Aberdeen's UNESCO recognized collection in particular, are considered in light of their legal character. The changing features of pre-modern political society between the fifteenth century and the early nineteenth century are introduced as a shared problem for investigation, and an ancien régime framework is examined as a comparative tool in this field. A vital concern of these articles is with the construction and sometimes contested use of vocabularies of law and authority, privileges and liberties, and ideas of urban ‘community’. Courts at the municipal level, and in the world beyond the burgh, are appreciated as legal and governmental fora. The ambition of this special section is to prompt European comparisons, and encourage greater dialogue with and consideration of Scottish urban records in future research.

A milestone in medieval urban archaeology - David Perry, Hilary Murray, Tom Beaumont James & Nicholas Q. Bogdan. Perth High Street: archaeological excavation 1975–77. Fascicule 1: the excavations at 75–95 High Street and 5–10 Mill Street, Perth. xii+242 pages, 166 colour and b&w illustrations, 14 tables, CD. 2010. Perth: Tayside and Fife Archaeological Committee; 978-0-9561783-4-3. - Derek W. Hall &

A milestone in medieval urban archaeology - David Perry, Hilary Murray, Tom Beaumont James & Nicholas Q. Bogdan. Perth High Street: archaeological excavation 1975–77. Fascicule 1: the excavations at 75–95 High Street and 5–10 Mill Street, Perth. xii+242 pages, 166 colour and b&w illustrations, 14 tables, CD. 2010. Perth: Tayside and Fife Archaeological Committee; 978-0-9561783-4-3. - Derek W. Hall & numerous other contributors. Perth High Street: archaeological excavation 1975–77. Fascicule 2: the ceramics, the metalwork and the wood. xi+400 pages, 217 colour and b&w illustrations, 9 tables. 2012. Perth: Tayside and Fife Archaeological Committee; 978-0-9561783-6-7. - P.Z. Dransart & numerous other contributors. Perth High Street: archaeological excavation 1975–77. Fascicule 3: the textiles and the leather. xv+383 pages, 169 colour and b&w illustrations, 14 tables. 2012. Perth: Tayside and Fife Archaeological Committee; 978-0-9561783-6-7. - G.W.I. Hodgson & numerous other contributors. Perth High Street: archaeological excavation 1975–77. Fascicule 4: living and working in a medieval Scottish burgh. Environmental remains and miscellaneous finds. x+169 pages, 65 colour and b&w illustrations, 40 tables, CD. 2011. Perth: Tayside and Fife Archaeological Committee; 978-0-9561783-5-0. - Volume 88 Issue 340

Was there a British Georgian town? A comparison between selected Scottish burghs and English towns

This article examines the nature of Scottish urban ambition during the Enlightenment period, through assessing the pattern of public building construction in selected burghs against the general historiography of Georgian towns. Using principally Scottish burgh council minutes and contemporary publications, it studies the improvement agenda as the context for civic building, and questions whether it provided a discernible process and chronology for the construction activity. In reviewing the symbolic role of public buildings in particular, the article ponders whether there was indeed a British urban experience toward the end of the first century of parliamentary union. [1] It concludes that both in the historically different Scottish urbanism and the distinctive manner in which Scots burghs responded to improvement, the urban experience north and south of the border was significantly different.

Urban morphology and medieval burgh development in Edinburgh and Elgin

Presented here are the results of a study to assess the potential of urban morphology to make a continuing contribution to the understanding of urban development in the Scottish burghs and to provide helpful input to associated archaeological studies. Use is made of recent cartographically based evidence of the high degree of consistency and stability to be found in the configuration of the burgage plots and foreland lines in Scottish burghs.
 To do this, four carefully selected aspects of the urban development, one in Edinburgh and three in Elgin, were examined. The two Scottish burghs were selected for their similarity of layout along a single main street, providing a relatively simple urban pattern. For Edinburgh, appropriate morphological information, which is available from earlier studies, is summarised. Similar information for Elgin was compiled as part of this study and the results are set out.
 The case is made that urban morphology still has much to offer in the study of Scottish urban history and archaeology. In addition, having reviewed recent archaeological reports, it is suggested that archaeology has great potential to provide a strong contribution to the better understanding of the urban morphology of Scotland.

Military Power and the Scottish Burghs, 1625-1651

AbstractHistorians are generally agreed that Scotland’s limited military capability was transformed after 1639, when expatriate mercenaries, with experience of Continental European conflicts, returned home to take part in the wars against Charles I. There has been less interest in how the creation of centrally-coordinated standing forces affected Scottish society. This article focuses on the experiences of Scotland’s burghs, where traditional military practices remained a feature of civic life, at least in the larger urban centers, during the early decades of the seventeenth century. These practices informed the way in which burghs responded to the call to arms from 1639. Despite tensions with landed neighbors, burghs were not wholly subsumed into the shires and they retained a measure of their distinctiveness as military units. Burghal autonomy was severely tested from the mid-sixteen-forties, not only by the demands of central government but also by the physical presence of soldiers in the midst of the urban community. This essay will explore the strategies employed by civic leaders to protect the community from violence and exploitation, while also maintaining their own authority and status. It will be tentatively suggested here that the social and political structures of civic life proved surprisingly resilient under the unprecedented pressures placed upon them during the sixteen-forties.

Burgage plot patterns and dimensions in four Scottish burghs

A comparison is reported of cartographic studies that have been made of the burgage plots in Edinburgh, Canongate, St Andrews and Perth. The results confirm and extend those of earlier studies of St Andrews and Perth. In particular, the presence of plots differing in width by quarter-widths is confirmed. The earlier reports of some plots not complying with this scheme are discussed, and it is demonstrated that the plot widths in the four burghs all do in fact conform. It is suggested that the plots were set out to these varying widths rather than the pattern resulting form later subdivision and amalgamation of plots of uniform width. Possible measurement units which may have been used in setting out the plots are discussed. A systematic pattern of the closes used to access the backlands is reported and it is suggested that a degree of central control is likely to have been exercised over their positioning.

Imagining the "Scottis Natioun": Populism and Propaganda in Scottish Satirical Broadsides

This essay addresses an intriguing though neglected instance of sixteenthcentury political satire. During the late 1560s and early 1570s a series of broadside poems papered the market crosses and kirk doors of Scottish burghs. The broadsides first appeared in Edinburgh in 1567 after the sensational murder of the second husband of Mary Queen of Scots, Henry, Lord Darnley, and her rumored affair with the prime suspect, James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell. The early poems depict the Queen as an adulterous, murderous Jezebel who deserves to lose her crown. Mary and her advisors immediately recognized the political threat posed by such broadside literature. On April 19 she and her parliament sought to curb the trend of

The archaeology of burgage plots in Scottish medieval towns: a review

Burgage plots, typically narrow strips of land with a house near the street frontage, are one of the most striking features of the medieval townscape. Archaeological excavations in Scottish burghs over the last twenty-five years have recovered considerable evidence concerning their nature, development and function, and the paper aims to provide an overview of the archaeological evidence for this feature of Scottish burghs. Includes a specialist report on

Crown, Capital, and Metropolis

This article considers the topography of two neighboring Scottish burghs—Edinburgh and Canongate. Sited alongside each other, they sat on a tail-like ridge running down from the volcanic rock that housed Edinburgh’s castle. From the castle, a single street stretched about a mile down to Holyrood Abbey at the east end of the burgh of Canongate. Both the castle and abbey were temporary homes to kings and queens of Scotland throughout the Middle Ages; by the sixteenth century, Holyrood was established as a palace and Edinburgh was the sole capital of Scotland. This royal palace with an urban court was the home of Scots kings, whereas Edinburgh housed the tools of a capital—parliament, law courts, and university. The two burghs became the stage for ceremony—royal entries, processions, and “riding the parliament” followed the processional route, the Royal Mile. Topography determined that route and does so to this day.

Evil Necessaries and Abominable Erections: Public Conveniences and Private Interests in the Scottish City, 1830–1870

This study of the provision of public conveniences in four large Scottish burghs explores the governance of public space. Conveniences were the responsibility of local government and were erected to bring moral and environmental order to city streets by providing a confined and private area for urination and defecation. Yet private citizens had an acknowledged right to demand the erection or removal of conveniences in order to bring the condition of public space into line with that of adjacent homes, businesses, and institutions. The burgh authorities therefore had to balance the interests of the wider population against those of individual residents and businessmen when attempting to introduce this sanitary reform.

What's in a Name? Language, Image, and Urban Identity in Early Modern Perth

AbstractThe corporate identity of the Scottish royal burgh of Perth was in the Middle Ages tied closely to its patron saint, John the Baptist. After the reformation of 1559-60 had abolished all veneration of saints, this identification did not disappear. The town was still called Sanctjhonstoun, the festivals of the Baptist continued to serve as calendar dates, and the St. John's bell continued to call parishioners to the kirk. Even more striking, images of the Baptist survived — on the bells, in the hammermen's silver marks, and in the town seal. Protestant usage would eventually shift the meanings associated with the Baptist, but the saint would never disappear entirely from the town's constructed identity.

The Union of 1707, Integration and the Scottish Burghs: The Case of the 1720 Food Riots

Between the end ofjanuary and the middle of March 1720 a series of riots raged along Scotland's east coast. Appearing first in the south of Fife they spread like 'a fire or Contagion' to engulf Dysart (26 January), Methil, Leven, Elie and Pittenweem (2 and 3 February), Anstruther (5 Febru ary), Kingsbarns and Crail. The 'disease' worked northwards to Dundee and westwards alongside the River Forth, spreading to Valleyfield and Kincardine, and on or around 17 February, Blackness, Bo'ness and Linlithgow, not far from the capital city of Edinburgh. Its course was exhausted only after outbreaks of disorder in Montrose (14 March) and Arbroath (19 March).* Impressive as this list is, it does not capture the full geographical extent of the disturbances. In the Fife burghs, crowds were swollen by the inhabitants of adjacent villages such as Cellardyke, Markinch, St Monans and Buckhaven, who were drawn into the main centres of disorder. The confusion and ambiguity of the legal records from which much of the evidence of the disturbances is drawn also mean

‘To Solemnize His Majesty's Birthday’: New Perspectives on Loyalism in George II's Britain

The importance of loyalism or loyal feelings in George II's Scotland has too often been passed over or ignored by historians, leading, in some important recent studies of Scottish Jacobitism, to a distorted view of patterns of political allegiance in Scotland in this period. This article explores a crucial focus and manifestation of loyal sentiment in Scotland during this period: celebration of the monarch's birthday. The special nature of this occasion is underlined through comparison with political calendars in England and Wales, and an extended analysis is offered of the various and changing political meanings which these celebrations possessed in Scotland. In late 1745, with Jacobite forces occupying or close to many Scottish burghs, so widely understood were the rituals and practices of this day that it offered loyal Scots, from a cross‐section of urban society, a perfect opportunity to demonstrate their allegiance to their Hanoverian king and their repugnance for the Stuart cause. Another important conclusion is that, contrary to what has been asserted by several historians, royal days remained a very important and vital part of the political calendar in many parts of Britain throughout George II's reign. This provides further evidence of the deep roots of enthusiasm for Protestant patriotic monarchy in eighteenth‐century Britain. It was a complex of emotions which was often frustrated and only sporadically glimpsed under George II, but which was, nevertheless, as the popular response to the accession of George III was to show very clearly, widely influential in shaping perceptions of the British nation and polity.

SIR JOHN RUTHERFURD: A FIFTEENTH CENTURY ABERDEEN BURGESS

Dr. Grant comments that in later medieval Scotland men such asJohn Mercer of Perth and Adam Forrester of Edinburgh founded landed families and that as early as the fourteenth century there was a well established social movement upwards of burgess-administrator-landowner in Scotland.1 This trend reflected the growing political status and economic power of Scottish merchants within late medieval society. In this broad and general social and economic context, Aberdeen, by the fifteenth century, was one of Scotland's premier royal burghs. It had been encouraged and supported in its early development by crown grants, and concessions encompassing both local and overseas trading privileges together with substantial town owned landed assets. Subsequent economic growth was maintained by the supply of commercial products from the burgh's extensive agricultural hinterland, supporting a vigorous commercial life at a domestic and foreign level. This picture is partly supported by some fragmentary tax evidence for Scottish burghs north of the River Forth for the years 1485, 1495 and 1535. They help demonstrate both Aberdeen's regional and national economic pre-eminence in the later middle ages as shown in Table 1.