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CULTURAL CHANGE IN PROVINCIAL SCOTTISH TOWNS, c. 1700–1820*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2011

BOB HARRIS
BOB HARRIS*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
*
Worcester College, Oxford OX1 2HBbob.harris@worc.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

In the decades which immediately followed the union of 1707, most Scottish towns saw limited economic and cultural change. The middle of the eighteenth century, however, marked the beginnings of a new provincial urban dynamism in Scotland, which, from the 1780s or so onwards, was accompanied by far-reaching and rapid cultural change. This article seeks first to establish the scope, nature, and geography of this cultural transformation before discussing its wider historical significance, not only for our view of modern Scottish urbanization but in terms of patterns of urban change within the British Isles in the long eighteenth century. It is a story in part of convergence on Anglo-British cultural norms, but more saliently of the emergence of an increasingly British cultural synthesis, albeit one with distinctively Scottish elements. Another underlying purpose of the article is to re-direct views of Scottish urbanization away from Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen and on to a group of towns which hitherto have barely featured in discussions of British urbanization in this period.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 105 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

This article is a product of an AHRC-funded project into Scottish towns and urban society in the age of the enlightenment, of which the author is the principal investigator. He would like to thank his colleagues on this project, Professors Charles McKean and Chris Whatley, for comments made on an earlier version, and Drs Nathalie Rosset and Robin Usher for their diligence in the archives. He is also very grateful for the helpful comments of the journal's two anonymous reviewers of the initial submission, and the skilful editorial interventions and advice of Dr Clare Jackson.

References

1 The other histories were David Paton, The history of Dunfermline: gather'd from good autority [sic] personal knowledge and hear-say (1813); John Fernie, A history of the town and parish of Dunfermline (Dunfermline, 1815).

2 As described in Ebenezer Henderson, The annals of Dunfermline and vicinity from the earliest authentic period to the present time ad 1069–1878 (Glasgow, 1879).

3 Stobart, Jon, ‘Culture versus commerce: societies and spaces for elites in eighteenth-century Liverpool’, Journal of Historical Geography, 28, (2002), pp. 471–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See e.g. Joyce M. Ellis, The Georgian town, 1680–1840 (Basingstoke, 2001), and, more recently, Peter Clark, European cities and towns, 400–2000 (Oxford, 2009), chs. 7–11.

5 The seminal work on the English urban renaissance remains Peter Borsay's The English urban renaissance: culture and society in the provincial town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989).

6 The towns are Arbroath, Ayr, Brechin, Cromarty, Cupar, Dumfries, Dundee, Dunfermline, Forfar, Greenock, Haddington, Inverness, Irvine, Kelso, Kilmarnock, Montrose, Paisley, Perth, Selkirk, and Stirling.

7 R. A. Houston, Social change in the age of the enlightenment: Edinburgh, 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1994); T. M. Devine and Gordon Jackson, eds., Glasgow, i: Beginnings to 1830 (Manchester, 1995); E. Patricia Dennison, David Ditchburn, and Michael Lynch, eds., Aberdeen before 1800: a new history, (East Linton, 2002).

8 See Ian D. Whyte, ‘The function and social structure of Scottish burghs of barony in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, in Antoni Maçzak and Christopher Smout, eds., Gründung und bedeutung kleinerer städte im nördlochen Europa das frühen neuzeit (Weisbaden, 1991), pp. 11–30.

9 Ian D. Whyte, ‘Urbanization’, in T. M. Devine and J. R. Young, eds., Eighteenth-century Scotland: new perspectives (East Linton, 1999), p. 188.

10 Michael Lynch, ‘Continuity and change in urban society, 1500–1700’, in R. A. Houston and I. D. Whyte, eds., Scottish society 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 85–117; idem, ‘Urbanization and urban networks in seventeenth-century Scotland: some further thoughts’, Scottish Economic and Social History, 12, (1992), pp. 24–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Whyte, ‘Urbanization’, p. 183. For the fortunes of small towns, see Peter Clark, ‘Small towns 1700–1840’, in Peter Clark, ed., The Cambridge urban history of Britain, ii: 1540–1840 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 733–73.

12 See Jon Stobart, Andrew Hann, and Victoria Morgan, The consumption of space: leisure and shopping in the English town, c. 1680–1830 (Abingdon, 2007), ch. 2.

13 For Aberdeen, see Murray G. H. Pittock, ‘Contrasting cultures: town and country’, in Dennison, Ditchburn, and Lynch, eds., Aberdeen before 1800, pp. 347–73; David Johnson, Music and society in Lowland Scotland in the eighteenth century (London, 1972), pp. 32, 48.

14 Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, p. 376.

15 Frank Boyd, Records of the Dundee stage, from the earliest times to the present day (Dundee, 1886).

16 K. R. Bogle, Scotland's common ridings (Stroud, 2002), pp. 93–4; J. Burnett, Riot, revelry and rout: sport in Lowland Scotland before 1860 (East Linton, 2000), pp. 101, 105; Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, p. 431; Paula Martin, Cupar: a history of a small Scottish town (Edinburgh, 2006), p. 138; Selkirk Council Book, 1704–17, entry for 29 Apr. 1715 and 1717–24, entry for 18 Mar. 1721, Borders Council Archives, Hawick, 1/1/2 and 1/1/3.

17 J. Fairfax-Blakeborough, Racecourses of Scotland: a short history of Ayr, Bogside (Irvine), Edinburgh, Hamilton Park, Kelso, Perth racecourses (London, 1955), p. 91.

18 Johnson, Music and society, p. 44.

19 Burnett, Riot, revelry and rout, p. 111.

20 George Penny, Traditions of Perth, containing sketches of the manners and customs of the inhabitants and notices of public occurrences during the last century (Perth, 1836), p. 117.

21 See the general discussion in Jennifer Macleod, ‘Freemasonry and music in eighteenth-century Edinburgh’, in R. William Weisberger, Wallace McLeod, and S. Brent Morris, eds., Freemasonry on both sides of the Atlantic: essays concerning the craft in the British Isles, Europe, the United States, and Mexico (Boulder, CO, 2002), pp. 123–52.

22 James Miller, The lamp of Lothian: a history of Haddington (Haddington, 1844), p. 490.

23 Dumfries Kirk Session Minutes, 4 Apr. 1751, Dumfries Archive Centre, Dumfries, CH2/537/4.

24 Johnson, Music and society, pp. 180–1.

25 Houston, R. A., ‘Literacy, education, and the culture of print in enlightenment Edinburgh’, History, 78, (1993), pp. 373–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 See Bob Harris, ‘Communicating’, in Elizabeth Foyster and Christopher A. Whatley, eds., The Edinburgh history of everyday life in Scotland (Edinburgh, 2010), pp. 164–90.

27 Robert Carnie, Publishing in Perth before 1807 (Perth, 1960); idem, ‘Provincial periodical publishing in eighteenth-century Scotland: the Dundee experience’ (unpublished paper, Dundee University Archives); W. J. Couper, Millers of Haddington, Dunbar and Dunfermline (Edinburgh, 1914), p. 74.

28 According to data compiled for the Scottish Book Trade Index (www.nls.uk/catalogues/resources/sbti, accessed 23 Mar. 2009), references exist to booksellers in thirty-eight places before 1750, although some were agents, rather than booksellers proper.

29 This conclusion is partly based on analysis of inventories of personal estates drawn up at the death of individuals, although these rarely listed books as part of the estates. Currently, there are no known extant lists of stock held by provincial booksellers for the early eighteenth century.

30 In Dumfries, for example, the coffee house was owned by the town and the lessee furnished with newspapers by the council, an arrangement terminated in 1755 (Dumfries town council minutes, 1752–7, entry for 28 July 1755, Dumfries Archives Centre, A2/16). There is no modern study of the growth of coffee houses in Scotland. In general, however, they were fewer in number than in England and they appear to have lacked the diversity and cultural importance of the London coffee houses during the Restoration.

31 Montrose Burgess Register, Angus Archives, Restenneth, MS 616, pp. 201, 229 (entries for William Leigh, dancing master, 1713 and Joshua Largean, dancing master, 1717); list of persons to be cited to a constable court at 3 o'clock, Thursday, 20 April 1732 (includes John Smyth, dancing master), Perth and Kinross Council Archive, A. K. Bell Public Library, Perth (PKCA), B59/11/8/3.

32 Memorabilia of Inverness, or a chronological list of remarkable occurrences relative to the town and neighbourhood of Inverness (Inverness, 1912), p. 56; Howard, J. V., ‘Herd-boy, court physician, MP, spy: the life of Dr John Hutton of Dumfries’, Journal of the College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 35, (2005), pp. 164–8Google Scholar; Dunstan, Vivienne S., ‘Glimpses into a town's reading habits in enlightenment Scotland: analysing the borrowings of Gray Library, Haddington, 1732–1816’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 26, (2006), pp. 42–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Kaufman, Paul, ‘The rise of community libraries in Scotland’, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 59, (1965), pp. 261–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Ibid., p. 263; Dunstan, ‘Glimpses into a town's reading habits’.

35 Kaufman, ‘The rise of community libraries’, pp. 273–4.

36 Perth town council minutes, entry for 25 Nov. 1723, B59/17/3; Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, p. 388.

37 John Strawhorn, The history of Ayr: royal burgh and county town (Edinburgh, 1989), p. 128.

38 The figures are drawn from George Draffen, Scottish masonic records, 1736–1950: a list of all the lodges at home and abroad (Edinburgh, 1950). See more generally Peter Clark, British clubs and societies, 1580–1800: the origins of an associational world (Oxford, 2000), p. 310.

39 See esp. David Stevenson, Origins of freemasonry: Scotland's century, 1590–1710 (Cambridge, 1988); idem, The first freemasons: Scotland's early lodges and their members (Aberdeen, 1988); Lisa Kahler, ‘The Grand Lodge of Scotland and the establishment of the masonic community’, in Weisberger, McLeod, and Morris, eds., Freemasonry on both sides of the Atlantic, pp. 112–15; and Mark Coleman Wallace, ‘Scottish freemasonry 1725–1810: progress, power and politics’ (Ph.D. thesis, St Andrews, 2007).

40 Wallace, ‘Scottish freemasonry’, esp. p. 94.

41 Ibid., p. 313. Wallace also gives figures for the Aberdeen no. 1 (3) lodge for the period 1736–51. Of the membership in 1736, as many as 43 per cent were gentry; in 1751 they accounted for a smaller percentage, but still 38 per cent (p. 300).

42 Fred Vernon, The history of freemasonry in the province of Roxburgh, Peebles and Selkirkshires (London, 1893), p. 114.

43 J. Grant, History of the lodge St David's (Dundee, 1918).

44 Margaret C. Jacob, Living the enlightenment: freemasonry and politics in eighteenth-century Europe (Oxford, 1991), pp. 44–5.

45 Grant, History of the lodge St David's, p. 12.

46 This conclusion is based on reading lodge histories and extant data on lodge membership held by the Grand Lodge of Scotland in Edinburgh.

47 For the view that economic conditions in the burghs were poor and becoming more so on the eve of union, see Christopher A. Whatley, The Scots and the union (Edinburgh, 2006), esp. pp. 189–96. See also the same author's Scottish society 1707–1830: beyond Jacobitism, towards industrialisation (Manchester, 2000), ch. 2.

48 Whyte, ‘Urbanization’, pp. 189–90.

49 See esp. T. M. Devine, ‘Scotland’, in Clark, ed., The Cambridge urban history of Britain, ii, pp. 151–64; Whyte, ‘Urbanization’, pp. 176–94.

50 A. J. S. Gibson and T. C. Smout, Prices, food and wages in Scotland, 1550–1780 (Cambridge, 1995).

51 Borsay, English urban renaissance, passim.

52 Loretta Timperley, A directory of landownership in Scotland, c. 1770 (Edinburgh, 1976).

53 See Whyte, ‘Urbanization’, p. 191; Nicholas Phillipson, The Scottish whigs and the reform of the court of session, 1785–1830 (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 34–6.

54 Memorabilia of Inverness, p. 70.

55 Christine Leigh Heyrman, Commerce and culture: the maritime communities of colonial Massachusetts, 1690–1750 (New York, NY, 1984); Bruce C. Daniels, Puritans at play: leisure and recreation in colonial New England (Basingstoke, 1995).

56 See inter alia, Penny, Traditions of Perth, pp. 238–46; A general history of Stirling: containing a description of the town and origin of the castle and burgh (Stirling, 1794), pp. 62–3. See also, more generally, Parliamentary Papers, 1835 [30] [31], General report of the commissioners to inquire into the state of the municipal corporations in Scotland, 1835; 1836 [32] [33] [34], Appendix to the general report of the commissioners, 1836. The decline of incorporations in Edinburgh was more advanced than in other Scottish town at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

57 See esp. D. D. McElroy, Scotland's age of improvement: a survey of eighteenth-century literary clubs (Pullman, WA, 1969).

58 Leah Leneman and Rosalind Mitchison, Sin in the city: sexuality and social control in urban Scotland, 1660–1780 (Edinburgh, 1998).

59 On this, see Richard B. Sher, Church and university in the Scottish enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1985).

60 The history of Stirling: from the earliest accounts to the present time (Stirling, 1812), p. 278.

61 Dundee Town Council Minute Book, entry for 9 Aug. 1787, Dundee Archives and Records Centre, Dundee.

62 For the relative failure of the huge Glasgow theatre built by subscription for the enormous sum of £18,500 in 1818, see Richard B. Sher, ‘Commerce, religion and the enlightenment in eighteenth-century Glasgow’, in Devine and Jackson, eds., Glasgow, i, p. 318.

63 Ibid., p. 318.

64 Instructions for the constables appointed by the magistrates, 8 Jan. 1748, PKCA, B59/24/11/13.

65 Robert Brown, The history of Paisley, from the Roman period down to 1884 (2 vols., Paisley, 1886), ii, p. 10.

66 See James C. Dibdin, Annals of the Edinburgh stage (Edinburgh, 1888); Boyd, Records of the Dundee stage.

67 There is no modern study of the rise of Scottish newspapers in this period, but see Harris, Bob, ‘Scotland's newspapers, the French revolution and domestic radicalism (c. 1789–1794), Scottish Historical Review, 84, (2005), pp. 39–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The conclusion about regular attention to metropolitan fashion and events is based on close reading of extant Scottish newspapers for the later Georgian period, including newspapers in Dumfries, Inverness, Greenock, and Ayr.

68 Documents relating to two theatre managers, Richard Wilson and Robert Hamilton, National Library of Scotland (NLS), Acc. 7510.

69 One dimension of this process is described in very stimulating fashion in Richard B. Sher, The enlightenment and the book: Scottish authors and their publishers in eighteenth-century Britain, Ireland and America (Chicago and London, 2006).

70 William St Clair, The reading nation in the romantic period (Cambridge, 2004).

71 As evident from data contained in the Scottish Book Trade Index and Pigot's 1825/6 commercial directory of Scotland.

72 Isaac Forsyth, Memoir of Isaac Forsyth, bookseller in Elgin (London, 1889).

73 George Robertson, Topographical description of Ayrshire; more particularly of Cunninghame (Irvine, 1820), pp. 154, 271.

74 See Table 2, below.

75 Couper, Millers of Haddington, pp. 42, 131.

76 Robertson, Topographical description of Ayrshire, p. 154.

77 K. Manley, A., ‘Scottish circulating and subscription libraries as community libraries’, Library History, 19, (2003), pp. 185–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 Robertson, Topographical description of Ayrshire, p. 385.

79 For a recent discussion, see David Allan, A nation of readers: the lending library in Georgian England (London, 2008).

80 Manley, ‘Scottish circulating and subscription libraries’, passim.

81 Towsey, Mark R. M., ‘“All partners may be enlightened and improved by reading them”: the distribution of enlightenment books in Scottish subscription library catalogues, 1750–c. 1820’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 28, (2008), pp. 20–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 See e.g. the article on the Greenock Subscription Library in the Greenock Advertiser, 15 Jan. 1805 defending proposals to raise fees for subscribers.

83 For Aberdeen, see Shona Vance, ‘Schooling the people’, in Dennison, Ditchburn, and Lynch, eds., Aberdeen before 1800, pp. 316–18.

84 See e.g. Montrose Town Council Minutes, entries for 25 May 1763, petition from David Buchanan who wants to teach navigation in the town; 1 June 1763, council agree to give Buchanan ‘all reasonable Encouragement’; Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline, p. 487, referring to a John Reid's school in the East High Street, established in 1767, and who taught land-surveying, navigation, and the use of globes and whose students came from Burntisland, Inverkeithing, Limekilns, as well as the town.

85 Memorabilia of Inverness, p. 60; Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 21 Oct. 1801.

86 Miller, Lamp of Lothian, p. 458; Memorabilia of Inverness, p. 66.

87 Robertson, Topographical description of Ayrshire, p. 418.

88 As can be traced through notices placed in any of the early nineteenth-century Scottish provincial newspapers.

89 Dundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser, 2 Jan. 1818.

90 See Table 2 below.

91 For an example, see Greenock Advertiser, 4 July 1806.

92 ‘A tour through part of the Highlands of Scotland in 1780. By Jacob Pattison (jun) of University of Edinburgh’, NLS, MS 6322, fo. 62.

93 Paisley had a bowling green from 1758 (Brown, History of Paisley, ii, p. 35); for Kilmarnock, see the item on the Kilmarnock bowling club in The Ayrshire Miscellany, or, Kilmarnock Literary Expositor, 4, 1, 1 May 1818; Cowane's Hospital, Trustees Minutes, 1708–1823, Stirling Council Archives, Stirling, SB5/1/1–5; Montrose Town Council Minutes, entry for 6 July 1768, Angus Archives, M1/1/8; Martin, Cupar, pp. 139–41.

94 The walks around Perth were a subject of frequent comment in contemporary travel accounts and journals. See e.g. NLS, MS 3529, fo. 11; journey to Scotland, 1786, NLS, MS 10991, which notes of Perth that there are ‘many delightful walks round the town’. For Dundee, see History of the town of Dundee (Dundee, 1804), p. 113, where the Ward was described as ‘a large spot of grass, inclosed by a thorn hedge, shaded with trees, and encircled by a pleasant walk, which is well frequented during the salubrity of summer.’ In Inverness, a walk called the ‘Ladies’ Walk' on the banks of Loch Ness was created in 1817 (Inverness Courier, 20 Aug. 1818).

95 Female servants were not necessarily a luxury, but were regularly employed by single householders and middling and lesser tradesmen.

96 Alexander Brown, ‘Journey in Scotland with sketches of some picturesque ruins in that interesting country in two vols.’, NLS, MS 3294–5, i, pp. 131–2.

97 Robert Heron, Observations made in a journey through the western counties of Scotland in the autumn of 1792 (2 vols., Perth, 1799), ii, p. 77.

98 The Ayrshire Miscellany, or, Kilmarnock Literary Expositor, 2, 25 Sept. 1818.

99 Jon Stobart, ‘In search of a leisure hierarchy: English spa towns in the urban system’, in P. Borsay, G. Hirschfelder and R. Mohrmann, eds., New directions in urban history (Münster, 2000), pp. 19–40.

100 Harris, Bob, ‘Towns, improvement and cultural change in Georgian Scotland: the evidence of the Angus burghs, c. 1760–1820’, Urban History, 33, (2006), pp. 195–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 206.

101 See the comment on the social exclusivity of Northern Meeting balls even in the middle of the nineteenth century, recalled in later life in Isabel Harriet Anderson, Inverness before railways (Inverness, 1885), p. 45.

102 The Royal Caledonian Hunt (Edinburgh, 1871).

103 Fairfax-Blakeborough, Racecourses of Scotland, p. 91.

104 Minutes of the Ayr Hunt, NLS, Acc. 5357. The initial limit on membership was forty, a number which was quickly raised to seventy.

105 For a list of subscribers to the fund for building the Montrose academy, see The Montrose, Arbroath and Brechin Review, 30 Sept. 1806, 16, 23 Sept. 1816. For subscribers to the Perth seminaries, see Dundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser, 1 Feb., 26 Apr. 1805, 3 Mar. 1809.

106 Notice for Forfar New Inn, in Edinburgh Evening Courant, 23 Jan. 1792; The Tweeddale Shooting Club: a sequincentenial memoir, 1790–1940, compiled and edited by Captain George Wolfe Murray (Edinburgh, 1945). The Peebles inn cost £3,950, raised in £25 shares.

107 Warren Hastings, ‘Tour in the Highlands, 1787’, NLS 19200 (i–37). According to Hastings, when complete, the inn would have fifty-two rooms ‘of all kinds’.

108 Memorabilia of Inverness, p. 61.

109 For an abortive scheme for a tontine inn in Dundee in the 1790s, see ‘An Introduction to Georgian Dundee’, in Charles McKean, Bob Harris, and Christopher A. Whatley, eds., Dundee: renaissance to enlightenment (Dundee, 2009), p. 148. Tontines were a means of raising capital by which each investor paid into the scheme, receiving an annual dividend on the capital. As investors died, the capital was re-allocated among surviving subscribers.

110 This can be traced in inventories of personal estates compiled at the death of their owners. I intend in future to write in detail about changes to material culture in Scottish towns in this period. However, see Bob Harris, ‘Merchants, the middling sort, and cultural life in Georgian Dundee’, in Dundee: renaissance to enlightenment, McKean et al., eds., pp. 243–67. See also Martin, Cupar, ch. 7.

111 Memorial from the linen manufacturers of Perth, Feb. 1788, The National Archives, Kew, Board of Trade Papers, BT 6/150.

112 The Ayrshire Miscellany, or Kilmarnock Literary Expositor, 4, 8, 19 June 1818.

113 For satirical comment on this, see The Ayrshire Miscellany, 11 June 1819 (on ‘hyperbolical beauties’); 30 July 1819 (on ‘shop loungers’).

114 Maxine Berg, Luxury and pleasure in eighteenth-century Britain (Oxford, 2005).

115 Sher, ‘Commerce, religion and the enlightenment’, pp. 350–1.

116 See Table 4 above. The best general discussion remains R. J. Morris, ‘Voluntary societies and British urban elites, 1780–1850: an analysis’, in Peter Borsay, ed., The eighteenth-century town (London, 1990), pp. 338–60.

117 Towsey, ‘“All partners may be enlightened and improved by reading them”’; Allan, David, ‘Provincial readers and book culture in the Scottish enlightenment: the Perth library, 1784–c. 1800’, The Library, 3, (2002), pp. 367–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

118 The Autobiography of John Galt (2 vols., London, 1833), i, p. 17.

119 Allan, Nation of readers, p. 72.

120 See Allan, ‘Provincial readers and book culture’; Bob Harris, ‘Scottish towns and the enlightenment’ (unpublished paper).

121 The history of Stirling, pp. 293–4.

122 David Allan, Making British culture: English readers and the Scottish enlightenment, 1740–1830 (New York and Abingdon, 2008).