Foyster E., Whatley C.A. A History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1600-1800
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72 Charles McKean
improve: ‘Some give them wood for building a house, a pick and a spade,
with what seed they require for the fi rst year; to sow on any new ground that
they bring into culture; and they are allowed to remain for the fi rst seven
years without paying any consideration except one fowl and twenty eggs.’
92
But in his survey of the entire country, that remained his sole example of that
kind of action.
Most surviving estate structures will post-date the Entail Improvement
Act. The simplest cottages were single storey, with a central entrance, a com-
munal room, including the kitchen, on the one side and a bedchamber, often
with multiple box beds, on the other. Sometimes there might be a coal store
or a privy projecting to the rear. The distinction between this and earlier
practice was that there was no pretence that any part of these houses should
contain livestock. Slightly grander cottages would have a central staircase
up to storage space or further rooms in the attics – and thus exponentially
for houses of higher rankings. However, appearance was sometimes all they
were. For example, Dorothy Wordsworth observed with disdain a new
cottage built for the Ballachulish quarry blacksmith: ‘the shell of an English
cottage left unfi nished, without plaster and with a fl oor of mud’.
93
A decade
later, a similar comparison crossed Southey’s mind as he approached Loch
Venachar in the Trossachs: ‘We saw the skeletons of several Highland cabins
in decay, where the ribs rested on the mud. What new ones had been erected
were better built and of better materials, having stone walls and slate roofs,
like decent English cottages.’
94
THE PLANNED ENVIRONMENT
The most striking exemplars of rural modernisation, however, lay not in
the fermtouns, but in the new towns – that is to say, new plantation villages
laid out to a grid-iron pattern. The great boom in such villages was between
1770 and 1830, and they often sprouted – like Cuminestown, New Pitsligo,
Tomintoul and Aberchirder – upon unforgiving moorland. Excellent exam-
ples of the north-eastern new towns may be seen at Fochabers and Cullen on
the Moray Firth. The dukes of Gordon and earls of Seafi eld, respectively,
had substantial ancient burghs at the entrance to their policies, both with
narrow streets opening out into a market place at the centre with tolbooth
and parish kirk.
95
Few had much good to say about old Cullen. Forsyth
found its houses ‘in general mean and ill-built’, with streets of an ‘irregular
and dirty appearance’.
96
Fochabers was surveyed in 1766–72 and a new grid-
iron town planned more distant from Gordon Castle (Figure 2.11); and fi fty
years later that pattern was replicated at Cullen. In both cases, the new town
straddled the main road from Banff to Elgin in a rectilinear manner, although
in the case of Fochabers the road was realigned to accord with the new
town’s main street. A square at the centre would be adorned with the laird’s
inn (the Gordon Arms and the Seafi eld Arms), the church (save in Cullen’s
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Improvement and Modernisation 73
case since the medieval parish church was retained within the Cullen House
policies) and the factor’s offi ce. The principal street was of regular two-storey
houses, with parallel back streets of lesser cottages. The Lowland equivalent
occurred where small-holdings in central Scotland were cleared to allow for
agricultural improvement, the former occupiers forced into new towns such
as Blackburn and Whitburn. A similar impulse lay behind the formation of
Tomintoul, Glenlivet, by the duke of Gordon. There was often a mismatch
between the grandiose town plan and the small scale of the cottages that pro-
vided the urban enclosure of these new communities. Stewartfi eld and New
Pitsligo, both in Buchan, exemplify where such new towns wholly failed to
create the ‘weather-protected spaces’ so typical of the ancient burghs – and
wind remains their dominating characteristic.
Feu conditions generally ensured a well ordered, regulated and homogene-
ous settlement (Figure 2.12). Too ordered, perhaps. Dorothy Wordsworth
disliked the appearance of the village of Springfi eld, built by Sir William
Maxwell: ‘a dull uniformity in the houses as is usual when all built at one time,
and belonging to one individual, each just big enough for one or two people to
live in, and in which a family . . . is crammed’.
97
As part of the inducement for
Figure 2.11 Old Fochabers (NAS RHP 2358) by Thomas Milne. ‘Town plan of
old Fochabers’, Moray, surveyed by Thomas Milne in 1773, who noted the inhabitant
of each house. The tolbooth lay in the central square, and the black mass at the bottom
represented the recently rebuilt Gordon Castle. The plan proposed the re-alignment of the
Elgin–Aberdeen road and the laying out of the grid-iron new town on its axis. The old town
was duly excised and its inhabitants relocated to the new. Reproduced by permission of the
National Archives of Scotland.
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74 Charles McKean
urbanites to settle on a barren moor, each plot was graced with a garden almost
large enough to offer self-suffi ciency, and there were usually rights to free peat
(that is, fuel) and to use the local river for both power and bleaching linen. In
the case of New Pitsligo, it seems probable that Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo
permitted his feuars to plunder the Renaissance palace of Pitsligo for materials,
to judge by contemporary reports of internal furnishings and box beds being
made of its fi nely carved timberwork.
98
It is not clear whether the laird took
responsibility for providing that key marker of improvement – slates – or even
timbers – for a roof in the ‘improved’ manner – but it is diffi cult to see how an
ordinary occupier in a location as remote as Tomintoul could otherwise have
had access to slates and timber. George Dempster went further when founding
his planned village of Letham in Angus. He established an independent com-
mittee of feuars whom he made responsible for running his new town.
Far fewer new towns were constructed than were planned; and some
barely started. Many others never achieved their full potential. Forsyth
concluded that the inducements to ambitious people – particularly in the
small amount of land allotted to each incomer – were insuffi cient to be really
attractive.
99
The grandiose New Leeds, by Kininmonth, Buchan, remains
just a deserted church and a straggle of cottages, its English rival remaining
contentedly unchallenged.
None the less, a certain type of settlement could now be deemed modern,
Figure 2.12 Helmsdale, Sutherland. A new town established by the Sutherland estate
partly, at least, for families cleared from inland and Strathnaver. It is an excellent example
of the austere nature of these settlements – of regimented, usually harled houses and wide
grid-iron streets that took no account of the climate. Source: C. A. McKean.
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Improvement and Modernisation 75
Figure 2.13 View of Inveraray in 1791 drawn by J.C. for Views in Scotland. It shows
the newly built castle, with the old seat and church behind, not yet removed; and the shore
lined with cottages, with herring boats drawn up on the shingle. The letter press states that
the new town remained unfi nished. Source: C. A. McKean.
Figure 2.14 Inveraray High Street. A view up the high street of the new town, designed
principally by John Adam in the 1750s, axially focused upon the town’s churches. The
town’s magnifi cent Celtic Cross has been placed on that axis, indicating its fundamental
cultural confusion. Source: C. A. McKean.
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76 Charles McKean
Figure 2.16 Perth in the early nineteenth century, drawn to emphasise the classical
ambience created by Rose Terrace forming the western edge of North Inch. Perth Academy
forms its centrepiece, with Atholl Terrace lying to the left. The old town of Perth lies out of
sight to the left. Source: C. A. McKean.
Figure 2.15 Bon Accord Square, Aberdeen. The new civil society: a vision of order,
regularity and the suppression of individuality. The regimented houses of Bon Accord
Square, Aberdeen, designed by Archibald Simpson in 1823, combining to create a sense of
ordered opulence. Source: C. A. McKean.
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Improvement and Modernisation 77
whereas an old one – no matter how improved – could be condemned as
antique or rude. Where both survived for a time side-by-side, as in the case
of Inveraray, the contrast was easier. Thomas Garnett happily characterised
the original burgh as ‘a dirty ill-built village’ by contrast with the new town
‘built with uniformity . . . commodious well-built and covered with slate’.
100
The newly built houses of Aberfeldy suggested to Alexander Campbell an
‘air of business and even of consequence’.
101
Thus, by the opening of the
nineteenth century, Scotland had not just modernised; the mindset of its
intellectuals had been revolutionised. Neither the urban nor the rural built
culture of the past was acceptable any longer.
CONCLUSION
Between 1600 and 1800, everyday buildings in Scotland underwent more a
signifi cant cultural shift rather than a gradual evolution. Whereas evolution
was generally represented by the concept of ‘improvement’, modernisa-
tion implied cultural shift. Even though most parts of Scotland had been
improved considerably over the eighteenth century, that was not deemed to
be suffi cient. Possibly inspired by government institutions and their planned
soldier resettlements and fi shery colonies,
102
but fi rmly within Enlightenment
ideology, Scotland had begun on the route of wholesale modernisation.
Since so few pre-1800 everyday houses survive in Scotland, it is not as
straightforward to arrive at an unbiased view of their condition as it might
seem. Allowing for the fact that most of the evidence may be skewed by the
Enlightenment’s modernist perspective, conditions in parts of rural Scotland
in the early eighteenth century must have been very poor, with decaying
towns and abandoned country estates. By 1800, such problems were on the
way to being solved – albeit modernisation was taking longer to reach the
remoter parts. The houses were better built. Moreover, whereas there may
have been an increasing consumption of space by those who could afford it
in the larger new towns, that was probably not the case beyond the Highland
line where multi-functional communal spaces were still preferred to single
purpose chambers. Modernisers failed to understand the separate and valid
culture of the Highlands, and condemned it accordingly.
The principal outcome of the eighteenth century was the physical expres-
sion of the Enlightenment’s new civil society: much greater social formality,
with discrete spaces allotted to different ranks of society, each to its own
place. There were both new social chambers within these new houses and
greater opportunities for privacy. The middling suburbs, however, also
exemplifi ed a marked suppression of individuality in order to emphasise the
homogeneity of their occupiers. Even that great admirer of progress, Robert
Southey, expressed reservations about the new, highly controlled landscape
and townscape which he visited, lamenting the ‘mournful uniformity’ of
Rothes, evidence of its having been ‘planted as a colony’;
103
just as Robert
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78 Charles McKean
Mudie, fi ve years later, would condemn the New Town of Edinburgh as ‘a
cold eternity of stone and lime’.
104
Overall, by 1800, Scotland was well on the way to constructing an extraor-
dinarily well-ordered built environment, perhaps to act as both a lure to
those seeking a more ordered civil society and as a means of controlling
those who did not.
Notes
1. Highland cottages or ‘hutts’ of the ‘black house’ (that is, Highland) form
were found in rural Aberdeenshire, Moray and Nairn, throughout much of
Perthshire and also as close to the capital as Stirlingshire.
2. Robert Southey, Journal of a Tour through Scotland in 1819, C. H. Herford (ed.)
(London, 1929), p. 258.
3. Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland
AD 1803, J. C.
Sharp (ed.) (Edinburgh, 1974), p.9.
4. D. Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour, p. 109.
5. R. Heron, Scotland Delineated 1799 (Edinburgh, 1975 edn), p. 16.
6. D. Lockhart, ‘The evolution of the planned villages of north-east Scotland:
studies in settlement geography, c. 1700–c. 1900’, unpublished Ph.D. (University
of Dundee, 1978).
7. C. McKean, ‘Timothy Pont’s building drawings’, in I. Cunninghame (ed.), The
Nation Survey’d (Edinburgh, 2001), ch. 7.
8. I am very grateful to Dr Mary Young for this information.
9. F. Grose, The Antiquities of Scotland, Vol. 2 (London, 1797), p. 128.
10. R. MacInnes, ‘“Rubblemania”: ethic and aesthetic in Scottish architectural
history’, in Journal of Design History, 9:3 (1996), 137–51.
11. The two largest burghs of sixteenth-century Scotland, with the tallest urban
blocks.
12. PROPOSALS for carrying on certain PUBLIC WORKS in the CITY of
EDINBURGH (Edinburgh, 1751), p. 8.
13. There were arcaded buildings also in Aberdeen, Portsoy, Dunfermline,
Linlithgow, Leith and Dundee. In 1652 Glasgow rebuilt itself after a fi re with
four streets of elegant regular ashlar-fronted tenements sitting on arcades at a
standard 11-foot (c. 3.3 metres) deep.
14. L. Ritchie, Scott and Scotland (Edinburgh, 1835), p. 153.
15. J. Gilhooley, A Directory of Edinburgh in 1752 (Edinburgh, 1988). Because the
Edinburgh buildings were built against the edge of the escarpment, there could
be a number of storeys to the back lower than the High Street. These tended
to be occupied by the underclass, the ‘broken men of war’ of the sixteenth
century, and some crafts people. It was in these lower storeys – in taverns such
as Johnny Dowie’s in Liberton Wynd – that many of the Enlightenment Clubs
deliberated in the later eighteenth century.
16. That was the contemporary perception. See C. McKean, The Scottish Chateau
(Stroud, 2001), pp. 45–6.
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Improvement and Modernisation 79
17. See C. McKean, ‘The evolution of the European weather-protected city’, in P.
Dennison (ed.), Conservation and Change in Historic Towns (York, 2000).
18. For more information about tenements see F. Worsdall, The Glasgow Tenement
(Glasgow, 1979), particularly chs 1 and 2.
19. J. Ballantine, The Gaberlunzie’s Wallet (Edinburgh, 1843), p. 98.
20. A. Campbell, Journey from Edinburgh through Parts of North Britain, Vol. 1
(London, 1803), p. 99.
21. A. A. Allen, ‘Occupational mapping of 1635 Edinburgh’, Proceedings of the
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 136 (Edinburgh, 2006), pp. 278–94.
22. C. McKean, ‘What kind of town was Renaissance Dundee?’, in C. McKean, B.
Harris, and C. A. Whatley (eds), Dundee 1500–1800 (forthcoming).
23. A McKechnie, ‘Scots court architecture of the early 17th century’, unpublished
Ph.D. (University of Edinburgh, 1993).
24. D. M. Gauld (ed.), The Book of Record (Glamis, 2004), p. 97.
25. Ben Tindall, personal communication.
26. Historic Scotland, Technical Advice Note, TAN 4 Thatch, ‘Thatches and
thatching techniques: a guide to conserving Scottish thatching traditions’,
(Edinburgh, 1996).
27. Thomas Pennant, Tours in Scotland, 1769, p. 94
28. K. Newland, ‘Norwegian timber and the Scottish great house’, Architectural
Heritage, XVIII (Edinburgh, 2007).
29. This is disputed by B. Walker, who has suggested that a history of timber
construction in Scotland has been suppressed by those favouring masonry.
See B. Walker ‘The use of vertical timber cladding in conjunction with the
platform frame in urban Scotland during the sixteenth century’, Transactions of
the Ancient Monuments Society (London, 2006). While there was certainly some
timber construction, most timberwork in towns took the form of timber gal-
leries and superstructures extending forward from a stone structure rather than
being wholly timber-framed, which was very rare.
30. Clay bool is a construction where clay and rounded stones – and sometimes
straw – was packed between shuttering, and then fi nished with a weather-
protecting coat of limewash or harl.
31. Pennant, Tour, 1769, p. 146.
32. T. Garnett, Tour through The Highlands, Vol. 1 (London, 1800), p. 12.
33. Garnett, Tour through the Highlands, pp. 159–60.
34. Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour, p. 104.
35. Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour, p. 176.
36. B. Walker and A. Fenton, The Rural Architecture of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1981), chs
5 and 6, and ‘Scottish Vernacular Building’, Bibliography, 2 (Edinburgh, 1987).
37. See C. McKean, ‘Galleries, girnals and the woman house’, Review of Scottish
Culture (2004); C. McKean, ‘The laird and his guests’, Architectural Heritage,
XIII (Edinburgh, 2002); C. McKean ‘The Scottish Renaissance country seat in
its setting’, Garden History (London, 2004).
38. Good examples are the gardener’s houses at Glamis, Culloden, Culzean and
Tyninghame.
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80 Charles McKean
39. Plans of Haddo House in J. Simpson (ed.), Vitruvius Scoticus, (Edinburgh, 1980);
S. Lammie, ‘Separate worlds? The changing nature of the country house in
eighteenth-century Scotland’, unpublished M.Phil dissertation (University of
Dundee, 2006).
40. Newland, ‘Norwegian timber and the Scottish great house’, p. 40.
41. Glamis Papers MSS 255/7.
42. I am indebted to Charles Wemyss for this information.
43. Pennant, Tour, 1769, p. 186.
44. E. Reid, ‘Renfrew 1650–1850’, unpublished M.Phil (University of Dundee,
2006).
45. Watercolour of Dunblane by Francis Grose, National Galleries of Scotland
Prints and Drawings.
46. C. McKean, ‘Not even the trivial grace of a straight line’, in L. Miskell, B. Harris
and C. A. Whatley (eds), Victorian Dundee – Image and Realities (East Linton,
1999), p. 22.
47. NAS, Plan of the lands and barony of Galashiels . . . belonging to Hugh Scott of
Gala, 1796.
48. Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour, p. 255.
49. C. A. McKean, F. A. Walker and D. Walker, Central Glasgow (Edinburgh,
1993), p. 24.
50. Pennant, Tour, 1769, p. 87.
51. Edmund Burt, Letters from the North of Scotland, R. Jamieson (ed.), (Edinburgh,
1974), vol. 1, pp. 20–1.
52. R. D. Oram, T. Neighbour, P. de C. Martin and C. McKean, Historic Wigtown
(Historic Scotland, forthcoming).
53. Philetas, Dundee Magazine, 1799, cited in R. Mudie, Dundee Delineated (Dundee,
1822), p. 187.
54. ‘The greatest part of the New Town is built after the manner of the English, and
the houses are what they call here “Houses to Themselves”’, E. Topham, Letters
from Edinburgh in 1774 and 1775 (Edinburgh, 2003 edn), p. 6.
55. RCAHMS, Sketchbook of the Revd John Sime.
56. See D. G. Barrie, ‘Urban order in Georgian Dundee’, in C. McKean and Bob
Harris (eds), Dundee 1500–1800 (forthcoming).
57. PROPOSALS for carrying on certain PUBLIC WORKS in the CITY of
EDINBURGH (Edinburgh, 1751).
58. R. Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, Vol. I (Edinburgh, 1825), pp. 49–52.
59. Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, p. 8. They classifi ed the turnpike stairs as
‘constantly dark and dirty’.
60. F. C. Mears and J. Russell, BOEC, XX1 (Edinburgh, 1939), p. 169.
61. Robert Forsyth, Beauties of Scotland, vol. III, p. 191.
62. Pennant, Tour, 1769, p. 68.
63. Pennant, Tour, 1769, p. 69.
64. A. Youngson, The Making of Classical Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1966), ch. 1 and
Introduction, ch. 2.
65. See C. McKean, ‘Twinning cities – the old and new towns of Edinburgh’,
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Improvement and Modernisation 81
in B. Edwards and G. Jenkins (eds), Edinburgh – the Making of a Capital City
(Edinburgh, 2005).
66. McKean, ‘Twinning cities’, p. 48.
67. Dundee Central Library, Lawson Collection.
68. Register of Sasines, Midlothian, PR247140, 17.5.71; PR 17177, 19.1.81.
69. ‘Copy Restrictions as to buildings in the New town of Glasgow’, held in
Aberdeen, New Street Trustees NSET/4/12. Undated, but c. 1780s. Prohibited
activities (which Dundee forgot to include in its feuing of South Tay Street)
were tanning of leather, making of candle soap or glues, preparing vitriol, erect-
ing glueworks, distilleries, sugar houses, foundries, smelting houses of brass,
lead or other metals, or forges, etc.
70. Act of Town Council of Edinburgh, 24 February 1768.
71. Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, vol. I, p. 312.
72. J. Strang, Glasgow and its Clubs (London, 1856).
73. Pennant, Tour, 1769, p. 116. Pennant saw much the same on the military road
to Crieff, and came to the same conclusions, Tour 1772, vol. II (London, 1776),
p. 91.
74. Pennant, Tour, 1769, p. 83.
75. Pennant, Tour, 1772, vol. II, p. 155.
76. Pennant, Tour, 1769, p. 131.
77. Southey, Journal of a Tour, p. 136.
78. H. MacDougall of MacDougall, Island of Kerrera – Mirror of History (Oban,
1979), p. 25.
79. R. J. Naismyth, Buildings of the Scottish Countryside (London, 1985), p. 143.
80. See, inter alia, H. Holmes, ‘The circulation of Scottish agricultural books
during the eighteenth century’, Agricultural History Review, 54:1 (2006), and C.
W. Withers, ‘William Cullen’s agricultural lectures and the development of
agricultural science in eighteenth-century Scotland’, Agricultural History Review,
37:2 (1989). I am grateful to Sue Hewer for these references.
81. The Rudiments of Architecture (Edinburgh, 1778).
82. G. Robertson, General View of Agriculture in the County of Midlothian (Edinburgh,
1795), facing p. 40.
83. Forsyth, Beauties, vol. V, p. 206.
84. MacDougall, Kerrera, p. 24.
85. MacDougall, Kerrera, p.20.
86. Forsyth, Beauties, vol. IV, pp. 1–2.
87. Forsyth, Beauties, vol. IV, pp. 61–3.
88. Forsyth, Beauties, vol. II, p. 522.
89. Forsyth, Beauties, vol. II, pp. 455 and 177.
90. See D. Jones, ‘Living in one of two Rooms in the country’, in A. Carruthers
(ed.), The Scottish Home (Edinburgh, 1996).
91. Forsyth, Beauties, vol. V, p. 420.
92. Forsyth, Beauties, vol. V, p. 222.
93. Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour, p. 167.
94. Southey, Journal of a Tour, p. 34.
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