Foyster E., Whatley C.A. A History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1600-1800

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42 Robert A. Dodgshon

Moy More ‘have for the season bypast kept Great Droves or herds of Swine

and allowed the same to pasture up & down the Severall Towns of the neigh-

bourhood without any kind of tethering or Binding’.

How did the improving movement from the mid-eighteenth century

onwards change the basic rhythms of the countryside? Three probable areas

of change can be noted. First, the introduction of winter fodders like turnips

and sown grasses, the wider use of winter sown grains in the Lowlands, the

need to ﬁ t in a range of activities like marling, liming, ditching, the laying

of drains, hedge laying, stone clearing and rig straightening, led to farming

rhythms spread more evenly across the year. Secondly, as regional farm

economies became more specialised toward the end of the century, everyday

rhythms of farm life probably became regionally more speciﬁ c. Thirdly,

the specialisation of farm output was matched by a growing specialisation

of roles within the rural community, the labour force acquiring some of

the gradations that were to characterise it during the nineteenth century.

There were now more full-time craftsmen and tradesmen, some living in the

planned villages that landowners laid out as a focus for such services.

THE SPACES OF EVERYDAY LIFE

The spaces through which traditional society played out its daily rhythms

were an intrinsic part of how it experienced the everyday. Different kinds of

space need to be recognised. First and foremost were the functional spaces

around which everyday life was organised. The most telling point to be made

here is that there appears to be a remarkable degree of uniformity about how

rural communities divided their functional spaces. Distinctions like inﬁ eld,

outﬁ eld, common pasture and shielings were widespread across the main-

land. Only in the Hebrides and northern isles was it simpliﬁ ed into townland

arable, common pasture and shieling.

The way in which parts of the south-

west Highlands referred to inﬁ eld as wintertoun,

in contrast to the summer

spaces of outﬁ eld or tathing ground, common pasture and shieling grounds

reminds us that these spaces were imbued with a time–space character. In

addition to these broad categorisations of space, there also existed a welter

of other work or activity spaces, such as kailyards, penfolds, tathfolds,

cot-touns, crofts, as well as buildings in which key activities were focused,

like the house itself, the byre, grain barns or girnals, hay barns, drying and

malting kilns, mills and shielings. These activity spaces were found widely,

although some were conﬁ ned in their distribution, like the small garden-like

enclosure known as a planticrue that was used for growing vegetables, but

especially cabbages, in Shetland.

Such spaces were usually linked to speciﬁ c

uses, often at particular times of the year and, to judge from some contem-

porary comments, there may have been a gender bias as to who used them:

thus, while all took part in shearing, threshing was a men-only task, on the

other hand where the quern was used, grinding was a woman’s task.

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Everyday Structures, Rhythms and Spaces 43

Being a feature of most touns, functional spaces did not provide touns

with individuality. This came only from the identity which they constructed

out of the spaces that they occupied, an identity founded on the bounded-

ness which they imposed on the world around them and on toponymic

naming. Though we ﬁ nd ample references to communities perambulating

their bounds, and to boys being beaten at key points along the way so as to

imprint the memory indelibly in their mind as well as on the ground, such

rituals can give the impression that bounds were always simple and abso-

lute.

The head dyke, the point where what was exclusive to a toun gave

way to its common grazings, was patently an unambiguous boundary, one

that each toun was obliged to maintain.

Beyond, a toun might have some

exclusive right to grazing and to resources like peat and turf, but often these

rights overlapped or merged with those of adjacent touns. We need only take

note of the disputes over grazing that frequently erupted between adjacent

touns within the same estate and, more seriously, between touns on adjacent

estates to realise that the outer reach of touns, the bounds of its use rights,

could be fuzzy.

Identities were also constructed through naming, though

this could inﬂ ect a range of meanings. At the level of the toun itself, there

was a marked conservatism that is well shown by the way in which names

persisted despite change. In the case of the eastern Grampians, old davach

names continued to be used as a generic form of identity despite the fact

many were sub-divided into a cluster of small touns. In effect, the identity of

such touns had a genealogy to it. At a ﬁ ner scale, most touns also named their

ﬁ elds and pastures, though these are not routinely recorded by eighteenth-

century surveys. The typical farm community did not live its everyday in a

bland world of rigs, shotts and meadows, but in one that was richly differ-

entiated and valued through the close naming of arable plots, furlongs and

grazing areas, names that display a strong regional patterning in terms of the

place elements used.

Yet, just as the improving movement of the mid- to

late eighteenth century saw a simpliﬁ cation of ecological differences through

its programmes of land improvement, drainage and reseeding, so also did it

see the loss of some of these ﬁ ne-scaled identities, as farms were comprehen-

sively realigned into wholly new and larger ﬁ elds.

The way in which traditional communities constructed their everyday

space symbolically provides a third kind of space. This symbolic meaning is

not easily documented from the sources available but there are clues. Many

touns in eastern Scotland were divided out into runrig shares, or split into

wholly separate and discrete touns, using customary methods of land divi-

sion, including one based on sunny and shadow shares.

Early Scottish law

books explain what was involved: divisions started on the east side of touns

at dawn and worked their way round it in a sun-wise direction, giving out rigs

to each landholder, ﬁ nishing in the east by evening. Landholders who held the

sunny portion of the toun were always given the strips that lay to the east or

south in each sequence of allocation and those holding the shadow portion

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44 Robert A. Dodgshon

receiving those that lay to the west or north.

Such a system used a natural

ordering of time–space so as to frame a division process that was similarly

enacted through time–space. At ﬁ rst sight, it might be thought that this was

simply a convenient method of land division, with no carry-over for com-

munities once the division was complete. However, some evidence suggests

otherwise. First, some sources refer to sunny/shadow or easter/wester ploughs,

as if the symbolic ordering implicit in such divisions was carried over into

the routines of husbandry and the way land was ploughed.

Secondly, early

legal descriptions of such divisions depict the terms sunny/shadow as synony-

mous or interchangeable with forms like east/west, upper/lower, fore/back

and more/beag. We can appreciate the implications of this only when we take

into account the fact that some touns carried over this potential ambiguity of

identity into their day-to-day world, so that we ﬁ nd touns named as Easter

Herrocks in one source but as Little Herrocks in another, or Over Lethnot

in one and as West Lethnot in another.

Thirdly, a 1715 entry for Fintray

barony court in Aberdeenshire referred to the appointment of birlawmen for

‘foreside’ of the estate and others for the ‘backside’. Any doubt as to what this

meant is removed by a later 1717 entry which compelled tenants in ‘ye forside

viz. the two ploughs in Woodhead, two in Cowstones, two in Woodhead . . .’,

etc., to bring in lime when required.

Each toun had a further two ploughs

comprising the backside. Clearly, the symbolic order embodied in land divi-

sions appears part of a mentalitié that was carried over into everyday routines.

A further indication of how communities may have symbolised the

world around them is provided by evidence drawn from pre-improvement

estate plans for north-east Scotland. In a number of cases they show touns

as having an arable ﬁ eld called The Lost, usually close to their settlement

or core.

Though its occurrence was concentrated in the Strathavon and

Glenlivet area, there are also signs that it may also have been used elsewhere,

such as on the Uists.

As a ﬁ eld name, The Lost does not have an obvious

derivation. It may be linked with the Gaelic word for ﬁ re but it may also be

connected to losaid, meaning bread basket, and denote a particularly fertile

part of the toun. The areas where the ﬁ eld name The Lost occurs are also

those where kirk sessions records document the practice of ﬁ re rituals by

local communities: signiﬁ cantly, these were focused on one particular ﬁ eld,

along with the dwellings, byres and barns of the toun, the farm community

reportedly taking a lighted torch in a sun-wise manner around them.

The

Lost may have been the focus for this ritual based on ﬁ re. In other words, it

was not just a fertile ﬁ eld but one which communities charged with all the

symbolism that was thought to underpin fertility and renewal.

A fourth and ﬁ nal way in which we can characterise the spaces of the early

modern countryside is through their form in the landscape. When we look

at pre-improvement estate plans and their depiction of settlement, arable,

meadow, pasture and major markers, like head dykes, we ﬁ nd a landscape

whose shapes and forms ﬁ tted in with the natural ecology of environmental

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Everyday Structures, Rhythms and Spaces 45

opportunity. Arable land comprised small, irregular patches that were often

broken by numerous small areas of poor drainage, even in the more fertile

parts of the Lowlands. In the Highlands, rock outcrops broke up the arable

land still further. Pasture, too, was not the uniform, improved pasture that

we see today, but highly variegated in character thanks to local variations in

groundwater conditions and ecology. Contemporaries talked about spouty

land, a reference to the numerous eruptions of water and ﬂ ushes that existed

prior to the use of effective under-drainage. The sum effect was a variegated,

discontinuous and uneven landscape. Along with its adoption of new

farming systems, the improving movement witnessed the transformation of

such landscapes, with extensive programmes of ﬁ eld realignment, enclosure,

land improvement and stone clearance. There were two components to this

transformation. A landscape that had hardly known a straight line, in which

natural ecology always had the upper hand in shaping farm layout, was now

covered with the uncompromisingly regular shapes and lines of the surveyor,

with new ﬁ elds, roads and plantations turning parts of the landscape into an

exercise in geometry, a statement of how improvement was about taming the

wild. The process began around estate policies in the 1720s and 1730s, before

becoming more general from the 1750s and 1760s onwards.

A second

feature of the improving movement’s transformation of space stemmed from

its heavy programmes of land improvement, marling, liming, stone clear-

ance, drainage and reseeding. The weeds that had so enhanced the species

richness of arable land in the pre-improvement landscape, and which had

made the difference between arable and pasture a matter of degree, were now

systematically weeded out. The variety that had characterised the farming

ecologies of the pre-improvement landscape were slowly reduced, though

not removed, as its more variable ecology slowly gave way to the simpler

ecology of the improved farm. For those who lived through the improving

movement, the way it transformed the landscapes of their everyday in this

way would have been among its more obvious visible effects.

CONCLUSION

Except for some communities in the far north and north-west, those living

in the Scottish countryside would have had a fundamentally different expe-

rience of everyday life in 1800 compared with what it had been in 1600.

The social structures in which they lived and worked, and through which

they played out their everyday, the very nature of the rural community

itself, had been transformed. The new husbandries and systems of farming

that were adopted over the second half of the eighteenth century initiated

a transformation in the basic rhythms of the everyday, not least through

the emergence of more year-round cycles of husbandry and a shift toward

more specialised farm economies. Finally, the everyday was now increas-

ingly played out across a different kind of space, a managed space made up

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46 Robert A. Dodgshon

of regular enclosures, roads and shelter belts, one whose ecologies had been

simpliﬁ ed through land improvement, drainage, stone clearance and reseed-

ing. If we had to reduce such changes to a single overarching experience, then

it would be to see the everyday as having begun the period from 1600 to 1800

mostly, if not exclusively, energised and framed by local needs and horizons,

but then gradually opened out to the demands of a much wider world, one

in which market opportunities at a national scale played an increasing role in

shaping its character.

Notes

1. Dunvegan Castle, Macleod of MacLeod Papers, 2/10.

2. E. Cregeen, ‘Tacksmen and their successors: a study of tenurial reorganisations

in Mull, Morvern and Tiree in the early eighteenth century’, Scottish Studies, 13

(1969), 93–144.

3. MacLeod Papers, 4/294.

4. Typical was National Archives of Scotland, Gordon Castle Muniments,

GD44/51/732/1, which recorded Moy and Keillisoss as held by John Macdonald

‘but that the hail of it is possest be the Subtenants’; Cregeen, ‘Tacksmen and

their successors’, p. 101.

5. Cregeen, ‘Tacksmen and their successors’, pp. 93–144; Armadale Castle, Clan

Donald Trust, GD221/3695/2.

6. Inveraray Castle, Argyll Papers, vol. 65, 1771.

7. T. M. Devine, Transformation of Rural Scotland: Social Change and the Agrarian

Economy 1660–1815 (Edinburgh, 1994), p. 13 and appendices 2–5.

8. Devine, Transformation of Rural Scotland, p. 12.

9. NAS, Polwarth Papers, GD157/1030 and 1031.

10. As illustration, NAS, Clerk of Penicuik, GD18/722, has a 1694 entry for

Lasswade saying ‘those 5 houses abovementioned are cottars to me & not to

David McKall’.

11. For example, NAS, Breadalbane Muniments, GHD112/16/13/3/1 lists the number

of families in Glenorchy touns, 1730 and shows a number where only one family

was present.

12. NAS, Airlie Muniments, GD16/30/11; A. Geddes, ‘Conjoint tenants and tacks-

men on the isle of Lewis, 1715–26’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 1 (1948–

9), 54–60.

13. A. Mitchell (ed.), Geographical Collections Relating to Scotland by W. Macfarlane,

ii, Scottish Historical Society, vol. 52 (Edinburgh, 1907), pp. 270, 463–4.

For a mid-eighteenth-century example, see NAS, Breadalbane Muniments,

GD112/12/1/2/14.

14. Occasionally, agreements refer to the need to divide shares, such as that dealing

with the just and equal half of Little Formestoun, NAS, Huntly Muniments,

GD312/30/3.

15. For example, NAS, Lindsay of Dowhill, GD254/78, Contract between Laurence

FOYSTER PAGINATION (M1994).indd 46FOYSTER PAGINATION (M1994).indd 46 29/1/10 11:13:4529/1/10 11:13:45

Everyday Structures, Rhythms and Spaces 47

Mercer, James Lyndsey and Robert Douglas, 1611, records the division of

Culcairny, Fife, which had been ‘occupit be the tennentis and labororis thairof

be Rin Rig quhilk hes oftymes movit and raisit cummer and trubull amangis

thames’.

16. NAS, Airlie Muniments, GD16/5/148.

17. J. Storer Clouston, The Orkney Parishes (Kirkwall, 1927), p. 146; F. J. Shaw,

The Northern and Western Islands of Scotland: Their Economy and Society in the

Seventeenth Century (Edinburgh, 1980), pp. 35–42; W. P. L. Thompson, The New

History of Orkney (Edinburgh, 2001), pp. 311–14.

18. Dunvegan Castle, MacLeod of MacLeod papers, 1/382; Armadale Castle, Clan

Donald Trust, GD221/3695/2; GD221/4284, No. 11/2.

19. For example, in Netherlorn, comparison shows only 91 out of 123 tenants listed

in 1692 as being in the same toun a year later, NAS, Breadalbane Muniments,

GD112/9/1/4/1–2; Ibid., GD112/9/1/3/5.

20. G. S. Keith, A General View of the Agriculture of Aberdeenshire (Aberdeen, 1811),

pp. 143, 151–4,

21. C. Withers, Gaelic Scotland. The Transformation of a Culture Region (London,

1988), pp. 77–8, 318–22.

22. A.I. MacInnes, Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart 1603–1766 (East

Linton, 1996), p. 144; Armadale Castle, Clan Donald Trust, GD221/3695/2.

23. M. H. B. Sanderson, Scottish Rural Society in the 16th Century (Edinburgh, 1982),

pp. 56–63.

24. Sanderson, Scottish Rural Society, pp. 77–123; I. D. Whyte, Agriculture and Society

in Seventeenth Century Scotland, (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 161–2.

25. Whyte, Agriculture and Society, p. 162; I. D. Whyte and K. A. Whyte, ‘Continuity

and change in a seventeenth century Scottish farming community’, Agricultural

History Review, 32 (1984), 162–3, 167.

26. For example, NAS, Abercairny Muniments, GD24/1/32.

27. NLS, Sutherland Papers, 313/982/37.

28. For example, Inveraray Castle, Argyll Papers, Bundle 663; NAS, Macgregor

Collection, GD50/159, 9 December, 1740.

29. Macgregor Collection, 1 November 1723; NAS, Campbell of Jura Papers,

GD64/1/86/7.

30. Inveraray Castle, Argyll Papers, Bundle 2530, 1761.

31. Miscellany of the Spalding Club, vol. 4 (Aberdeen, 1849), pp. 261–319; G. Smith,

The Book of Islay (Glasgow, 1895), p. 483 lists seventeen ‘ofﬁ cial’ or rented

changehouses on Islay.

32. Dunvegan Castle, MacLeod of MacLeod Papers, 2/20.

33. Examples included the inn at Tyndrum, NAS, Breadalbane Muniments,

GD112/16/25, and at Minginish, 1792, Dunvegan Castle, MacLeod of MacLeod

Papers, 2/485/59.

34. R. A. Dodgshon, ‘The removal of runrig in Roxburghshire and Berwickshire,

1680–1766’, Scottish Studies, 16 (1972), 121–37; Devine, Transformation of Rural

Scotland, pp. 24–9.

35. Devine, Transformation of Rural Scotland, p. 27.

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48 Robert A. Dodgshon

36. Devine, Transformation of Rural Scotland, pp. 28–9.

37. Devine, Transformation of Rural Scotland, pp. 21–9. For analysis of the process

in the Borders, see Dodgshon, ‘The removal of runrig in Roxburghshire and

Berwickshire, 1680–1766’, pp. 121–37.

38. Old Statistical Account, 1791–99, i, pp. 101–2; viii, pp. 112 and 310, x, p. 166; xi,

pp. 376 and 416.

39. NAS, Breadalbane Muniments, GD112/16/4/2/22.

40. E. Richards, A History of the Highland Clearances: Agrarian Transformations and

the Evictions, 1746–1886 (London, 1982).

41. M. Bangor-Jones, ‘Sheep farming in Sutherland in the eighteenth century’,

Agricultural History Review, 50 (2002), 181–202.

42. Old Statistical Account, 1791–99, viii, pp. 112 and 310, x, p. 166; xi, pp. 376 and

416.

43. Devine, Transformation of Rural Scotland, p. 151.

44. Whyte, Agriculture and Society, pp. 224–6.

45. NAS, Mar and Kellie, GD124/17/130/1 and 6.

46. A. Fenton and T. C. Smout, ‘Scottish agriculture before the improvers – an

Exploration’, Agricultural History Review, 13 (1965), 73–93.

47. Whyte, Agriculture and Society, pp. 223–4 and 230.

48. Devine, Transformation of Rural Scotland, p. 23.

49. Devine, Transformation of Rural Scotland, p. 236.

50. A. Mitchell (ed.) Macfarlane’s Geographical Collections (Edinburgh, 1907) p. 107;

Whyte, Agriculture and Society, pp. 124–5.

51. I. D. Whyte, Scotland’s Society and Economy in Transition, c. 1500–c. 1760

(Basingstoke, 1997), p. 92.

52. R. A. Dodgshon, ‘Agricultural change and its social consequences in the south-

ern uplands of Scotland, 1660–1780’, in T. M. Devine and D. Dickson (eds),

Ireland and Scotland, 1600–1850 (Edinburgh, 1983), pp. 49–52.

53. Dodgshon, ‘Agricultural change’, pp. 53–4.

54. Dunvegan Castle, MacLeod of MacLeod Papers, 2/487/14; ibid., 2/487/14.

55. NAS, Breadalbane Muniments, GD112/16/13/4/1–2.

56. NAS, Forfeited Estates, E788/42; see also, E745/59.

57. Burt’s Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland to His Friend in London, ed.

R. Jamieson (Edinburgh, [1754] 1876), vol. ii, p. 83.

58. C. Innes (ed.), The Book of the Thanes of Cawdor, Spalding Club (Edinburgh,

1859), p. 378; NLS, Sutherland Papers, 313/918.

59. Acts of Parliament of Scotland, viii, p. 595.

60. Forbes’s report is reprinted in Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the

Conditions of the Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands (Edinburgh,

1884), p. 389.

61. R. A. Dodgshon, ‘Coping with risk: subsistence crises in the Scottish Highlands

and islands, 1600–1800’, Rural History, 15 (2004), 1–25.

62. Mitchell (ed.), Macfarlane’s Geographical Collections, i, vol. 51, p. 103 says bear

mixed with darnel or roseager had a ‘narcotick’ effect on ale.

63. Inveraray Castle, Argyll Papers, vol. 65, 1788.

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Everyday Structures, Rhythms and Spaces 49

64. J. M. Thomson (ed.), ‘The Forbes baron Court Book 1659–78’, Miscellany of

Scottish Hist Society, Scottish History Society, 2nd series, vol. 19 (Edinburgh,

1919), pp. 239 and 292.

65. Typical is NAS, John Macgregor Collection, GD50/136/1, 11/12 July 1660, ‘All

tenants to goe to the sheills with ther goods, the tenth day of May everie yeir.’

66. NAS, Gordon Castle Muniments, GD44/25/2/76; NAS, Breadalbane Muniments,

GD112/1/7/3.

67. NAS, Breadalbane Muniments, GD112/17/5, August, 1625; GD112/17/6, May,

1628.

68. Inveraray Castle, Argyll Papers, Bundle 2531, September/October 1747; NAS,

GD50/136/1.

69. NAS, Breadalbane Muniments, GD112/12/1/2/14. See also, NAS, GD112/14/

12/7/8.

70. NAS, John Macgregor Collection, GD50/159 Barony Court Book of Lude

1621–1806, 1627. See also, Thomson , ‘The Forbes baron Court Book 1659–78’,

p. 318.

71. NLS, Sutherland Papers, 313/982, Miscellanous Papers on estate Management,

No. 29, Petition the Tenants of Achintoull to Lt Col. Sutherland, Dunrobin,

1782.

72. NAS, Mackintosh Muniments, GD176/760; C. B. Gunn (ed.), Records of the

Baron Court of Stitchill, Scottish History Society, vol. 50 (Edinburgh, 1905), p. 2.

73. I. Carter, Farm Life in Northeast Scotland 1840–1914 (Edinburgh, 1979), pp.

138–42.

74 T. C. Smout, ‘The landowner and the planned village in Scotland, 1730–1830’,

in N. T. Phillipson and R. Mitchison (eds), Scotland in the Age of Improvement

(Edinburgh, 1970), pp. 73–106.

75. R. A. Dodgshon, ‘Strategies of farming in the western Highlands and Islands

of Scotland prior to crofting and the clearances’, Economic History Review, xlvi

(1993), 679–701; Thompson, The New History of Orkney, pp. 323–6.

76. NAS, Breadalbane Muniments, GD112/14/12/7/8.

77. A. Fenton, The Northern Isles: Orkney and Shetland (Edinburgh, 1978), pp. 101–5.

78. Mitchell (ed.), Macfarlane’s Geographical Collections, iii, vol. 53, pp. 224, 324; M.

Martin, A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (London, 1716 edn), p. 286.

79. Martin, Description of the Western Isles, p. 114; ‘Corshill Baron Court Book’, in

Archaeological and Historical Collections relating to the Counties of Ayr and Wigton,

1884, vol. 1v, p. 72.

80. Typical is NAS, John Macgregor Collection, GD50/159, 6 June 1622.

81. A good example is provided by NAS, Macpherson of Cluny Papers, GD80/384/12–

26; NAS, Breadalbane Muniments, GD112/5/9/59.

82. The Grampian region possessed the most regionally distinctive ﬁ eld elements,

see, for example, NAS, RHP 6586/1–8, RHP 1846 and 1847.

83. B. M. W. Third, ‘The signiﬁ cance of Scottish estate plans and associated docu-

ments’, Scottish Studies, 1 (1957), 39–64.

84. R. A. Dodgshon, ‘Scandinavian solskifte and the sunwise division of land in

eastern Scotland’, Scottish Studies, xix (1975), 1–14.

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50 Robert A. Dodgshon

85. J. Baillie (ed.), Sir Thomas Craig’s Jus Feudale (1603) (Edinburgh, 1732 edn),

p. 425.

86. Examples occur in NAS, Dalhousie Muniments, GD45/16/1544.

87. NAS, GD248/248/31; NAS, Airlie Muniments, GD16/13.

88. J. Cruickshank, ‘Court Book of the Barony of Fintray 1711–26’, in Miscellany of

the Spalding Club, vol. I, Third Spalding Club (Aberdeen, 1935), pp. 28 and 33.

89. Examples occur in NAS, RHP 1746; RHP 1747; RHP 1752; RHP 1754; RHP

3964/2, 4, 6, 8 and 24.

90. J. L. Campbell (ed.), Gaelic Words and Expressions from South Uist and Eriskay,

Collected by Rev. Fr. Allan McDonald (Dublin, 1958), p. 158.

91. NAS, CH2/191/vol. 2, Kirk Session of Inveravine, reported how farmers ‘goe

about yr. folds & cornes with kindled Torches of fﬁ rr, superstitiouslie &

Idolouslie ascribing ye power to the ﬁ re of santiﬁ eing yr Cornes & cattell’,

1703.

92. Third, ‘The signiﬁ cance of Scottish estate’, pp. 39–64.

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Chapter 2

Improvement and Modernisation in

Everyday Enlightenment Scotland

Charles McKean

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, the concept of everyday building is taken to imply virtually

any structure that did not have a primary ceremonial purpose. However,

given the disparate array of other structures then in use for craft, trade or

industry, the focus is primarily upon the home.

There are four themes to this chapter. The ﬁ rst addresses rank – how

Scots at almost all levels had a keen appreciation of rank, which was reﬂ ected

in their dwellings. The second addresses self-provision – what people did

when they had to fend for themselves by constructing their own vernacular

buildings. There were two distinct phases to this. The ﬁ rst comprised build-

ing according to a vernacular tradition of self-shelter to an inherited evolving

pattern; the second, emerging in the later eighteenth century, took the form

of the occupier or self-builder having to conform to externally enforced rules

according to an imposed ‘improvement’ model set by, for example, the feu

superior, the landlord or the founder of the new town or village in which

they lived. Throughout the period, however, there remained an absolute

distinction between the lesser rural buildings in Lowland Scotland and those

beyond the Highland line.

Self-provision was almost entirely a rural phenomenon. Once the very ear-

liest phases of urban settlement were passed, self-provision became almost

impossible in Scots towns. The Scottish form of feu tenure led landlords

to maximise the income from their burgage plots, with the consequence

that they built upwards; and such structures needed skilled erectors. Thus,

urban buildings in the larger town centres comprised increasingly tall blocks

of tenement or apartment ﬂ ats – eventually rising to six or more storeys in

Edinburgh and Dundee – with the result that self- provision was restricted to

the aristocracy or the very rich. Everyday urban life was much more a matter

of adapting, refurbishing or customising existing apartments.

The third theme is that of decay and abandonment. Although most of the

evidence comes from travellers and commentators imbued with the modern-

ising Enlightenment spirit, it seems impossible to avoid the fact that a good

number of Scots burghs – Nairn, Selkirk and Renfrew are good examples

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