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54 Charles McKean
if the building fell foul of the ‘rubblemania’
10
fashion causing the harling
to be cloured off in the early nineteenth century. Only the very smartest
village houses might be graced with a new façade of expensive squared stone
(ashlar).
Rank was equally important in towns. In Scotland’s largest Renaissance
towns – notably Dundee and Edinburgh
11
– occupiers of all apartments
shared a common stair – an ‘upright street’ as the Enlightenment con-
demned it
12
– even though the rank of those who occupied each storey
differed considerably. The street level, accessed separately, was occupied
by merchants’ booths and storage, usually screened by arcades of loggias,
of which the best surviving examples are to be found in Elgin and at
Gladstone’s’ Land, Edinburgh.
13
In 1835, Leith Ritchie interpreted the
already historic living pattern of upper tenement fl oors for Walter Scott’s
English readers: ‘The fl oor nearest heaven, called the garrets, has the great-
est number of subdivisions; and here roost the families of the poor. As we
descend, the inmates increase in wealth or rank; each family possessing an
“outer door”.’
14
The primary apartment was on the piano nobile or prin-
cipal fl oor, occupied by persons of the highest rank of those who lived in
such properties.
15
Being generally undefended and walled for burgh control and customs
purposes only,
16
Scottish towns had evolved without the centrifugal defen-
sive plan with multiple squares and plazas normal in European walled cities,
but had instead spread out in a linear manner. Their urban ‘outdoor rooms’
were restricted to two: the high gait or market place, from which the wind
was as far as possible excluded; and the service centre with its urban stench
(in Edinburgh the Grassmarket, and in Dundee the Fishmarket) through
which the wind was welcome.
17
The highest value merchant apartments were
those nearest to the market place,
18
the centre of urban life. In 1560, Dundee
rearranged its public buildings – a new tolbooth, fl eshmarket, grammar
school and public weighhouse – to form a self-conscious new axis between
the market place and the harbour. In both Edinburgh and Dundee, the catch-
pull (Scots for tennis court) lay on one edge of the town toward one of the
gates.
The extent to which Scots towns shared the European pattern of identifi -
able craft districts is not yet clear. In the early nineteenth century hammer-
men, for example, were concentrated in Edinburgh’s West Bow where the
noise was ferocious: it ‘was one of the most noisy quarters of the city – the
clinking of coppersmiths’ hammers, the bawling of street criers, ballad
singers and vendors of street merchandise’.
19
Alexander Campbell observed
of Perth in 1800:
Different streets and lanes appear to have been very early allotted to different
craftsmen who, with few exceptions, still inhabit the same quarters. The skinners,
for instance, live in one street, the weavers in a second, the hammermen in a third,
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