Adam Westwood was a local painter who has left us some beautiful images of Dunfermline in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. In “Adam Westwood, Dunfermline artist (1844–1924)” Jean Barclay gives us a concise summary of his life and work illustrated with some rarely-seen examples of his work.
The Tale of the Holes in the Floor
Tales from the Kirk Session The Affair of the Holes in the Floor By Elaine Campbell The Ordination of Elders By J M Lorimer RSA From 'The Kirk and its Worthies' By Nicholas Dickson In the 17th and 18th century the Kirk was a very important institution in monitoring how people conducted their day to day lives and it interfered in a way we would now find unacceptable. It did however, do a lot of good in the community by giving small pensions to people who were unable to work through age or disability, paying school fees for a child whose father had died and by trying to ensure that the father of an illegitimate child took responsibility for its upkeep. As the arbiters of morals in the community, the Kirk Session Minutes contain a large number of cases of fornication and children born out of wedlock. Occasionally, there are cases where there is a dispute about paternity of an illegitimate child or whether fornication has taken place and some of these can be as entertaining as a soap opera. The Session normally met each week and on Thursday, 13th July 1752 the Moderator informed the Session that one of the elders had given a report of "flagrant and scandalous behaviour" on the previous Friday between George Wilson, a farmer in Knockhouse (Knockhouse farm is now part of Crossford) and Isabel Watson, the widow of Peter Shorthouse, who was the late gravedigger in Dunfermline. The Moderator had therefore cited both George and Isabel to appear before this meeting of the Session....
Christmas Banned!
Tales from the Kirk Session The Kirk that Stole Christmas by Dr. Jean Barclay The Presbyterian Church of Scotland did not like Christmas and ensured that it was not celebrated in Scotland for some 400 years. The old winter festival of Yule had lasted 12 days and, Yule Day, as `Christmas Day`, continued to be recognised by the Catholic Church. After the Reformation of 1560, however, the founding fathers of the Church of Scotland had no time for `Christ's mass` and other `popish` rites. In the Calvinistic First Book of Discipline, John Knox and others stated that any doctrine that `men by laws, councils or constitutions have imposed upon the consciences of men, without the express commandment of God's word…and keeping of holy days of certain Saints commanded by men, such as be all those that the Papists have invented as the feasts (as they term them) of the Apostles, Martyrs, Virgins, of Christmas, Circumcision, Epiphany, Purification and other fond feasts of our Lady, because in God's Scriptures they neither have commandment nor assurance, we judge them utterly to be abolished from this Realm: and affirming farther that obstinate maintainers and teachers of such abominations ought not to escape the punishment of the civil Magistrates`. In 1573 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland confirmed the abolishment of `all days that hereto have been kept holy except the Sabbath day, such as Yule day, saints days and such others` and in 1583 it forbade bakers from...
James and Charles Stewart, Builders
James Stewart and Sons, Builders and Quarrymen Dunfermline's Industrial Past by George Beattie Born in Falkland but brought up in Dunfermline, James Stewart served an apprenticeship as a stone-mason with a then noted country builder at Cowstrandburn, near Dunfermline. He was later employed by the Dunfermline firm of Messrs W & J Hutchison, stone masons and builders. In 1876 Messrs Hutchison were awarded the contract for building the new City Chambers in Dunfermline and James Stewart was the foreman stone-mason on this project which took almost three years to complete. The ornate and impressive stonework on this building is testimony to Mr Stewart’s ability and it is probably no surprise that he started in business on his own a short time after the City Chambers building was completed. It would appear that James Stewart was initially in partnership with one of the Hutchison family as there is a reference in one of the Trade Directories of the early 1880s to a building company of Stewart & Hutchison. If so, this partnership did not last long as the Dunfermline Trades Directory of 1890 indicates that Mr Stewart was then trading on his own account from premises in Burt Street, Dunfermline. He also had premises at Grantsbank (now Pilmuir Street) from an early period. It may be that the Grantsbank premises and the Foundry Street premises, mentioned in the above letter heading, were one and the same. In 1900, whilst still at Grantsbank, James Stewart was...
A Middle-Class Scandal – The Margaret Ker Story
In “The A Middle Class Scandal – the Margaret Ker Story”, the second of our Tales from the Kirk Session, Jean Barclay tells the story of a two year long series of hearings in which the Kirk tried to discover the truth about Margaret Ker’s illegitimate child.