Dunfermline’s Industrial Past. This series shows how in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, Dunfermline, like many towns of a similar size, had manufacturing businesses of all types to support the local economy. The Lindsay business produced a wide range of ceramic products for builders, architects, gardeners, farmers and others. In addition the owners and managers, like Robert Lindsay, were often active in local politics and the community. Robert Lindsay and Co. Lilliehill Fire-Clay and Terra-Cotta Works, Dunfermline by George Beattie Robert Lindsay, who was a native of Penpont, near Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, came to Dunfermline around 1860, when he was appointed manager of the well-known Lochhead Fire Clay Works on the north side of the town. He had gained considerable experience, firstly at the Garnkirk Fire-Clay Works in Glasgow, and afterwards with Barnpark Fire-Clay Works at Tranent. He remained at Lochhead for six and a half years, contributing much to these works. In the 1861 census Robert, then 28 years of age and designated as Manager of a Brickworks, is residing at Chalmers Street, Dunfermline, with his wife, Mary, (37), daughter Mary, (4) and sons William (2), and Robert (11 mths). His next door neighbour is almost certainly his brother, James Lindsay, 24 years, a Chimney Can Maker, residing there with his wife, Violet, (26), and daughters, Elizabeth, (3), and Margaret, (1). In 1867, in partnership with a Mr W. Anderson, from Dundee, Robert…
Walter Scott’s Abbey Haul
Many of you will have visited Abbotsford House near Melrose, extravagantly built and furnished by Sir Walter Scott. But did you know that much of the ancient wooden panelling was “salvaged” from the old Dunfermline Abbey Church, when the new church was opened in the 1820’s? Sir Walter Scott and his “Hawl” from Dunfermline Abbey By Dr. Jean Barclay Walter Scott was born in 1771 in Edinburgh. After schooling at the Royal High School, he became a lawyer, was called to the bar and eventually became a Chief Clerk to the Court of Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire. Scott was not enthusiastic about his legal work but when he began writing poetry from the late 1790s, and later his famous novels, he felt he had found his true metier. Although he published his first novel ‘Waverley’ anonymously in 1814, he was widely known as the author and in 1815 he was invited to dine in London with the George, the Prince Regent, who wanted to meet ‘the author of Waverley’ (1). Edinburgh in the later 18th century had been a hub of the Enlightenment, an ‘Age of Reason’, with a scientific outlook, rational ideas on religion and society and burgeoning industrialisation, as well as growing political unrest in the wake of the French Revolution. Perhaps as a reaction, Romanticism blossomed in the early 19th century and affected poetry, novels, dress and even buildings, where there was a looking back to a chivalrous and romantic past (2). Sir Walter Scott…
Harriebrae Mill
Gray & Harrower Ltd, Grain Millers, Harriebrae Mill, Baldridgeburn, Dunfermline By George Beattie Harriebrae Mill was originally built as a spinning mill during the early part of the 19th century. By the 1840s the spinning industry was in decline locally and Harriebrae Mill closed around the middle of that century. After lying empty for some time the mill was bought by a Dunfermline baker, James Walls, who converted it into a grain mill. At that time, the mill was water driven from the stream on the south side of the buildings. In 1910 Harriebrae was bought by Messrs Gray and Harrower, an Alloa firm of grain-millers, the business having been established in 1895 by Thomas Gray and Thomas Harrower. On the move to Dunfermline, they were joined in the enterprise by English born John Malcolm Smith who, at that time, was a Baillie in Dunfermline. Thomas Harrower was born in 1873, in Glasgow, the son of William Harrower, Marine Engineer’s Clerk, and his wife Janet. On retiring in 1945, Mr Harrower had been resident in Dunfermline for over 30 years, his home being ‘Tighvonie’, 123 Rose Street. He bought Tighvonie in 1915 for the sum of £1,000 from the Bath Street Congregational Church, and sold it in 1946 to the Dunfermline Carnegie Trust for the sum of £3,300. He was a prominent member of Gillespie Memorial Church, an elder for 30 years, preses of the congregation for a period and at one time was superintendent of the Sunday School. During his time in…
The Millport Mill
In The Millport Spinning Mill, Sue Mowat tells the story of the varied uses of a building which once stood in Bruce Street, on the site of a medieval meal mill. It was built as a yarn spinning mill and we learn of it’s construction and of what it was like to work there. Later it became a damask weaving shop and finally, a rather insalubrious lodging house.
An Edwardian Day Out
Jean Barclay tells us how the elderly, former handloom weavers of Dunfermline were treated to an annual outing. Hundreds of men and women were taken by fleets of horse drawn carriages for visits to “big houses” around Fife. This fascinating article gives us all sorts of insights into life and social attitudes one hundred years ago. The Auld Weaver’s Drive By Dr. Jean Barclay At the end of the 19th century there were many old handloom weavers in Dunfermline, who had experienced the ‘four stoups o’ misery’ with the coming of power looms from the early 1850s. Some had found employment in the new textile mills but many were in poor circumstances having faced years of unemployment or doing what odd jobs they could find. In 1897 Councillor John Dick and Mr. Edward Watt, burgh rate collector, organised a collection to provide ‘Old Handsel’ suppers for old hand-loom weavers (1). These took place in January 1898 and 1899 and it was suggested at the time that it would be nice to give the old men a summer outing into the countryside. Courtesy of The Carnegie Library and Galleries Money was raised and an ‘Auld Weavers’ Drive’ was arranged to Glensherup Reservoir, the source of Dunfermline’s water supply. On the morning of Thursday July 19th 1900 some 70 old weavers assembled at the cannon near the townhouse and took their seats in four large, horse-drawn brakes. To the sound of the bagpipes, the brakes left the town via Douglas Street, halted at the post…