by Dr Jean Barclay When it came to a winter festival, Handsel (or Hansel) Monday at the start of the year meant a great deal to generations of Scots. It was a time of rejoicing with visits to family, friends and neighbours, food and drink in plenty, and giving ‘handsels’ or presents to children and employees (1). Despite its excesses and high jinks, Handsel Monday was tolerated by the fathers of the Presbyterian kirk as preferable to the ancient festival of Yule, which they considered pagan, and its successor Christmas, which they regarded as ‘popish’ like other masses and saints’ days. But how did ‘Handsel Monday’ become ‘Auld Handsel Monday’? Confusion about dates arose when the calendar was changed in September 1752 from the Julian to the Gregorian, which was 11 days shorter (2). To account for the difference the Westminster Parliament decreed that September 2nd should be followed by September 14th and the terms ‘old style’ and ‘new style’ began to appear in dates in official records. Many working people resented the imposition of the new calendar with its loss of 11 days and Scottish die-hards began to celebrate Handsel Monday, not on the first Monday of the New Year, but on the first Monday after the 12th of January. Christmas and New Year or Hogmanay meant little but working people looked forward all year to their holiday on Auld Handsel Monday (3). In the 1850s Auld Handsel Monday was in full swing in Dunfermline. It was ushered in with the glare of flambeaux and…
Lilliehill Fire-Clay and Terra-Cotta Works
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 Spinning Mill
by Sue Mowat When a twelfth century Abbot of Dunfermline Abbey built his burgh of Dunfermline he included in his plans at least two water mills, powered by an elaborate system of leads (water channels). One of the Abbey’s mill sites was on the slope between the Abbey precinct and the Tower Burn, but the mill we are concerned with was situated at the top of what was then called Collier Row (now Bruce Street). At some point one of the town’s ports (gates) was built next to this mill, after which it was known as either the Collier Row or the Millport Mill. This section from a plan of Dunfermline made in 1771 shows the mill with its mill Dam (pond) and lead. (A Tesco store now occupies the site of the Dam.). We pick up the story in 1824, when the grain-grinding mill was replaced by a new building with a totally different purpose. Among the papers of the Hunt family of Pittencrieff, held in the Dunfermline Local Studies Library (Reference EB1/3), is a small packet of letters, invoices and other items that document the transformation of the mill. In March 1824 James Hunt of Pittencrieff, who owned all the Dunfermline mills, the Dam and the leads, leased the Millport Mill for 21 years to a Bridge Street baker, John Malcolm, who was planning a career move. Under the terms of the lease Malcolm would demolish the old barley mill and build a yarn spinning mill on the site, mill-spinning being an important industry in Dunfermline at the time. The new mill would be partly powered by a…