Sue Mowat describes the development of an area of central Dunfermline in her new article “Before The Bus Station” . Using some excellent large scale maps of the town she illustrates her research on the changing uses of the land where our Bus Station now stands and tells us of the people who once lived there.
Touch Bleachfields Dunfermline
by George Beattie Around 1843, Messrs Ralph Walker and David Wilson opened a bleach works on the banks of the Lyne Burn at Touch. Within a decade of opening the field, Mr Walker and Mr Wilson dissolved the partnership. Mr Walker established the Elgin Bleachfield on the banks of the same stream at the south side of Dunfermline, leaving Mr Wilson to operate at Touch. The work of bleaching yarns is as old as the linen industry and, when Mr Wilson and Mr Walker dissolved their partnership in 1851, they were not slow in recognising that as long as Dunfermline was noted for table linen, so long would there be work for bleachers in the area. At Touch, Mr Wilson ultimately took one of his sons, John, into partnership with him, and for many years the latter was head of the concern. In the 1871 census, John Wilson, then 48 years of age and residing at Comely Park, Dunfermline, is designated a Master Bleacher, employing some 42 females, 19 men and one boy. The record shows that John was married to Allison and that they had six daughters, aged between 4 and 15. The family also had two ‘general servants’ in residence. The Comely Park address, with14 rooms according to the census was, and still is, in a very desirable area of the town and probably indicates that the Touch business was doing very well. Robert Black In 1886, a lease of the works was acquired by Mr Robert Black, who a year previous had taken up the duties of manager. Mr Black, a native of Newburgh, had been trained in...
Auld Handsel Monday
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 Lindsay...
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 was a disciple of...