General Wade, Builder of Roads

Home , Amulree, Patrick Matthew, Perth and Kinross, Tay Bridge, Trinafour, Vennel

Issue No. 29 Oct 2010

CONTENTS Page

Notes from the Chair & Archive News 2 Preserving our Heritage: Wade Roads and Bridges 4 Exploring a Wade Road on Foot 8 Archaeologists Love Perth’s Ancient Middens 12 Patrick Matthew preceded Darwin by a quarter century 21 The Friends’ Outing to Stobhall 24

Picture courtesy of SCRAN 1 Notes from the Chair Dear Friends, The summer has flown by (albeit leaving pleasant memories of long sunlit days), and the clocks will soon be back on GMT. The outing to Stobhall (see Jackie Hay's excellent report) is now another distant memory. But the advantage of winter is that the Friends resume their activities with a programme of talks and other events.

The season has started most successfully, with Miss Rhoda Fothergill's talk on post-War Perth on 23 September. As with all her talks, our speaker treated us to

a wealth of interesting facts, figures, anecdotes and some very apt illustrations. Then, on the 1st of October, volunteers manned the Friends' stall at the Elderly Persons' Forum. We were invited to set out a stall to inform senior citizens of Archive-related activities, and, although quieter than last year's Forum, it was a lively and worthwhile gathering.

As I write, we look forward to welcoming back archaeologist Mr Derek Hall, this time to talk to us about Romans, doocots and orchards – cultural features in the Carse of Gowrie. This will be held at 2pm on Thursday 21 October.

Before Christmas, the Friends will be involved in a prize-giving for the Heraldry Competition, which we have sponsored as part of Perth 800. Schools throughout Perth and Kinross have been invited to design a shield or other heraldic device which represents their community. The purpose of the competition is to interest our young people in history, heraldry, art and their communities. So far we have received entries from about half a dozen schools

In the New Year we look forward to welcoming Mr Geoff Holder as our guest speaker on 24 March, at 7pm. His theme – Hanged by the neck until ye be dead: murders, murderers and executions in nineteenth century Perthshire – certainly sounds grim, but I suspect that it may prove most enjoyable. On 21 April Dr Nathalie Rosset discusses Perth as a frontier town and on 26 April, after the AGM, Ms Margaret Bennett will share with us her experiences of recording and archiving Perthshire's oral tradition. I hope you will be able to attend and enjoy all these meetings. All good wishes, Margaret Borland-Stroyan 2

Archive News

I suppose the most recent and exciting news is the success of the conference ‘Perth – a place in history’. Organised by P&K Heritage Trust, Local Studies, the Museum and the Archive, the two-day conference featured a wonderful range of topics and some brilliant speakers. I know quite a few of you were there, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. For those of you who couldn’t make the conference, look out for a publication of the papers…

Other ventures of the Archive have included broadening our reach through the wonders of social networking. Using Facebook, Twitter and Flickr is exciting, and hopefully will help us communicate with all kinds of potential users, but at the moment, we’re taking baby steps, feeling our way as to how we can use these sites most effectively.

The main cataloguing task over the summer has been of MS254, the Munro Society collection. This was quite a toughie to arrange and list, simply because the material came from a variety of creators. However, the list is now with the Society’s Archivist for checking and the collection is available to the public. Established in 2002, the Society provides a forum for those who have completed a round of Munros, and the collection contains wonderful photographs of mountains and climbing logs by Munroists, as well as the Society’s administrative papers.

As usual, to keep up to date with newly-listed collections and new accessions, check out the Archive’s web pages at www.pkc.gov.uk/archives. And while you’re online, have a look at the images we’ve been posting on Flickr – we need people’s help in transcribing and translating the older documents as well as help with more information. Just log on through the Archive’s website and browse the different sets – especially the one that celebrates Perth 800. Jan Merchant

Friends of P&KC Archive, AK Bell Library, York Place, Perth PH2 8EP Scottish Charity No. SCO31537 Tel: ( 01738) 477012 Email: [email protected] Hon. Presidents: The Provost; Sir Wm. Macpherson of Cluny and Blairgowrie; Mr D. Abbott Editor: David Wilson 3 Bridging Perthshire’s Past: Conservation and Promotion of an 18th century system of communication

Bridging Perthshire’s Past is a three-year project which focuses on the 18th century system of communication conceived by General Wade as part of a military solution to effectively garrison Scotland. The system of roads and bridges which eventually came to cover most of the Highlands should be seen within the context of the general feeling of unrest in Scotland at that time. Dissatisfaction with the 1707 Act of Union had only grown after a series of breaches of the Treaty by the British government and delays in honouring financial inducements. The subsequent rebellions attempted to a lesser or greater extent and with varying success to capitalise on this dissatisfaction, although all ultimately failed to restore the Stuarts to the throne.

It is worth remembering that General Wade did not arrive in Scotland to carry out his proposals to garrison Scotland until 1725, many years after the last significant rebellion in 1715. It is doubtful whether he would have been in Scotland at all had it not been for a memorandum to George IV, written the previous year by Simon Fraser, the 11th Lord Lovat. In it, Lord Lovat claims that the measures put into place to control the Highlands after the 1715 rebellion were for the most part not working. In particular, he points to the Disarming Act of 1716, which disallowed Highlanders from carrying all ‘warlike’ weapons. Of course, such an act proved difficult to enforce, and worse, Lovat suggested that it left loyalists vulnerable as they dutifully handed in their weapons while those disloyal to the King only handed in use- less and broken weapons, thereby remaining armed. He further suggests that the new barracks had largely been a waste of money as they were wrongly sited and manned by regular troops who, unlike the Highland Com- panies made up of local men, were not used to the mountainous and rugged terrain of the area and couldn’t pursue criminals and bring them to justice. However, the Highland Companies (one of which, it is worth noting, had been commanded by Lovat himself) had been disbanded in 1717 as a waste of money.

4 In response to the memorandum, General Wade was instructed by King

George to proceed to Scotland to report on how far Lovat’s letter was founded on fact and to make proposals on how best to settle that part of the Kingdom.

Wade left for Scotland on 4 July 1724 and his report reached the King on 10 December that same year. His report largely confirmed Lord Lovat’s claims and, perhaps crucially, pointed out that, of the 22,000 men in the Highlands capable of bearing arms, only 10,000 were loyal to the King. The rest had been actively involved in rebellion and would happily rise again in support of the Pretender. As requested, General Wade also gave a number of recom- mendations to subdue any unrest in the Highlands including a new disarming act, re-establishing the Highland companies and strengthening a number of key strongholds such as Edinburgh and Stirling. He also proposed two new forts, one at the southern end of Loch Ness which Wade called the most ‘centrical’ part of Scotland and which he believed to be of key strategic importance, and another at Inverness on the site of the old medieval castle.

Although not one of his specific report proposals, General Wade does note that in terms of troop movement ‘the Highlands of Scotland are still more

5 impractical from the want of © Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust roads and bridges’, and for the next nine years (1725—1733) Wade set about constructing a transport system which would be fit for the rapid movement of large amounts of troops and gun and baggage trains. General Wade finally left Scotland in 1740 and the road- building programme was entrusted to Major Caulfield, who from documentary sources appears to have been with Gen- eral Wade from at least 1729 until his death in 1767.

The Bridging Perthshire’s Past project aims to preserve and promote the remains of Wade’s and Caulfield’s work in Perthshire and may be divided The distressed masonry in the soffit of Errochty Water bridge into three key areas. The first is to undertake conservation work at a number of critical sites, including bridges at Dalnamein, Errochty Water and Spittal of Glenshee, the latter being the best example in Perthshire of a bridge constructed under the supervision of Major Caulfield. This year’s work has concentrated on Errochty Water bridge and Trinafour on the military road between Crieff to Dalmarnoch. The bridge is of rubble construction with a single arch, and as with so many 18th century bridges, it was later widened, buttressed and tied.

In terms of conservation, it suffered from many of the problems typical of this type of structure. In particular, the masonry in the soffit was under some distress and required repair by replacement stone and extensive pinning and pointing. As with all the structures in this project, all pointing was carried out using a natural hydraulic lime mortar suitable for achieving a balance of technical compatibility and historical integrity while remaining fit for purpose. Other work included the removal or treatment of root-bearing 6 vegetation, and the controlled taking down and rebuilding of the parapet to the original profile.

The second aim was to provide an extensive outreach and education programme which would allow everyone to learn more about this aspect of their heritage and to have the option of becoming actively involved in its protection. To this end, a series of presentations and guided walks was planned and undertaken, and a dedicated group of volunteers helped to create a written, photographic and drawn record of the military bridges within Perthshire, allowing a comparable body of material to be built up to inform future management strategies. Further survey and excavation work is planned for next year.

In terms of education, the project has already hosted a number of teacher placements. These were made available through the Excellence in Education through Business Links (EEBL) scheme which aims to provide teachers with relevant hands-on experience of a wide range of careers and how they relate to what young people are learning at school. In return, the Project Officer has the opportunity to promote the Bridging Perthshire’s Past project to students, and discuss how the various aspects of the project could tie into the new Curriculum for Excellence learning areas.

A school pack has also been produced and is available on the PKHT website as a pdf download through the Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) history portal, Scotland’s History. The school pack is to be used either as a teaching aid in conjunction with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme, or to inform ‘Living History’ days. In 2011 the project will concentrate on the third aim, which is to improve access and interpretation. This will involve the production of a series of interpretation boards at key sites, together with leaflets and a publication.

The project has now entered its final year and it is hoped that by achieving these aims an important part of our heritage will be preserved for future generations to learn about and enjoy. Lindsay Farquharson

Project Manager

7 General Wade’s Road from Crieff to Dalnacardoch

Jim Morrison has produced a series of walks for the local Rambler’s club, which he has kindly allowed us to reproduce. It is not just scenic beauty of the chosen routes that he values, but also their historical interest, as this example illustrates.

General Wade’s roads connected the Lowlands with Highland forts, pro- viding a speedy route for soldiers, their horses and wagons – and their can- nons.

This road starts in Crieff, from the north side of the present bridge (OS map 52: NN856 208) an old ferry crossing where the military road from Muthill meets the Strowan road. Using the bridge as a starting point, Wade’s road climbs up into Crieff via North Bridge Rd. and King St., and swings right, up

to the top end of Ferntower Road.

The bridge across the Tay at Aberfeldy; the best preserved of all the Wade bridges..

(Photo courtesy of SCRAN)

Here, the road continues as a track over the golf course towards Gilmerton, where it leaves the track, left at NN883 235, and then continues over open countryside to the Lodge House of Monzie Castle. Here, the road runs forward where it joins the A822 (at NN885 244), continuing underneath the A822, exiting north of Foulford Inn at the road end to Connachan Lodge (NN898 268). From here, Wade’s road swings left towards the Lodge, then swings right and following the map’s ‘General Wade’s military road’, makes a long sweep down into the Sma’ Glen, rejoining the A822 at NN904 296.

There is a tradition that ‘Ossian’s Stone’ was, at the time of building, obstructing the line of the road, and that a great number of army engineers rolled the stone to one side, only to find a burial chamber housing the body of a Roman officer, possibly from Fendoch. The Ossian Stone was removed to its present site (NN895 306), though nearer the road itself is the Soldier’s Mound, thought to be the grave of one of Wade’s soldiers. Another grave – the Giant Grave cairn, is nearby at NN905 296.

Wade’s road continues to run alongside and sometimes under the A822, up to Newton Bridge. This bridge replaces one of Wade’s, the remains of which can be seen further upstream. At Newton Bridge, the road turns right and uphill, then exits left from the A822, carries on up over the heather, rejoins the A822 at NN892 338, then exits the A822 right at NN893 344, and rejoins the road at the Amulree to Glen Quaich road junction. Wade’s road goes down the hill, passes the Amulree Hotel and crosses the River Braan, near the present bridge (NN901 368). As Wade’s bridge was slightly downstream, his road exits right, shortly before the current bridge, crossing the A822. It then goes up via the Ballinlochan farm road, around the hillside where it crosses the Fender Burn and continues on to a sharp right turn at NN905 385, then runs down as a farm track, swings left and, at a farm road junction, bears left again, running along the edge of a wood, before crossing the A826 at NN911 394.

At NN908 405 the route again crosses and rejoins the A826, going up past the Griffon Forest and on to the viewpoint at NN880 464. Wade’s road then leaves on the right hand side and runs forward directly downhill, passes to the right of the Gatehouse, continues beside the A822, then exits right

The maps from Roy’s Military Survey of Scotland, 1747-1755, showed the new roads in great detail. These excerpts cover the start of the road at Crieff, and the Tay crossing at the then tiny village of Aberfeldy (Courtesy of National Library of Scotland)

10 again near the road end to Duntaggart at NN870 485. The road now makes its way into Aberfeldy via the hospital and Square and over Moness Burn via a less well-known bridge of Wade’s. Aberfeldy was a tiny place in Wade’s time, but as it has grown, so has his more famous Tay bridge survived, a vital link in his route, leading the walker across the river to Weem.

In 1730-31, the bridge’s stones were cut from a schist quarry on Faroc Hill, part of the nearby Bolfracks Estate. Dressed into ashlar blocks, the stones were then numbered and put into storage until Wade’s masons arrived. Completed in 1733, Wade’s bridge was then the only one spanning the River Tay.

Walking on through Weem, where the Weem Hotel has Wade’s portrait above the door in consequence of his lodging there, the road follows the B846 to Tirinie and on to Coshieville, where his troops were stationed. The road continues uphill, just past Glengoulandie, exiting right at NN769 530 then rejoining the B846 at NN773 537 near Whitebridge. It then passes the Tomphubil Lime Kilns, going downhill to Kynachan, swinging left round to Tummel Bridge, where a Wade bridge is still intact, but limited to pedestrian use.

Initially, Wade’s road follows the B846 westwards towards Kinloch Rannoch but soon exits right at NN753 596 and runs under and alongside a minor road, winding its way up and over the hill, and down to Glen Errochty. Here it eventually joins the B847 (OS map 42 NN721 633) just before it runs into Trinafour, where it crosses Errochty Water downstream of Wade’s bridge, which is only for pedestrians. Leaving Trinafour on the B847, the road exits left on to a minor road at NN721 633, and after a steep climb, traverses out of Glen Errochty, crosses a burn at NN727 683, exiting right from the minor road, going forward and crosses the Allt Culaibh where there are remains of another of Wade’s bridges. Wade’s road continues, joining the minor road at NN727 693 and following along before it finally joins the A9 at Dalnacardoch.

This route is ‘mapped’ only, so when walked, the route may need some minor changes. Use OS maps 52 & 42. Length: 69.6km (43.5 miles) Jim Morrison

11 There’s life in that midden!

Derek Hall, for many years identified with the recent archaeology of Perth, tells how much more we have learned about the everyday life of townsfolk in the past.

The most productive elements of a medieval burgh from the archaeologist’s point of view are the town middens. In the medieval period there does not seem to have been an organised rubbish collection system, although by the sixteenth century there are references in burgh guildry books to ‘pynnouris' or shore porters, who were paid to remove rubbish. The result was that domestic rubbish was disposed of by being spread out in the backlands of the burgage plots or even out into the street. There is documentary evidence from Perth which indicates that this build-up of rubbish was starting to cause problems by the fifteenth century, particularly where it was building up along the access road at the foot of the town defences: the burgh eventually passed a law to prevent this from happening.

The deep middens of Perth contain preserved textiles, silk, leather and wood that tell what clothing and footwear people were wearing. The most commonly found textile is a very coarse hand-woven fabric that was presumably very good at keeping out the cold. Finer types of clothing are best represented by the very ornate silk headscarf from the Marks and Spencers excavations on Perth High Street. The best parallel for this headscarf comes from royal graves in Spain dated to the fourteenth century. Other fragments of silk embroidered with bird designs were recovered from the Kirk Close excavation.

There is limited evidence for domestic sanitation - a small shed containing an earth toilet was found attached to the back of a medieval building fronting the High Street at Kirk Close, so by implication such facilities may have been very common in the medieval burgh. Locally-gathered moss seems to have been used as the equivalent of modern toilet paper. We presume that the water was provided by communal wells, although the town’s lade may have been clean enough also to provide water.

12 In its medieval heyday Perth appears to have become a very crowded place, and pressure on the available High Street frontage seems to have been intense; this is best illustrated by the results of excavations at the House of Fraser site in the early 1980s, where a vennel (or alley) between two properties on the street frontage was turned into a very small booth by roofing over the gap between the two buildings. The enterprising occupant then appeared to be in the business of selling hot food, as there is a small hearth with an associated wattle-built animal pen perhaps for chickens. In contrast, there is evidence from excavations that in some periods, possibly as early as the mid-thirteenth century, some of the street frontages are derelict and are only occupied by pits either for rubbish or the quarrying of sand; later examples of such bad times for the burgh economy may reflect the effect of war, famine and disease.

Wooden bucket found in Kirk Close excavation, Perth

The most distinctive feature of the plans of Scotland’s medieval burghs are the backlands. These reflect the way land was divided when the burghs were founded – an extent on the street frontage where the first buildings were built, and a long strip of land stretching back to the next boundary, often the limit of the burgh. In burghs such as Perth, St Andrews and Aberdeen the

13 boundaries of many of these plots of land have remained unchanged throughout the centuries, although many have now disappeared as a result of modern development. The owners of the properties would often conduct their trade here, and it is from these backland properties that much of the archaeological evidence for the different industries of the burgh is recovered. From the surviving documentary evidence in the Rental Books of the King James VI Hospital in Perth we can see that these backlands are often further subdivided into ‘forelands’ and ‘innerlands’ and often have various owners. By careful study it is possible to construct an accurate jigsaw of how the different parts of the burgh would have looked at various periods in the late medieval and post-medieval periods.

Climate Flooding in the burgh of Perth is not a modern phenomenon. As early as 1209, the royal castle was washed away and in 1621 a fearful inundation of water swept away the bridge over the river. At very low water the timber pile foundations of this bridge can still be seen in the riverbed on the shore of Stanners Island. Evidence for climatic variation can also be recovered, for example the bone ice skates from Perth indicate a period when the River Tay must have frozen over.

Buildings and Townscape The very good preservation of archaeological deposits in Perth has allowed archaeologists to suggest what the standard domestic dwellings of the medieval burgh must have looked like. Until at least the fifteenth or sixteenth century, all the buildings were built of wood - the only stone-built structures were likely to have been the church and any monastic establishments, although there is an intriguing reference to a stone house in the Skinnergate in fourteenth century Perth. Recent excavations in the Skinnergate found a fragment of ceramic stove tile of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, the only piece so far from Scotland that doesn’t come from a monastic site. A standard medieval house would have had timber foundation-beams holding upright posts that supported wattle walls daubed with clay and dung.

Occasionally, evidence is found for a slightly more sophisticated wall structure, such as upright planks fitted together with tongue and groove.

General view of the excavations at 80—86 High St.

15 The roofs of these medieval buildings seem to have been thatched with straw or heather, although it has been argued that wooden shingles may also have been used - there is a single excavated example of a shingle from the 1975-77 Marks and Spencer’s site excavations. An account of the Perth flood of 1209 refers to some of the burgesses escaping from the rising waters by going up- stairs into the ‘solars’ of their houses, implying that some of these houses must have had at least two storeys.

The buildings would have been concentrated on the street frontage and along the sides of any vennels or closes that ran back from these major thoroughfares. Vennels seem to have been a very common feature of the burghs, and some still exist to this day, for example Horner’s Vennel off South Street and Cutlog Vennel off the High Street. The name ‘vennel’ is French in origin and provides further evidence for Norman influence in the planning of the burghs.

From several excavations on the High Street, evidence is growing that this street was much wider than now, by up to as much as 2 or 3 metres on either side. It appears that such a wide main street would have acted as the burgh market; the idea of a market square, so common in England, is a rare phenomenon in Scotland.

Very few Scottish burghs were provided with formal defences against attack; Perth was one of the few that had a substantial stone wall surrounded by a deep water - filled ditch. Perth’s royal castle was washed away in the floods of 1209 and never rebuilt; excavations in advance of the building of the concert hall located a sizeable ditch that probably represents the eastern defensive circuit of this structure. That the king subsequently stayed at the Blackfriars monastery when visiting Perth implies that the main function of these castles was as royal lodgings and not as defensive strongholds.

Medieval Perth was a hive of commercial activity and different parts of town seem to have been used by different trades; thirteenth century documents give us an idea of the number and types of trades or professions that existed. People’s names included their trade Willelmus galeator (helmet maker) and Robertus faber (smith). Such trade names were associated with a range of industrial processes involving cloth or clothing, metalwork and leatherwork.

16 It is out of this wide range of professions that the Guildry Incorporation developed an organisation that still exists today in many Scottish towns. By 1400, at least thirteen burghs are on record as having guilds; unfortunately, no earlier records of these important organizations survive which makes it difficult to understand their function and composition. In Perth, the Guilds of Glovers and Hammermen (metalworkers) claim that their origins go back to the time of William the Lion. The presence of guilds in most of the burghs involved in overseas trade suggests that they had a monopoly over trade in certain goods such as cloth and hides.

Pottery

It is interesting to identify which industries were not members of the Guildry as this may imply that they were not based within the burgh limits - the pottery industry for example. The kiln sites which produced large quantities of pottery do not seem to have been located within the burgh limits; from the excavations at Marks and Spencer’s alone there are some 50,000 sherds of pottery. The kilns would, of course, have been an enormous fire hazard to a town almost exclusively built of timber. Until the post - medieval period, basic cooking equipment was made of ceramic material, although plates and bowls were exclusively made from wood. Whereas broken wooden implements could be burnt, pottery is virtually indestructible and so is a common find from excavations.

In the case of Perth there are at least three possible sites for pottery production: at Claypots, Potterhill and Kinnoull. However, no evidence for anything relating to such an industry has been found at any of these sites. It is possible that the kilns may have been further afield, although the first piece of kiln furniture from medieval Perth was found from the excavations on the site of the new Council Headquarters at the former Pullar’s works just to the north of the medieval burgh. It seems likely that a whole series of small kiln sites situated in rural settlements may have been supplying the major burghs, since in many cases this is where the resources, clay, fuel and water supply, are located anyway.

At the time of writing, the products of a native pottery industry have been identified, but very few kiln sites have either been located or excavated.

17 From at least the twelfth century Scottish White Gritty ware was being produced, with suggested production centres in the Borders, Lothian and Fife. There is a strong possibility that the technology for producing this well- fired pottery may have been brought to Scotland by some of the monastic orders, particularly those orders whose mother houses were in Yorkshire.

Until the thirteenth century, most pottery in the burghs was imported from England and the Continent. From several sites in Perth only imported pottery was found in the early layers and it is possible that the prevalence of these imported wares reflects the nationality of a large number of the burgh’s inhabitants. From the early thirteenth century, a type of pottery known as Scottish Redware came into use; it has been found in excavations from Stirling to Dornoch. A local Redware fabric is also beginning to be found on the west coast at sites in Dumfries and Galloway and in parts of Strathclyde.

In thirteenth and fourteenth century Scotland, the very well-made products of the Yorkshire kilns became the dominant type and had an enormous effect on the style and technique of the local potters. The Yorkshire kilns were producing distinctively lustrous green glazed vessels, often decorated with

Deep Archaeology! Looking down into an excavation in Scott St., Perth 18 figures on horseback riding around the outside - for example the so-called ‘knight jug’ and tableware such as the aquamanile which was designed to hold water for washing the hands. Excavations at the site of the new Scottish Parliament in the burgh of Canongate (now in Edinburgh) recovered an important group of sixteenth and seventeenth century pottery, including sherds from high - quality vessels from northern Germany and France and olive jars from Seville in Spain. Such pottery is not often recovered in Scotland, as deposits of this period have often been destroyed by the extensive eighteenth and nineteenth century rebuilding.

The nature and extent of trade in medieval Scotland is a matter of considerable debate. The lack of surviving medieval port books makes it very difficult to prove conclusively that pottery was being traded in its own right rather than as containers for other goods such as wine and honey. However, the use of cooking pots imported from Eastern England or Scandinavia in the early centuries of the burgh of Perth suggests that these vessels were being bought for that very purpose.

The surviving customs records indicate the export to the Low Countries and Flanders of wool from Scotland, much of which may well have been coming from the major monastic estates of the Borders. Following the end of the war between the Hanseatic League and the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway in 1370, the reopening of the Sound of Skagerrak to shipping provided direct contact between Scotland and the Baltic. Interestingly, a Hanseatic decree of this date specifically stated that Scotsmen, Englishmen and Welshmen were not permitted to trade salt herring at the fairs in the Baltic region. It is difficult to work out just how extensive the use of this trade route was anyway, although by 1497 the Sound Toll Register lists twenty-one Scots ships from Dundee, Leith, Aberdeen, St Andrews and one unknown port. Recent important work on the tree-ring dating of timbers from Stirling Castle seems to indicate that timber from the Baltic was certainly being imported into Scotland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Animal skins, hides, cheap cloth and salt were all exported from Scotland. In the later Middle Ages there was a large - scale emigration of Scots tonorthern Europe; some of these were students heading for universities in Germany, France and the Baltic countries, but many were merchants who settled in coastal ports such as Danzig. There are also tantalising pieces of evidence

which may suggest that there were even earlier contacts between the Baltic States and Scotland, for example a type of imported pottery found in early levels in Perth has been identified as possibly originating in Jutland. Such possible early contacts are still the subject of ongoing research.

Medieval archaeology in Scotland has made enormous strides in recent years largely due to worthwhile cooperation between historians and archaeologists, this continues with important new research on the likes of Medieval pottery, from the excavation at 84-86 High St., Perth Scottish medieval deer parks and will hopefully lead to All pictures courtesy of the author further study of the countryside in the medieval period. We now understand our burghs a lot better than we did thirty-five years ago, but we have hardly begun to scratch the surface when it comes to the subject of the countryside and hinterlands that were supplying these communities. Our burgh archives have an enormous part to play in such research and give us a vital connection with the previous inhabitants of medieval Perth; in times of recession and economic uncertainty our surviving documents and irreplaceable archaeological deposits should be cherished.

Derek Hall, Archeologist

20 Patrick Matthew of Gourdiehill; Perthshire’s precursor of Darwin

‘If I were to give an award for the best single idea that anyone ever had, ahead of Newton or Einstein, I would give it Charles Darwin. At a single stroke, Evolution by Natural Selection unifies the realm of life, meaning and purpose with the realm of cause and effect and the natural law...’ (Daniel Dennett in his 1995 book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea)

Over the top, perhaps; but if is remotely near the truth, then Patrick Matthew of Gourdiehill, a Perthshire landowner and arboriculturalist, deserves to be more than to be an obscure footnote to The Origin of Species. For in 1831, fully twenty- seven years before Darwin finally published his great book, Patrick Matthew proposed a virtually identical thesis. Unluckily for his future reputation, it took the form of an appendix in his book On

Naval Timber and Arboriculture. Although the book was well reviewed at the time, it was hardly likely to appeal to non-specialists, and so his brilliantly original concept had no impact whatsoever on the development of scientific thought.

Patrick Matthew was born in 1790 into a Perthshire family of small landowners in the Carse of Gowrie. He was educated at Perth Academy and for a short period at Edinburgh University, where he began a course in medicine (as did Darwin himself a few years later). The ideas and The only known portrait of Matthew, probably attitudes of the Scottish Enlightenment dating from the 1850s. were evidently still alive at that time, (Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons) and Matthew clearly shared them. He clearly had a mind capable of great achievement; but in 1807, when he was just seventeen, his mother died, obliging him to leave university and devote his whole time to managing the estate.

21 He evidently decided quite early on to turn the estate over to orchards, and over the next twenty years clearly made himself an expert in tree cultivation, not merely of fruit trees, but of other economically important species. Selection for breeding was the key to improving the stock, and his book proved that by the late 1820s he had a profound understanding of the subject. In the case of the oaks from which the British Navy was built, he realised that, as the best trees were constantly being felled for shipbuilding, their successors were inevitably bred from the less well-adapted residue. In time quality would inevitably decline, and the British Navy would be outclassed.

But from this slightly mundane observation, and almost as an aside, he made a great conceptual leap to the mechanisms of descent in the natural world; ‘There is a law universal in nature, tending to render each reproduc- tive being the best possible suited to its condition that its kind is sus- ceptible of, and which appears intended to model their powers to their highest perfection and to continue them so. This law sustains the lion in its strength, the hare in her swiftness and the fox in his wiles. As nature, in all her modifications of life, has a power of increase far beyond what is needed to supply the place of what falls by Time’s de- cay, those individuals who possess not the requisite strength, swiftness, hardihood or cunning fall prematurely without reproducing – either a prey to their natural devourers, or sinking under disease, generally induced by want of nourishment, their place being occupied by the more perfect of their own kind, who are pressing on the means of subsistence … There is more beauty and unity of design in this continuing balance of life to circumstance, and greater conformity to those dispositions of nature that are manifest to us, than in total de- struction and re-creation … the progeny of the same parents, under great differences in circumstance, might in several generations even become separate species, incapable of co-reproduction’

For that period, these were audacious concepts. They represented a challenge to religious orthodoxy, which insisted on every species being the outcome of a divine creative act. The deist and freethinking eighteenth century was long gone; in reaction to the French revolution, most European governments encouraged religious orthodoxy as a weapon against potentially dangerous ideas. Matthew was probably protected from controversy by the very obscurity of the book’s subject-matter, but this does not detract from the intellectual courage it must have taken. 22 But tragically for him, Matthew did nothing to develop his great insight, to fill it out with confirmatory examples, or to make it known in scientific circles. Instead, he devoted more and more time to political concerns in which he was unable to achieve anything of consequence, and to developing orchards in NW Zealand and Schlezvig–Holstein, sending out his sons as managers. Darwin, in the meantime, worked for almost three decades on his theory, creating example after cogent example, and making the underlying argument as watertight as possible. It helped, too, that a wide circle of scientist friends were aware of his goal and lent him vital support in the ideological struggles that soon followed publication. Thus, when he was (reluctantly) obliged to publish it in 1859, it was an instant success, and has remained in print ever since.

Patrick Matthew’s chagrin must have been unbearable. In 1860, in a letter to the Gardener’s Chronicle , he claimed precedence for the idea, without however suggesting plagiarism on Darwin’s part. Darwin wrote a generous letter in response, which said: I freely acknowledge that Mr Matthew has anticipated by many years the explanation that I have offered of the origin of species, under the name of natural selection. I think that no-one will feel surprised that neither I, nor any other naturalist, has heard of Mr Matthew’s views, considering how briefly they are given, and that they appeared in an appendix to a work on Naval Timber and Architecture. I can do no more than offer my apologies to Mr Matthew for my entire ignorance of his publication.

By 1869, Matthew was an old man, his life’s work behind him, when he suddenly engaged in a proposal to build a vast and expensive railway bridge across the Tay Estuary to Dundee. His letters and articles in the Dundee papers are eerily prescient about the faults of surveying, design materials and construction which led to the disaster ten years later. He was the first to correctly forecast that the seabed on the North end ‘would contain deep depressions, full of sedimentary mud’ and he correctly forecast problems with the cast iron. But his greatest scorn was the design of the bridge itself as being too tall, too long and too fragile, and his foreboding on this score was all too justified.

Although he died in relative obscurity five years earlier, the disaster reminded Dundonians of his uncannily accurate predictions, and for many years he had a posthumous fame as The Seer of Gourdiehill.

23 David Wilson Friends’ Visit to Stobhall, 30 June 2010

Fourteen of us gathered for the Friends’ 2010 Summer Outing on a lovely sunny day in June in the grounds of Stobhall, near Cargill. Viscount Strathallan kindly waived the entry fee for us, suggesting instead a voluntary donation to his chosen charity, the Rehabilitated Addicted Prisoners Trust. Stobhall is a collection of buildings surrounding a courtyard, perched on a promontory above the Tay, and set in delightful topiary and wooded gardens.

The Drummonds received a charter for the lands of Stobhill and Cargill in 1367 and lived here for over a century before building the fortified Drummond Castle. They returned to Stobhall during the Interregnum, when many of the buildings, including the Dower House, were built. Following an introductory talk by

Viscount Strathallan in the library, we were able to browse a selection of volumes laid out on the table, including a very early gardening manual for Perthshire, maps, a book of beautiful horticultural pictures in watercolour and an enormous volume of drawings intended as an instruction manual for deploying infantry and cavalry on various types of battle terrain.

Alastair Elder then led us on a tour of the buildings and grounds. The 14th century Chapel features a painted ceiling from the mid 1600s depicting the mounted monarchs of Christendom, and also Prester John. There is an ornate plaster ceiling above the staircase to the Dower House, and fine views of the Tay from the drawing room. The folly is a recent construction housing a reclaimed 17th century trompe l’oeil panelling.

Viscount Strathallan rejoined us on the terrace overlooking the river, where we were treated to tea and ‘highly calorific biscuits’ and later we were able to explore the gardens and have a picnic in the grounds.

Our thanks are to Viscount Strathallan and to Alastair for making us so welcome, and to Margaret Borland-Stroyan for organizing such a successful outing. 24 Jackie Hay