Celebrating the Launch of 'Perth: a Place in History'
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Issue No. 31 November 2011 Days of Fire and Brimstone: Perth at the centre of religious revolution. The destruction of friaries after John Knox’s sermon, May 2nd,1559. A picture by David Simon (courtesy of Perth & Kinross Heritage Trust) Celebrating the launch of ‘Perth: A Place in History’ Chairman’s Notes and Archive News page 2 Review of ‘Perth: a Place in History’; 4 Perth during the Black Death and later Epidemics 7 The Enlightenment and Civic Improvements 12 The start of an Auld Sang; Perth and Parliament 1300-1707 18 Effie Gray; a Perth girl who married Ruskin and Millais 21 Chairman’s Notes Dear Friends, Our annual outing this year, was to the two archives in Dundee – that of the University of Dun- dee and the Dundee City Archives. There are so many references in our archives to the rivalry between our two cities that it was a great pleasure to meet our Dundonian colleagues and friends to discuss our history without rancour. In addition to standard university records, the University Ar- chive specializes in ecclesiastical records and those of the jute and linen industry. It also contains the magnificent photo- graphic collection of Michael Peto (1908-1970). The University Archive, Records Management & Museum Services care for the University art collection and a fascinating small museum. After all too short a visit, we proceeded to the City Archives, which are housed in the City Chambers. There, over lunch, we were welcomed by some Friends of Dundee City Archives. De- spite the pouring rain, about half of our group very much wanted to participate in a guided tour of the Howff. In 1564, Mary Queen of Scots granted the land of the former Franciscan Friary to Dundee, with permission to use the yard as a public burial ground. The Howff is so named because it was used as a meeting place and, especially, as a place to resolve disputes. Returning to the City Chambers, we were shown some treasures from the Dundee City Archives, including a document signed by Mary Queen of Scots, along with the spacious working area de- voted to the Friends (which we viewed with envy!). A simply lovely day, apart from the weather! A week later, on a very pleasant sunny afternoon, we had the pleasure of welcoming a group from the Friends of Dundee City Archives to Perth, for a walk around historical Perth conducted by one of our own experts, Graham Watson, and for a view of some of our Archive's treasures. Mrs Margaret Smith (outgoing President of the Perth Soroptimists) has joined the Friends as a volunteer, continuing Hilary's work on Women in Perth & Kinross. We offer her a warm wel- come. As usual, we have drawn up a most interesting programme for our Season 2011-2012. I shall look forward to seeing as many as possible Friends at our open meetings. One problem is that it is often difficult to speak to more than a few of those who attend. Please do not hesitate to con- tact me or other members of the Committee if there are any issues you wish to raise with us. With all good wishes, Margaret Borland-Stroyan 2 Archive News As autumn fast approaches, we’re missing Anna, who did sterling work helping us get ready to put all our catalogues online. This has been a slower job than we anticipated, mainly because of technical issues (which I haven’t a clue about), but I’ve been told that we are getting there. Meanwhile, we miss Anna and hope that she goes on to find a job that really satisfies her. We’ve had other work experience students in over the past few months, most notably one from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) who finished his week with us by finding a WW1 bullet! This was from a marvellous group of Pitlochry-based collections that was deposited with us, and which included a poignant set of letters home from a young man who had been mortally wounded in the advance on Cambrai, France. So devastated was his family, that in the early 1920s they made a pilgrimage to the battlefields, bringing home the rifle bullet as a souvenir – hence its inclusion among the papers. Our student was sorting through them when he came upon the bullet – it ended up being removed by the police who were planning to dispose of it ‘safely’. Less heart-stopping, but equally interesting collections in this deposit included records of all the fish that had passed through Pitlochry Fish Ladder during the 1960s, and two Highland Lawn Tennis Tournament minute books. Collections that are now catalogued and available include MS305, the Samuel Black Watson letters, 1913-1918. These letters tell the story of Black Watson’s military career from when he joined as a young man of 17 in 1909, of his being invalided out from Gallipoli in 1915, and serving with the Scottish Horse and King's African ri- fles, before being discharged from the army on 22 May 1919. You can find out about our new accessions and catalogued collections on our web pages under ‘Archive News’. Finally, you may remember in the last issue I mentioned the Perth Academy ‘Spot the Pupil’ event – well, photos and information are still trickling in, and we still need a volunteer to collate and organise the information….If you’d like to spend cold winter days in the warmth of the Archive searchroom, give me a call on 01738 477012. Jan Merchant Friends of PKC Archive, AK Bell Library, York Place, PERTH PH2 8EP Scottish Charity No. SCO31537 Tel:(01738) 477012 Email: [email protected] Hon. Presidents; The Provost : Sir William Macpherson of Cluny and Blairgowrie : Mr Donald Abbott Editor: David Wilson 3 Book Review Perth: a Place in History September saw the launch of a new book on Perth’s history which greatly extends our understanding of the origins and development of the city. Its twelve authors all took part last year’s very successful historical conference, but this book is not merely a raw collection of transcribed talks. For once, the usual book-launch hyperbole is thoroughly justified; it really is a landmark in historical scholarship about Perth, exploring an extraordinary range of subjects and periods at a depth which often sharpen the appetite for more. In David Strachan’s own article, in which he explores the deep prehistory of the area, Perth is shown to be a relatively late starter in a locale studded with ancient ritual sites and defensive landmarks. Places like Moncrieff, Abernethy and the Scone district were regularly reoccupied by completely different cultures over time-spans of thousands of years. Then, as maritime trade became more important, Perth an obvious place for settlement--it was at the lowest fordable point on the river, but also the furthest upstream for larger boats. The original settlement around St. John’s was on an ‘island’ in the flood plain; only later, when the town expanded into low-lying areas, did the chief drawback of the site—its liability to catastrophic flooding— become equally obvious. Derek Hall then takes the archeological story of the settlement forward into the early medieval period. Perth archaeologists love the waterlogged, oxygen-free ground under the city in which almost anything organic survives—even the stumps of trees from the original site clearance in the mid-1100s. The evidence uncovered reveals that Perth was a town of some prosperity in the early medieval period, but even at that early date it lived by making things rather than by trading alone; a way of life that persisted through the centuries, almost to the present day. In stark contrast, Richard Oram’s environmental history shows that by the 1250s, the prosperity associated with the ‘medieval warm period’ was over, and was succeeded (with brief intermissions) by centuries of climatic deterioration, crop failures and recurrent famine, terrifying human and animal epidemics, including of course the ‘black death’ which first struck Scotland in 1349. It is probable that that these environmental factors account for Perth’s gradual decline from a major trading centre to a merely regional market three centuries later. But as Alan MacDonald shows in his study of Perth and Parliament, it was just in this economically fraught period that the city became politically influential, both as a regular parliamentary venue and because of its prominence in parliamentary decision-making 4 It was usually represented on most important committees and commissions, to the town’s great benefit, for instance by securing large sums for bridge maintenance and rebuilding. But did its decades-long legal battle with Dundee over processional precedence stem from an uneasy awareness of its increasing economic inferiority vis-a-vis its flourishing neighbour? And then Mary Verschuur brings us back to the realities of town life in the mid-sixteenth century by leading us on a tour of well- documented locations in the years leading up to the religious explosion ignited by Knox in St. John’s church in 1559. She visits centres of manufacturing, home to craftsmen who were often prominent protestants. In those years, holding the wrong opinions could be life-threatening; Mary Stirk, a tradesman’s daughter, was drowned in 1544 for the crime of not praying to the virgin when giving birth! The tour illustrates the wide range of Perth’s occupations and trades, which included making such goods as ‘spears, knives, helmets, gloves, saddles and ladders’ as well as the ubiquitous textile trades. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment in Scotland was a liberating reaction to the dogmatic certainties of the past, and showed itself a commitment to rationality and order in intellec- tual, social and economic life, and a thirst for practical innovation and improvement.