Issue 39, Autumn 2015

Issue Number 39 Autumn 2015 2000-2015 CELEBRATING 15 YEARS! CONTENTS Page Chairman’s notes and Archive news 2 The old chapel by Lawers House 4 An overstayed welcome in the Tolbooth: Robert Glass 6 Celebrating 15 years of the Friends 9 Perth Theatre Memory Collective 17 The northern Highlands and their wider contacts with Perth and its shire in the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries 18 John Kerr 22 First World War: collection flags 23 Notes from the Chair As some of you will know, this year is the 15th anniversary of the formation of the Friends of Perth & Kinross Council Archive. Thus our charitable association was a Millennium creation in 2000! Its sustainability has been due to the determination and dedication of my predecessors in office and long-serving committee members. I hope very much that we can keep the organisation going into the future and continue to assist the Archive staff in any way we can. It was appropriate, therefore, that our summer outing this year was such a success. On Monday 15th July, a group of Friends visited the Map Collection of the National Library of Scotland, housed at 159 Causewayside in Edinburgh. Chris Fleet and Laragh Quinney were most hospitable and informative. Chris gave an excellent illustrated talk about the Map Collection, then Laragh took us on a guided tour of their facilities. All of this was fascinating but the display of historic maps of Perth and its environs was fabulous. Many of us would have stayed there much longer to absorb as much of the data as possible had that been practical. What we learned from these maps you could not appreciate from any other source. I know that some members have been studying the online versions assiduously since receiving a tutorial on using the database during our visit. Finally in this edition, I am delighted to be able to report that the Kirk Session of the Riverside Church on Bute Drive in Perth have agreed to take custody of the First World War memorials in the former St Andrew’s Church on Atholl Street, to which they are the successors. They intend to commission expert advice on the removal of the plaques from the old church and install them in a public memorial garden adjacent to the Riverside Church. The YMCA, who own the old church, have been very helpful in facilitating access and it is hoped that some funding can be obtained from the War Memorials Trust to help with the work involved. I don’t have a timescale for this but it is hugely satisfactory that these memorials will be able to be seen by the public again a hundred years on from the war they commemorate. Alan Grant Chair of the Friends Committee 2 News from the Archive What strange weather we had through the summer! One day it was glorious, the next rain – really, not a great summer overall. However, no matter what the weather throws at us, we are always buzzing in the Council Archive, whether with visitors and events, or behind-the-scenes work. As some of you may know, the Archive is to become part of a new culture Trust, along with Libraries, Museums and Art Galleries, from 1 April 2016. The service continues as usual, but it means that the Archive staff are very busy with background administration work in preparation for the new Trust. The change will not affect the provision of services to customers: we will continue to provide a high quality service. In fact, the only alteration likely to be noticed will be in our logo. The now annual national Explore Your Archive Campaign kicks off on Saturday 14 November and runs until the following Sunday. As with other years, we will have a display and “explore” box containing copies of some interesting items from the Archive. Before that, The Big Listen 3 survey takes place from 15 September to 24 October. This is your chance to have your say about the Archive, Libraries, Museums and Galleries. Please let us know what you think about our services and what we could do to improve. The online questionnaire is available at www.pkc.gov.uk/whataboutyou. If you have been visiting the A K Bell Library this year, you will know that the Library has been celebrating its 21st Birthday. This happy occasion culminates on Friday 4 December with a special event at the A K Bell from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm. Some exciting things are planned for that evening, so keep your eyes and ears open for further details. In conjunction with that, there will be a display on the gallery wall on the first floor of the A K Bell Library throughout November and December. This will feature memories, stories and anecdotes relating to the Library during its first 21 years. Local & Family History and the Archive are taking the lead in this exhibition. Well, I am sure you’ve had enough of me for now, so until the next time take care and enjoy the festive season when it comes. Christine Wood Assistant Archivist 3 The old chapel by Lawers House Travellers journeying west along the A85 road between Crieff and Comrie may sometimes have wondered at an old gable wall, standing in the parkland slightly beyond Lawers House on the right hand side of the road and almost surrounded by trees. This east gable wall is the only surviving part of a chapel that is believed to date from the early sixteenth century. The building measured 33 feet long by 20 feet wide; the gable itself is 20 feet high at its apex and is 2 feet 3 inches thick and there is a panel set into the outside of its wall, but unfortunately it is completely blank. How one wishes that at Photograph of Lawers Chapel supplied by the author least a date had been inscribed on it or even an armorial bearing that would have given a clue to the date of its building! Mystery surrounds its origins. The earliest records of the estate date back to 1510 in the form of a Precept of Sasine in favour of Mariote (Marion) Forester to hold in liferent, and her son John Drummond to hold in hereditary fee, the lands of Fordew, Glentarkane and Balmuk in the lordship of Strathearn and the Sheriffdom of Perth. All these lands [Fordie, Glentarken and Balmuig] were later incorporated into the estate of Lawers. Mariote herself was a daughter of Archibald Forester, the fifth laird of Corstorphine, and Margaret Hepburn. In 1493 she married Sir William Drummond of Kincardine who was the second son of the first Lord Drummond and their son was the John mentioned above; he married a lady named Isabella and eventually joined the Order of Dominican Friars. 4 Sir William Drummond died in 1503/04 and subsequently Mariote married again around 1524, her new husband being James Campbell of Lawers on Tayside. He was a son of John Campbell of Lawers who had died on 9th September 1513 at the Battle of Flodden. In turn, it was James’s descendant, Sir John Campbell, whose lands on Tayside were so devastated by the Marquis of Montrose’s Royalist army in 1645 during the Civil War that he left there for his safer lands further south on Upper Strathearn. He took with him the name of Lawers with which he renamed his Fordew estates in Upper Strathearn, so that is the reason why the name of Lawers still appears today on the maps of both Tayside and Upper Strathearn. James F. Whyte recorded in the Transactions of the Scottish Ecclesiological Society in 1938 that he believed the chapel might have been built around 1519, when the John Drummond mentioned above, who became a Dominican friar, owned the lands. This date is assumed because the bell, cast by Willem van den Ghein, bears the inscription (in Dutch) : “I was cast in the year of Our Lord 1519”. The chapel’s dedication is unknown but at that time it was popular in Scotland to build chapels dedicated to Our Lady of Loretto. There is a reference in the 1563 Rentals of Inchaffray Abbey to “ane Chapell or ane house ruinous callit the Chapell of Oure Lady of Lawreit”; this may or may not refer to the Lawers chapel but, according to the late Father CDR Williamson of Comrie, sometime around 1751 a Campbell of Lawers gave its bell to the Kirk at Amulree. When and why was this chapel built in the Lawers parkland long before the present house was built and when did it become a ruin? The gable still stands, nowadays even more camouflaged behind layers of creeper than in the photograph, but the writer has been unable to trace any reference to it in the Lawers House archives and so its mystery remains. Bernard Byrom This article provokes our interest in further research. If any reader can offer information in this regard, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please contact the editors via the Archive (details on back page). 5 An overstayed welcome in the Tolbooth: the case of Robert Glass Eighteenth century prisons were not intended for long-term incarceration, but rather temporary confinement until punishments, typically whipping, banishment, transportation or execution, occurred. Perth’s ancient tolbooth had long incorporated a prison, but in the 1790s growing numbers of penal guests, who overstayed their welcome, caused magistrates mounting concern. Their vexations with Robert Glass, customs officer at Pitlochry, are documented in the Perth & Kinross Council Archive (and Register House).

Load more