Issue 38 January 2021 CAIRT Newsletter of t he Scottish Maps Forum In this issue: New online maps showing engineering works and rural estate management in Scotland • New online engineering and estate maps In the last six months the National Library of Scotland has put online over 2,800 early maps of Scotland. The most significant of these • The Society of Scottish Land Surveyors include 1,072 Stevenson civil engineering plans (ca. 1800-1940), as well as 924 rural estate plans (1750s-1950s). The majority of the • Recent NLS website Stevenson plans show harbour works in coastal towns, but there are additions significant numbers of maps too relating to bridges, canals, railways, • Old Ways and New Roads – and river engineer ing. The Stevenson family also served as Bridging the River Tay at engineers to the Northern Lighthouse Board, and drafted plans and Kenmore profiles of lighthouses. The collection also includes a range of related • Cairt competition printed mapping, including charts, county maps, and Ordnance _ _______________________ Survey plans us ed for reference purposes, and often annotated. SCOTTISH MAPS FORUM Over half of the new online maps show Sutherland Estates (1770s- 1920s), but there are also new online maps showing estates The Forum was initiated by the National Library of Scotland in 2002: belonging to the Lockharts of Lee (1770s-1950s), centred on To encourage multi-disciplinary map use, Lanarkshire, and those of the Fletchers of Saltoun (1750s-1870s), study and research, particularly relating to centred on East Lothian. The continuing good work of the Dumfries Scottish maps and mapmakers Archival Mapping Project has also resulted in maps going online To disseminate information on Scottish relating to Caerlaverock (1775-76) and Dalswinton Estate (1768) in Dumfries-shire, Earlstoun in Kirkcudbrightshire and Dumfries-shire maps and map collections To record information on maps and (1800-1815), and Dunskey in Wigtownshire (1804). These varied mapmaking, particularly in a Scottish context estate maps show excellent detail of rural areas and were made to To liaise with other groups and individuals support all aspects of land management, including agricultural with map related interests improvement, the creation of designed landscapes and gardens, To build on, and to continue, the work of planning new villages, harbours, mines and industries, as well as Project Pont new roads, railways, lighthouses, and fisheries. CAIRT • View Stevenson engineering plans: The newsletter is issued twice a year. "Cairt" https://maps.nls.uk/collections/stevenson/ is Gaelic & 17th century Scots for map. • View named estate map collections: For further information, or to be added to the https://maps.nls.uk/estates/#collections mailing list, please contact: Scottish Maps Forum National Library of Scotland 33 Salisbury Place Edinburgh EH9 1SL Tel: 0131 623 4660 E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @natlibscotmaps ISSN 1477-4186 © 2021 National Library of Scotland Thomas Telford’s Plan for Improving the Harbour at Aberdeen (ca. 1828) Editor: C. Fleet Technical Editor: J. Parkerson (with south to the top) showing new breakwaters, wharves, quays and floodwater channels for the Dee, all constructed ca. 1810-1827. 1 The Society of Scottish Land Surveyors: a brief episode in the history of surveying John Moore and Diana Webster explain the background and purpose behind this little-known society, which promoted the use of Imperial or British/English measures, rather than Scots measures, from 1825. In 1843, the surveyor John Wood, resident at Although originally intended to come into effect in Canaan Grove, Edinburgh was listed in the May 1825, the legislation was extended to the city’s Post-Office Annual Directory and Calendar as beginning of 1826 because of difficulties in the Permanent Director of the Land Surveyor’s manufacturing the new standards which were to be Society. The following year’s Directory records that provided to all local authorities.5 The Edinburgh he was elected to this post in 1833 and he continued Post Office Annual Directory for 1826 records the to be so described in subsequent volumes up to establishment of an Imperial Standard Weight and 1847, the year of his death. This enigmatic position Measure Office at 12 Royal Exchange and this was runs contrary to evidence in the Edinburgh to operate until 1828. Almanacs for the years 1834 to 1836 which list John Geddes as President and Lord Napier as Patron, ‘Inquisitions’ or juries were held in several Scottish without mentioning Wood.1 In a study of his life and counties, usually before the Sheriff-Depute, to establish career, where he is described as ‘the undervalued the relationship between old local units and the new cartographer’, Robson considered this organisation Imperial units, and to develop conversion tables for to be ‘as shadowy as Wood himself’.2 This brief note payments such as stipends for ministers (paid in kind, seeks to provide a little more detail on what was a for example, as grain), customs duties, feus and rents. rather short-lived episode in the history of Scots Although the Act stipulated the use of Imperial units, it surveying. left a loophole whereby older measures could continue to be used if an easy method of conversion were The Society of Scottish Land Surveyors was available. The Society set as its goal ‘to promote by instituted in 1825, and held its first General Meeting every means in their power, the introduction of Imperial in the Waterloo Hotel in Edinburgh on 11 January measures’. Following a suggestion from James Jardine 1826, with eminent Berwickshire land surveyor that tables of conversion from the old measures to John Blackadder (1761-1840) in the chair.3 The Imperial units would enable and encourage use of the apparent stimulus for inaugurating the Society was new measures, the Society decided to publish these the Weights and Measures Act of 1824 which tables at their expense under their auspices. repealed nearly all of the previous weights and measures legislation and established standard Jardine (1776-1858), a mathematician, civil engineer, Imperial units across Britain.4 Given that a report and geologist was well qualified to compile the prepared by a Committee of Management was conversion tables. He was a protégé of John Playfair, tabled at the meeting, it is clear that there had been having studied mathematics under him at Edinburgh a rapid response by the profession to the recent University before lecturing himself in the subject from legislation. Uniform measures had been a goal for 1796 to 1808. He worked with Thomas Telford on over a century since the 1707 Act of Union, but several projects and was engineer of the Edinburgh various local standards had held sway until taxation Water Company from 1819, building pipelines and and improved communications required common reservoirs. In 1826 he was working on the construction measurements throughout the kingdom, and higher of the Innocent Railway, so was based in Edinburgh. He volumes of trade demanded more consistency in had been responsible for bringing the Edinburgh ell volume and weight measures for goods. standard measure back to Scotland following its Considerable agitation from Sir John Sinclair and the comparison with Edward Troughton’s graduated scales Highland and Agricultural Society had led to the in London.6 It was Jardine’s involvement in this establishment of a Royal Commission in 1819. It comparison which identified him as the person best referred to a general unfamiliarity with the true suited to co-ordinate the re-measurement of the old measure of contemporary standards and provided Scots units when the new legislation introduced powers for the provision of models and copies in Imperial standards. George Buchanan and Thomas each county. In particular, tables were to be Grainger, respectively Vice President and Treasurer of produced to show the proportions of those measures the Society, were nominated to create the appropriate in use to the newly established units. calculations. Both men were eminent engineers, with extensive practices, and it was not until the annual meeting of the Society in January 1827 that ‘Specimens 1 In fact, Napier died in Macau in October 1834. of the manuscript, and a page in print’ were circulated.7 2 Robson, Brian, ‘John Wood 1: the undervalued cartographer’ Cartographic Journal, vol.51, 2014, p.259. 3 Caledonian Mercury, no.16287, 14 January 1826, p.2, 5 Connor, R.D. and Simpson, A.D.C., Weights and Measures in col.5; Caledonian Mercury, no.16292, 26 January 1826, p.1, Scotland: a European perspective. Edinburgh, 2004, p.392. col.1. 6 ibid. p.390. 4 An Act for ascertaining and establishing Uniformity of Weights 7 [Buchanan, George], Tables for Converting Scottish Land and Measures, 1824 (5 Geo.4 cap.74). Measures & Rates into Imperial. Edinburgh, 1827. p.iii. 2 Members recommended that Buchanan and Grainger Visiting country surveyors could gain access, should prepare separate calculations to be revised supervised and assisted by the Janitor, verify their by Jardine and William Wallace, Professor of own measuring chains and arrange for these to be Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. Only three corrected with the proper degree of tension by Adie days later, the Edinburgh press carried a front-page for a small charge.10 It was envisioned that another notice regarding the introduction and enforcement of standard chain would be laid down on the parapet the new Imperial standards and measures in both wall of the Royal Institution on