Thistle Lodge of Free Gardeners, Penicuik

Posted on March 14, 2013 by kenb

: Free Gardeners Lodge, Penicuik 1908

The Black Collection is a remarkable record about Penicuik and surrounding area from 1880 to 1930. It is named after James Black and his son Robert, who assembled a mass of material about life in Penicuik. The collection includes research and lecture notes, newspaper cuttings, notebooks, postcards, photograph albums and many other items.

Amongst the collection is a large ammount of material about the Thistle Lodge of Free Gardeners, Penicuik. The Ancient Order of Free Gardeners was a fraternal society that was founded in Scotland in the middle of the seventeenth century. It later spread to England and Ireland although it was principally a Scottish phenomenon. Like numerous other friendly societies of the time, its principal aim was to share knowledge amongst those working in a particular profession and also to provide mutual aid and insurance for its membership. In the nineteenth century, the latter activity became predominant. The Free Gardeners always remained independent of Freemasonry, but the history and organisation of the two orders show numerous similarities. By the end of the twentieth century, the Gardeners had become almost entirely extinct.

Free Gardeners Lodge, Penicuik 1909

The Thistle Lodge of Free Gardeners, Penicuik was formed in June 1822 from members of an earlier order called the Hand Papermakers’ Society (Penicuik was a centre of the paper making industry). The Gardeners were a highly visible presence in Penicuik and held annual walks and feasts, church services, concerts, sales of work and excursions. The Order had very specific rules and members were entitled to wear special regalia, sashes and badges. It would appear that in Penicuik at any rate membership was not very restrictive and open to almost everybody (except, of course, women).

Gardeners demonstration on Bridge Street, Penicuik 1909

Robert E Black, who compiled the Black collection, was an enthusiastic member of the Penicuik Gardeners and at one time acted as secretary of the local branch. His collection contains a good deal of material about the local Order, including dinner menus, press cuttings, concert programmes and photographs of members. As secretary of the Gardeners, he wrote a short history of the Order in Penicuik which was published in 1910. His collection is a treasure trove for any researcher with an interest in this little known but important aspect of Scottish culture.

Page from scrapbook on the Free Gardeners, Penicuik

Livingston in the 1970s

Posted on February 28, 2013 by jennifert

I have been cataloguing the archive of the Livingston Development Corporation for eight months now. The collection is great on the technical detail, on the why and how the town was built, on who made the big decisions, but sometimes you get the hankering for a personal touch – a view of the town that has an opinion. Because the Corporation was, well, a Corporation, much of its documentation can be a little dry, efficient, business like and very much to the point – and even, dare I say it, a little self-congratulatory.

However, a couple of months ago, whilst cataloguing the records of the Housing Department, I came across the “Reports of the Assistant Housing Visitor.” They don’t sound that promising, but these turned out to be almost diary like entries made monthly by two or three women employed as Assistant Housing Visitors. From 1970 onwards and through the 1970s these women (they were all women) visited new tenants in the town and make sure they were settling in okay, to ask if they had any problems or any issues; and, unfortunately an all too common a problem, to help them find ways to pay their rent arrears. They ended up acting, in a town with limited community facilities and services, as quasi-social workers.

These reports, far from being brisk businesslike collection of stats and targets, give a wonderful insight of Livingston in the 1970s, and of the problems the community faced and overcame. For example, something that I come across time and again is the problems caused by dampness in Corporation housing, this arose due to poor industrial construction techniques when building vast quantities of housing in a short space of time. I’ve come across a good many technical reports as to why the dampness happened, but in the visitors reports the issue is made far more human.

“The main complaints come from tenants in Bison flats who are “humbugged” by “dampness”. In most cases they are using their storage heaters properly and keeping their windows open slightly as they have been instructed – this does not seem to cure the trouble.”

The Corporation, in the early days, was reluctant to accept that their choice of building construction was to blame, and instead chose to tell people that because they had never used central heating before, it was their fault the wallpaper was hanging in damp shreds off the wall.

Another related issue was the cost of heating. Many of the early houses in Livingston were installed with electric storage heaters when electricity was cheap – then electricity prices rocketed. This was a pressing concern for many years (and one it looks like we are all going to have to face again). In 1972 the housing visitor wrote -

“There is a great deal of concern and anxiety among tenants over electricity bills. In many cases, money is not saved towards this bill at all – it is the ‘great unknown’ and panic ensues when it arrives…. for most people… the main problem is the insecure feeling caused by a large, long term fluctuating bill. The cards provided by the SSEB for calculating weekly costs are not widely used… most because people people would not really believe them or do NOT want to know about their bills, hoping they will be smaller when they arrive. “

In 1974 the visitor recorded that -

“I found that a great many of my tenants have solved their fuel bill problem this winter with some ingenuity. Several tenants living in the area arrange to visit one house for two days, then another house for two days, the person they visit has a warm house whilst the visitors can leave their heating off.”

Despite this novel solution, however, the cost of heating remained an issue for many years. In March 1977-

“It is generally accepted that this is the most quarrelsome time of the year and this is assuredly born out by the number of tenants who have sent for me because of family feuding, not necessarily about rent arrears, most because of the excessively high gas and electric bills… whilst Mrs is wondering how on earth she managed to accumulate such a bill, Mr is wishing he never got married, or blaming her for being extravagant.”

There are several more entries in the reports about this issue, it dragged on for years – however, the reports provide such a breadth of insights into life in the 1970s, it is worth moving on. There is another area of insight that the reports can give – into the social and economic mores of the time.

“It is now obvious that a percentage of women work either part time of full time and that it is not possible to make contact with them during working hours.”

This was a time when it was still thought that men were the breadwinners, and women were the housewives, though times were a-changing. But even then, there were obvious issues with unemployment in the early 1970s.

“It would appear that there is a shortage of jobs for the under twenties as well as part-time work for women and according to tenants, the Department of Employment & Productivity hold out very little hope of any immediate improvement. Two cases of men having given up their jobs to move to Livingston came to light. This could be a mounting problem with all its attendant difficulties.”

And, by 1977, problems with inflation –

“this past year has been one of inflation and its attendant problems. After dealing with rent arrears problems last winter, I suggested to tenants that they should try to keep their rent a little in credit each month to try to help out with the problem months… it would be wise to stock up… as a buffer against the winter and the increased prices.”

The reports also record an issue that was unique to New Towns. The New Town Blues. Because The main reason people moved to Livingston was “high standard of housing provided by the Livingston Development Corporation, probably the main reason why families choose to come, and remain in Livingston.” Housing in Livingston was newer, cleaner, warmer and better than the old slums and tenements of Glasgow, where many had come from, but these people left behind established communities to move to a town that had only existed since 1962, the first residents – “the pioneers” – moving to Livingston from 1964 onwards, moved to a building site, a place of “dust in the summer and mud in the winter”. It was a town that had no established community; no established groups or societies; no cafes, cinemas, parks, or sports fields. Loneliness was rife.

“I have been discussing the problem of loneliness with quite a number of tenants. This problem is known as the New Town Blues and is widely recognised. Its avoidance lies in the development of a sense of community.”

This is something that the residents of Livingston tackled with relish. From zero in 1964, by 1973 there were two hundred and thirty clubs and societies, one for every 100 residents in Livingston. Community spirit in Livingston had flourished.

Finally, as well as the ‘big picture’ the reports also capture the smaller details that show that perhaps life doesn’t change as much as we think –

“Another dangerous game of the children’s is to get boards and slide down the steep grassy slope from Eden Drive to the main road near the bus stop. I have seen children rolling down the slope which is quite steep and stopped my car to shout at them. One false move and these kiddies are straight under a passing car.”

Or, taking a break from work for a relaxing thirty minutes,

“the light entertainment of the month was caused through a tenant who had a hive of wild bees in her garden, these have now been removed by LDC… however I spent a quite pleasant half an hour watching the bees at close quarters, from the number of bees and the size of the mound I imagine it was quite a large hive.”

This remark attracted an annotation from the housing visitor’s boss Leslie Higgs, “Time available for this?”

Bosses are bosses, I suppose, no matter the decade.

The Housing Visitor Reports are the subject of an ongoing blog about Livingston in the 1970s which can be found at http://newtownlivingston.blogspot.co.uk/

Aidan Haley, Project Archivist (Cataloguing), Livingston New Town: From Plan to Community, 1962-2012.

The Mauricewood Disaster September 1889

Posted on February 14, 2013 by kenb

Mauricewood Colliery from the Illustrated London News

On 5 September 1889, the Mauricewood Colliery near Penicuik was the scene of the worst mining disaster in the history of the Lothians. An underground fire claimed the lives of 63 workers, including some as young as 13-years-old.

Following the accident, a Mauricewood Disaster Relief Committee was established in Penicuik to care for the dependents of the deceased. The committee was comprised of important local worthies, including the adventure novelist SR Crockett who was then a minister of the Free Church in Penicuik.

The Reverend SR Crockett

The Relief Committee raised money to help those who had been bereaved by the disaster. It is worth remembering that there was no welfare state in the late nineteenth century. As a result of the disaster, many households in the Penicuik area lost their only wage earner and would have been left destitute if the committee had not intervened.

The original minute book of the Mauricewood Relief Committee has recently been donated to the Penicuik Historical Society. It is a fascinating document that illustrates Victorian charity and welfare provision in action.

The Victorians have a reputation as being stern and uncaring, but the minute book suggests that, in this case at least, they were surprisingly sympathetic and compassionate.

Money for the disaster fund was raised by voluntary donations. The relief committee, which was entirely unpaid, began their work by compiling a list of victims of the disaster and the names of their dependents. It was calculated that 96 children had lost their fathers. Financial support was given to widows, children up to the age of 14, and to elderly parents who were unable to work for themselves. Pregnant widows received money for their unborn babies. A doctor was employed to administer to the medical needs of bereaved families.

However, there were also strict rules about who could receive support and not every application for assistance was granted. For example, widows who had started work or remarried were immediately cut off.

The original minute book of the Mauricewood Relief Committee was received in a poor condition, but it has been professionally restored and is now in the care of the Penicuik Historical Society. An electronic scan of the book has been prepared and can be consulted in Midlothian Local Studies in Loanhead along with other information about the disaster.

The Official Report on the Mauricewood Disaster

Edinburgh’s Inter War Housing

Posted on August 17, 2012 by peterc

St Leonards Lane, 1920s

Sanitary improvements to the urban framework of Edinburgh had got under way in the later 19^th century with the work initiated by the Burgh’s first Medical Officer of Health, Sir Henry Duncan Littlejohn. (An outline of his life and work is available to view on this website under ‘Exhibitions’ on the ‘Discover the Records’ tab) Other improvements – including slum clearance – followed in the early 20^th century along with the increase in ‘general needs’ housing developments. These were responses to the growing shortages of dwellings within the city.

On the one hand the insanitary state of some of the then housing stock demanded a remedy. On the other, “slum clearance” – quite an emotive title – both in and around the Old Town was even at the time frowned upon by those anxious to preserve the character of ancient Edinburgh. One answer was what had become known as ‘conservative surgery’, an approach much less drastic than wholesale clearance and redevelopment. To a more limited extent, this was the method used with the St Leonard’s schemes of 1927 & 1929.

Located to the south of the Old Town of Edinburgh with a dense concentration of substandard housing, St Leonard’s

Gifford Park Backland

quite naturally became a candidate for remedial treatment. A series of wonderfully graphic photographs of the area prior to any improvement work survives within Edinburgh City Archives. These illustrate the magnitude of the problem faced by the Council

The overall approach was designed to move most of the residents out to purpose-built housing in the new schemes on the outskirts of the metropolis leaving the cleared areas to be redeveloped with lower density housing and increased public & private open spaces. The apparent dereliction of parts of the area as shown in the photographs, dictated a two stage approach with the 1^st sanitary improvement scheme promoted in 1927 and the 2^nd two years later in 1929.

Under stage 1 about 750 dwellings were cleared affecting 2600 residents who were rehoused primarily in the new Prestonfield estate. It involved 15 sites which were located roughly between Nicolson Street and the Pleasance. Stage 2 finally received central government endorsement in 1931 and, because of a building boom and a labour supply problem, took shape over the course of the 1930s. This was a bigger operation than the 1927 phase involving the clearance of 24 sites, 1600 dwellings, displacing 5600 residents and relocating most of them in the new Niddrie Mains estate. Although some of the original tenants were resettled in the area it is thought that this amounted to only around 10-15%.

St Leonards Improvement Scheme, 1927

The photographs, maps of reference drawn up for the redevelopments (see example here) together with the housing committee minutes and files preserved in the Archives give a comprehensive picture of these schemes and their impact on the urban and social character of the capital in the 1930s.

Rosewell Village

Posted on March 28, 2012 by kenb

The village of Rosewell in Midlothian grew-up around the coal-mining industry. Mining had been taking place in theMidlothianarea since medieval times. Monks from Newbattle Abbey were known to work the local area. Whitehill colliery in Rosewell was owned by Wardlaw Ramsay. It was situated at the top end of the village where the houses ofRosedaleand Fairmeadow are now. In 1856, Archibald Hood, an engine manager, acquired the lease for Whitehill Colliery from Ramsay. Hood modernised and extended the workings of Whitehill and extended the railway to service his pits at Carrington, Eldin, Gorton, Polton and Skelty Muir. Hood also improved the social conditions of the miners. Houses were built to accommodate workers and their families. The houses were built in a hierarchal system with managers and foremen having bigger houses than the ordinary mine worker. Unusually, every house had a garden attached to it so that workers could grow some of their own food. In 1846, the population of Rosewell was just 133 people, but by 1881 it had risen dramatically to 2129. This rise was due to many Irish immigrants coming over to find work and escape the effects of the Irish potato famine. This influx of Irish workers led to Rosewell becoming known as ‘littleIreland’.

By 1885, Rosewell had a church, post office, school and a savings bank. In 1890, Whitehill colliery was amalgamated with the Newbattle collieries, which were owned by the Marquis of Lothian, to form the Lothian Coal Company. It was at this time that Archibald Hood’s son James took over as general manager of the company. James Hood was also a Midlothian County Councillor. He was closely involved with many of his father’s projects, such as the Rosewell Co-operative Society which was founded in 1862 and was the first of its kind inMidlothian. Rosewell was known as a ‘company village’, which meant that the coal company owned and controlled every aspect of life, apart from the school and the church. The co-operative retail society was encouraged and a ‘Gothenburg’ style system was adopted with the opening of The Tavern in 1909. The coal company stipulated that a proportion of the profits from the sale of alcohol went towards the creation of the public park and community facilities, such as abowling greenwhich opened in 1901. This was a win-win situation for the mine owners as the wages that they paid to their workers were handed back at the shop and the Tavern. If a worker lost their job then they also lost their house. There were strict rules about maintaining a tidy garden and planting. Failure to comply with these meant that a worker would be brought up in front of the infamous ‘green table’ to face the consequences.

Life was undeniably hard in the early days. There was no electricity or running water, and water had been drawn from wells situated in the village streets. However, there was a strong sense of community. For example, on25 February 1892, the Rosewell Co-operative annual soiree and concert took place. James Hood was in the chair and guests were entertained by soprano singers and a ventriloquist. On21 July 1892, Rosewell Athletic Games were held in a field adjoining the colliery. Games were also held on29 September 1892under the auspices of the Rosewell Brass Band. These games included a pigeon race from Hawick to Rosewell, and there was also a trotting handicap. Rosewell had many different clubs at this time, including football, pigeon-racing and dramatic arts. By 1900, Rosewell was a self-sufficient village. Nobody really needed to venture outside of it as their needs were met. Local people worked hard and had few material possessions, but in many ways they appeared to be happy with their lot.

Written by Maureen Moffat, Local Studies Assistant

Thank goodness for collectors!

Posted on January 26, 2012 by kenb

Bonnyrigg Calendar 1977

Thanks goodness for collectors! You might call them daft but they are a godsend for archivists and archive collections.

Recently, Midlothian Local Studies has completed a catalogue for a collection once owned by Eric Basden.

Eric B Basden lived at 7 Leyden Park, Bonnyrigg with his wife Joan and four children. He was a keen entomologist, and a member of the Bonnyrigg and Lasswade District Horticultural and Industrial Society. He was active in local affairs and his collection reflects his interests, including horticulture, local shops, businesses, the annual Civic Week, and clubs and societies in Bonnyrigg and Lasswade.

Civic Week programme

Alex Eadie

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Eric collected a huge amount of ephemera from the Bonnyrigg area. This included advertising leaflets from local shops and businesses, political leaflets, newsletters, membership cards and calendars, even books of bingo tickets and brown paper bags. Few people would consider saving this kind of material which is normally just thrown away.

Vote for Buchanan

Fortunately, Basden kept it and it was donated to Midlothian Local Studies after his death. It provides a fascinating snapshot of life in Bonnyrigg in the 1970s, a typical Scottish town of its day.

Amongst the collection is a series of fact sheets called ‘Compar-a-cost’. These were produced by the local council in the 1970s and compared the prices of basic groceries in local shops. Inflation and rising prices were one of the big issues of the 1970s and here local people could compare prices. In December 1975, a tin of baked beans cost 11½p in Nobles of Bonnyrigg but 15½p in St Cuthbert’s of Mayfield.

Another typical item is a receipt for Allan Forrest, Grocer and Fruiterer, High Street, Bonnyrigg. Eric Basden has added a note to the receipt stating that he asked the four members of staff to sign it the day before the business closed for good (15 May 1976).

Raffle tcikets

The collection includes two scrapbooks of local small ephemera, such as bus tickets, raffle tickets, business cards and invitations.

The collection also holds some internment notices from Lasswade cemetery dating from 1916 onwards. Basden probably rescued these from somebody’s bin.

Eric Basden died in 1984, having been a Midlothian man and pillar of the local community for all of his life.

Bonnyrigg & Lasswade Official Guide

The only worying thing about this collection is that if you are of a certain vintage, the 1970s don’t seem that long ago but the decade is rapidly becoming the stuff of archives.

There must be an upside to all this work…

Posted on January 19, 2012 by francesw

We’re mad busy at East Lothian Archives getting ready for our move to John Gray Centre in a few weeks. Packing, cataloguing, cleaning, blogging – you name it we’re doing it. The website for the new centre began its user testing this week (and will launch to the public shortly) so many hours have been spent writing content, checking the details and uploading catalogues to make our collections as accessible as possible. With one search visitors will gets results from all heritage services in East Lothian – Museums, Archaeology, Local History and Archives. It’s been an amazing amount of work but we’re really pleased with the results.

All our work and the creation of a new building is having a positive effect on our profile in East Lothian which has already led to an increase in donations. Earlier this week a gentleman visited us to hand over documents of Haddington Inspector of the Poor form the early 19^th century. It’s a fabulous collection that he had been holding onto for some years and now feels that East Lothian’s new Archive will be the best place for it. The collection includes details of a soup kitchen that was set up to feed the destitute, a list of paupers for Haddington and an appeal by the Inspector to Whitehall asking for money for the passage to Australia of two children of a convict who had been sent there.

Hopefully this will be only one of many fabulous new accessions we receive – there has to be a upside side to all this work!

Wellington Farm Reform School

Posted on November 22, 2011 by BdBlackHat

School Children c.1895

The admission records of the Wellington Reform Farm School in Leadburn provide a rare glimpse into the lives of young offenders and nineteenth century approaches to understanding and ‘reforming’ juvenile delinquency. The admission applications and certificates are a rare survival of detailed individual records and help to tell the story of children from a variety of backgrounds and circumstances.

Although life as a ‘delinquent’ child during the Victoria era was certainly not easy, social reforms concerning the treatment of young offenders changed the way children were punished. Reforms ensured that juvenile offenders were no longer held for long periods in adult prisons and increasingly, most children were given access to some form of education or training.

By 1860, there were 27 reformatories in Scotland. Life in nineteenth-century schools like the Wellington Reform Farm School in Leadburn was highly disciplined and strictly regimented. Days usually began at 6am and ended at 7pm-every hour was accounted for with set times for schooling, learning trades, housework, religious worship, exercise and meal times. Nonetheless, the purpose of the reformatories was not only to instil discipline and ‘reform the character’ but also to provide basic education and training in a trade such as shoemaking, tailoring, wood chopping and carpentry-reformatories for girls taught cookery and domestic skills.

Offenders between seven and fourteen years of age could serve a sentence in a reformatory. The most common offence committed by children was theft and this was considered to be serious enough to warrant sending a child to a reform school, often for several years. Sadly, the stolen items were frequently food stuffs and it is likely that the children were driven to theft out of hunger and poverty. Although reformatories were undoubtedly punitive institutions, they did provide regular meals and essential clothing to children who would otherwise go without.

The following are examples of application and admission papers from the Wellington Reformatory Farm School between 1860 and 1861.


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Life Stories

Posted on November 18, 2011 by francesw

We are often asked what an archivist is. There are lots of right answers but I like to think of myself as a keeper of people’s stories. A collection at East Lothian that demonstrates this to a ‘T’ is the Wallace Menzies collection. Wallace Menzies is a firm of solicitors based in North Berwick and the collection is one of personal legal papers relating to work they undertook.

The story of the firm itself is an interesting one and is closely tied with North Berwick. It started out as Lyle and Wallace. Both Robert Lyle and Andrew Wallace were Town Clerks of North Berwick as well as solicitors and indeed for sometime the solicitors office and the town clerk’s office were one and the same place. When Lyle passed away Wallace asked his nephew John W Menzies to become his partner therby given the firm its modern name. Wallace was a popular character in the town and a plaque was erected as a memorial to him on top of North Berwick Law (pictured)

The collection runs to some 70 boxes and includes the stores of hundreds of people. In the collection we have the papers of Mrs Scott Elliott, a very wealthy local lady who owned a considerable chunk of Easter Road in Edinburgh. She set up a trust and left large amounts of money, furs and jewels to her family.

There are also the records of Helen Whitelaw a local lady who left a considerable donation to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary on her death. You can hold this ladys life in your hands as we have her birth, marriage and death certificates and her wedding and engagement rings.

The collection also includes a fair amount of scandal – a divorce case from the 1890s involving nasty diseases, adultery and alcoholism that probably would be too far fetched for Eastenders is just an example.

Some of the papers include an inventory of people’s possessions, bank books, certificates, insurance and pension documents – papers that give a great insight into these people’s lives.

This collection is only one of the hundreds that we hold. I wonder how many lives we have in our archive?

Surfing the New Wave

Posted on August 4, 2011 by emmap

This is blog written by Stephen Thomas. It has come to the point where we here at West Lothian Council Archive could not, nay dared not, ignore the growing wave of new and exciting ways to put oneself about. These so called Social Media Sites; where information about this and that can be Uploaded to be Downloaded to be Embedded, Shared, Edited, Trolled, Commented upon, Torrented and Uploaded again in the time it takes someone of my technological knowledge to work out how to attach a file to an email.

Bearing those limitations in mind we approached, with some trepidation, the bright and shiny new worlds of Twitter, Blogger, Twitpic, Flickr, YFrog, Hootsuite and Facebook. I am man enough to admit that there were tears, oh yes. Frustrations, rending of hair, slack jawed incomprehension and even the odd curse upon the Gods of technology and all their devious ways.

But as you are no doubt aware people who work in archives are patience and perseverance personified; they will happily wait for moss to grow on a stone so as to have a comfy seat. So, given time and restorative cups that cheer, the new media mountain was climbed and conquered.

Here are the fruits of our labour:

http://wlarchive.blogspot.com/

News, views, happenings and upcoming events. The blog is still very much in its infancy and not updated as regularly as one would like, but it’s getting there.

www.Twitter.com/WLArchiveRM

Various twitterings about projects as they happen.

www.Twitter.com/PoorInspector

Tweets as if from Councillor Alexander Smith, the Poor Law Inspector for the Parish of West Calder around 1896. Some license is used in regard to his thoughts on matters, but the information regarding names, dates and outcomes are all accurate.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/64453447@N08/

Our Flickr site where we upload pictures from projects and other more leftfield images taken around the archive.

www.Facebook.com

We also have a Facebook page; just search for the group West Lothian Council Archive.

Coming Soon – The blog of Private Peter Jack of Blackridge of the Lanarkshire Yeomanary charting a tour of duty from 1915-1916 which took him firstly to the Gallipoli Penninsula and later to Egypt.