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The mythical Battle of Airthrey

28/9/2014

Over the years, I have tried to reply to hundreds of enquiries, from professionals and others, about a range of Scots historical topics. Sometimes I am stopped in the street, sometimes people write or email or phone. I try to be helpful and clear and most people appreciate that. But a few, a very few ...

My reply to a telephone enquiry about the Battle of Airthrey was more or less as is set out here, though without the references, of course. To my surprise I now hear, via another enquiry, that I am credited with supporting the idea that such a battle took place. That is far from the truth.

The Battle of Airthrey is a myth. There is no reason to believe that such a battle took place. And, even if there was a battle between the Picts and the Scots around the year 840 AD, it was not the decisive event which gave rise to modern Scotland.

You can read some of the evidence here and get further detail via the references. The story could be amplified - but more evidence will not make the battle more real.

Note that this story is about myth-making, not about 9th century Scotland!

Vernacular Buildings - a new publication

26/8/2014

It was whilst working on the landscapes of the Battle of Bannockburn that I discovered a document, in the National Records of Scotland, which described the buildings of the Bannockburn estate in the early eighteenth century.

The document was compiled following the forfeiture of Sir Hugh Paterson of Bannockburn for his involvement in the 1715 Jacobite rising. As such, it is one of many surveys of forfeited estates at the time - but seems to be the only one which has such a detailed description.

Most (though not all) of the buildings are described as being built of stone and mud, most were thatched with straw and in some cases further structural details are given.

It was immediately obvious that, with around 100 buildings described, it was an important document, joining earlier hints of the importance of clay build in the Stirling area.

My paper on this topic has just appeared as 'Clay and the Buildings of the Bannockburn Estate in 1716' Vernacular Building, volume 37, 73-86. I have also included a brief outline of the economic developments of the immediate area at the time of the survey, including the development of new markets and fairs and the existence of coal, lime and stone workings; these are crucial parts of the context of the buildings themselves.

It is particularly gratifying to see it appear in a volume commemorating the work of the late Sandy Fenton, whose work on vernacular buildings in general (and clay build in particular) was so important.

Vernacular Buildings - Conference

17/9/2013

The Annual Conference and AGM of the Scottish Vernacular Buildings Group will be held at the premises of the Royal Commission in Edinburgh on 3rd October. You can find further details here where you can also download the booking form.

I have been a member of this group for 'longer than I care to recall'. And will be giving a talk about Archives and the Vanished Vernacular.

It's obvious that most buildings from the past have vanished beyond any physical recall - even archaeological remains have been obliterated. There may be no documentation for those which do survive.

But documents which relate to some types of buildings and to some geographical areas can be found, in surprising abundance. My talk will concentrate on a survey of the buildings of the Bannockburn estate in 1716 and on the evolution of tenement buildings between the late 16th and early 18th centuries.

By taking two such contrasting themes (one rural and one urban) I hope to show that documents can give broad, general insights which even the best-preserved buildings cannot do.

If you are interested in Scotland's older building traditions, then this is a group for you.

King's Park; Stirling's Overlooked Jewel

30/7/2013

This important conference will he held in the Smith Art Gallery and Museum on Saturday 31st August. Get an outline flyer here or full details here; this is a FREE EVENT but you need to make your own arrangements for lunch.

It is an honour to be speaking at this conference, the first attempt at an overview of the history of the park and its changing role. It is held at a critical time, when the future ownership and management of these major landscapes is under discussion.

The local importance of these landscapes is obvious; for leisure, for tourism, for views, for wildlife. Culturally, they are important at a European level, rare survivors of the royal past.

So, whatever your interests, come along, listen and contribute.

Battle of Bannockburn Project

3/1/2013

After several months of anxious waiting, it has now been confirmed that a team, led by Dr Richard Tipping of Stirling University, have been awarded a grant by the Leverhulme Trust to research the environment and landscape of the Battle of Bannockburn.

It was very gratifying to be asked to be a part of this big and exciting project - and to actually get the award is, of course, even better!

There are intractable limits to what the documents can tell us about the course of the battle - and even greater difficulties in explaining why the participants took the decisions they did.
A key question is why Edward II took the seemingly foolish decision to take his army down onto the carselands which, in the modern and popular view, were marshy or even peat-covered and intersected by deep, tidal channels.

But was it really like that? The hope is that scientific methods can provide new evidence. Formerly rather 'rough and ready' methods such as pollen analysis can now provide much finer detail about past environments.

My tasks will include comparing the findings with the documentary evidence, both with regard to the battle and the envionment. It is all going to keep me pretty busy for much of the first half ot 2013.

New Year

2/1/2013

Let's hope that New Year's Day's glorious sunshine is an augury of things to come!

Happily, Stephen and Ann, my 'first feet' were more than willing for a walk in the park. It's always a pleasure to walk in a familiar space with lively people and we had a lot of laughs, compared notes on various features, failed to find others. It is all part of the plan to roll forward research on the King's Park, to keep up the profile, to record and observe what there is to see. Now that it has been confirmed that Scottish Ministers will, in future, take ultimate responsibility for the park, we need to be prepared!

I am working forward with various other projects at present, one for Historic Scotland and on on the history of nails (OK, so that one is not everyone's cup of tea, but all will be revealed in due course!).

And on 14th of Jan I am talking to Dunblane Civiic Society about the Stirling Castle Palace Project which I am looking forward to.

Africans in 16th Century Scotland

22/11/2012

I was contacted a few days ago by Miranda Kaufmann who has been working on Africans in Britain 1500-1640 at Oxford. She had just come across reports of my findings of 'morys' [Moors] in the household of Marie de Guise in 1549 - for which see the Bread Book on the Papers page of this site.

So yesterday afternoon I attended her seminar at Edinburgh Uni on Africans in Scotland in the 16th century and much enjoyed it. She now has a total of at least 13 different people of African origin in Scotland across the century, mainly in the households of monarchs and a few other, high-status individuals, including the two 'morys' in 1549, of course.

This morning, I think we can increase that to at least 17 - with some more context!

In 1562 a distribution list for bread, wine, candles etc in the household of Mary Queen of Scots was compiled. The manuscript is in NAS at E33/5 and it was published as Menu dela Maison dela Royne Faict Par Mons. de Pinguillon. M.D.LXII. and published by Thomas Thomson in about 1819.

Like the de Guise bread distribution, it is arranged hierarchically. In the 'bread' section, after the queen's table, the master household's table and the ladies' table etc comes the 'table des filles desmoiselles'. The 'fillles desmoiselles' were young girls but, usually 'of good family'; indeed, letters survive from noble parents asking Marie de Guise to take their daughters as 'filles desmoiselles'.

Eight people ate at this table. It was overseen by the 'gouvernante' (sometimes known as the Mistress of the Maidens) and the names include la Jeune Leuiston (the young Livingstone, a Scots nobleman's daughter), another is La Jeune Bethon, and then comes La sauvaige. The last name is 'rallay', evidently one of the nicknames so widely used in these lists. Rallay had her own servant and there is another servant allocated to the 'filles' as a group.

The list then moves on to the gentlemen's servants table, the chamber women's table, the valet de chamber's table, two tables for household officers and then the table for officers of the kitchens where 17 people ate. These include 'villemonson et gregoire, sauuaige galloppins' and also 'adrian sauuaige gardeuaisselle'. Gallopin is, literally, a rascal but was commonly used to describe menial kitchen servants and the gardevaisselles again did what it says, took care of the kitchen utensils and so on.

In March of 1563 a payment is recorded for a horse hire for Adrian Sauvage, 'sommelier de la vessels de cuisine' [waiter on the kitchen utensils] (NAS E33/7/3 f. 31v-33v for month-end summary for March).

The 'filles desmoiselles' were given a modest allowance of wine, the 'sauvaige' again specified and, whilst those in the kitchen are not specified by name in the wine list, they totals of people are the same, so they got some wine as part of the group they belonged to.

'La Sauvaige' is clearly, literally, 'The Savage' but, for example, when Mary went hunting in the southern Highlands, supplies were sent to here 'au sauvage' (in the wilds) so it is not perhaps as derogatory as it seems. In any case, the girl is well placed and well fed; the servants ate the group's left-overs The two gallopins are further down the pecking order, but still are parts of the household, regularly fed - and they even have names! Adrian Sauvage, too, is a servant but is trusted with a horse and his job was not menial. The girl and the kichen servants ate with their peers. It would be intriguing if, as was often the case, the kitchen servants were also children, raising the question of how they came to be there, a question addressed at last night's seminar, though with only the most general conclusions.

There must remain a question of whether 'sauvage' necessessarily means, not just 'savage' but 'African'? There must also be a possibility that Adrian Sauvage was simply his name, though that seems unlikely in the circumstances. It is just possible that these people were from some other background but North Africa must, surely, be the most likely. Whilst the little girl might have been treated as something of an 'exotic pet', tolerated as a curiousity, that cannot apply to the kitchen servants who would seldom, if ever, have been seen by the sort of high-status visitors whose views of the court mattered! They are servants amongst servants, doing prosaic tasks.

I will post more on this story over the next few days, including images of the 'morys' entry in the Bread Book.

Gravestones, kirkyards and cemeteries

29/10/2012

Looking from Pithy Mary, across the Valley to the kirkyard and kirk. Click picture for larger image.

The Kirkyard at Stirling contains more monuments of the sixteenth and seventeenth century than the whole of the rest of the town. The owners of many of the stones can be identified, their styles and symbolism are a fascinating study.

As the eighteenth century advanced, new fashions in stones emerged and change reached its zenith with the creation of the 'educational sculpture garden' of the Valley Cemetery in 1858. Here, too, the grave monuments continued to change as new technologies and tastes brought about radical changes in design. But gravestones yield pride of place to the statues, the Star Pyramid and the Valley Rock Fountain, all redolent of Victorian piety (and obscurity).

I have published two papers about the area in the past and now plan to bring them together in a more user-friendly format as a leaflet which will be available (all being well) in the kirk itself for next season as an introduction for visitors and locals alike.

And, for anyone who is paying attention to 'John's Tasks' - be not alarmed. The sheep counting continues....

Forth Naturalist and Historian Symposium 17 Nov 2012

16/10/2012

Detail of moss margin at south west corner of Flanders Moss showing encroachment by moss settlers.

I am due to speak at the Forth Naturalist Landscape Symposium on 17th Nov and it is time to prepare something.
This is an unusual local event, a long-established, multi-disciplinary day with speakers on a diversity of aspects of a particular topic.

This year the theme is 'How Green is My Valley' lookiing at uses of the environment and landscape over several centuries and into the future. Speakers include an archeologist and historians (looking at the past) but the interest extends into the future with talks about policy and legacy. So, an eclectic mix and an audience who like, I think, to feel that they are 'keeping up with what is going on' in research.

It is quite a challenge to fulfill the brief. I will be talking about moss clearance - not the 'greenest' of topics of course. And much of the work has been published. But I am pretty confident of having some new and surprising slants to keep the audience awake and interested.

You can download the programme and booking form here.

Geocaching in Menstrie Glen

2/10/2012

The area of Loss, in Menstrie Glen, with its planting, laid out by James Wright in the mid eighteenth century. The house of Loss is in the glen bottom, out of site in this shot.

It is now over ten years since I was involved in writing up my work on Menstrie Glen, which was published, along with a detailed archaeological study of the glen by the Royal Commission in 2001 as "'Well Shelterd and Watered"; Menstrie Glen, a farming landscape near Stirling'.

Yesterday, whilst checking out something entirely different, I found that the site of Loss, home of James Wright, whose detailed records provided so much of the information, was being used as a geocaching site - and that the background information was all clearly taken from our publication (for which see the Books and Chapters page).

It's something which, I guess, could not have happened back in 2000 or so, when fewer people had access to the technology; indeed, it was only quite recently that someone explained the concept of geocaching to me.

It is also a rather sobering thought, to find that the work from years ago, has been assimilated into 'the culture' of the glen, become a new part of the story. And, if it encourages people to get out into those landscapes, to understand them and perhaps to help protect them, then so much the better.

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John G Harrison is a historian, working on a wide range of topics related to Scottish history, from architecture to wildlife. Take a scroll through the site to find out more. And feel free to contact John or to comment via the blog.

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