Love Scotland podcast – Season 9

Transcript

Five speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Susan Bain [SB]; female voiceover [FV]; Roger Hutchinson [RH]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
Today we’re going to go behind the headlines to take a closer look at the threats facing one of the Trust’s most treasured places: the islands of St Kilda. As the UK’s only dual World Heritage Site, prized for its natural and cultural value, a recent study sounded alarm bells when it quantified for the first time the specific impact climate change could have on this fragile environment.

St Kilda is a group of five remote islands, the biggest of which is Hirta. They’re little lonely dots in the North Atlantic, about 100 miles off Scotland’s West Coast mainland. The last residents were evacuated in 1930, but there’s something enduringly compelling about a community surviving in such a harsh and lonely environment that it makes a trip to St Kilda a dream for so many people.

Well, a woman who’s been lucky enough to spend more than 20 years working to protect St Kilda’s natural and manmade environment is Susan Bain, the Trust’s manager for the Western Isles, who joins me now. Hello, Susan.

[SB]
Hello, Jackie.

[JB]
Now, you’re not on St Kilda at the moment, but you are heading there soon. I suppose the weather conditions mean that nothing is certain until you actually set foot on the island.

[SB]
Absolutely. It’s always a challenge. I seem to spend quite a lot of my time making travel plans and then unmaking them and rearranging. I think I know CalMac ferry timetables – I don’t need to look them up anymore, I just know them in my head. So, it’s a real challenge.

[JB]
Well, well worth the trip when you eventually get there, I’m sure. Tell me about the background to this study that’s thrust St Kilda into the headlines once more.

[SB]
It was something we were very keen to do – to evaluate the impact of climate change – because we were looking around and we were seeing changes. We’ve been monitoring just about everything on St Kilda, but particularly seabirds, for decades now. And we could see that they were declining, and we knew sea temperatures were changing. But we really wanted to give that an intensive survey study. And I think it’s a good thing to do, because you have to know what the problem is before you can start to do something about it.

[JB]
How did this actually work?

[SB]
So, this is a very rigorous model where it’s almost like a step-by-step process that we look at –there’s a lot of jargon in here – the attributes of St Kilda. What is it that has made St Kilda a World Heritage Site? That can be seabirds, landscape, the sheep, the buildings, the sense of isolation – and we go through each one of them and then look at the stressors that have been pre-identified in effect. So, this is a process that has been applied to World Heritage Sites but can be applied to any site.

[JB]
I think even in Scotland it’s been used, or is being used, on places like the Antonine Wall, Edinburgh’s Old Town, New Town; sites like that.

[SB]
This was the first time the method had been applied to a dual World Heritage Site. St Kilda is inscribed for both its natural heritage and its cultural heritage.

[JB]
I was looking on the UNESCO site about the documentation as to the criteria and let me read this.

“The poignancy of the archipelago’s history and the remarkable fossilised landscape is outstanding and spectacular. Its natural beauty and heritage, its isolation and remoteness leave one in awe of nature and of the people that once lived in this spectacular and remarkable place.

The cultural landscape of St Kilda is an example of land use resulting from a type of subsistence economy based on the products of birds, cultivating land and keeping sheep. The cultural landscape reflects age-old traditions and land uses.”

And that’s just a fraction of the description. So, from that you can see why it’s so very special.

[SB]
Absolutely. And that statement is called the Statement of Outstanding Universal Value. Each World Heritage Site has a description that lists basically what is it about that site that just makes it so special, not just to the people that live there or to the nation, but globally?

[JB]
So, what this model did then, Susan, was that it looked to the future and modelled a scenario.

[SB]
What we did, we looked at what climate change scientists were saying and modelled a scenario based on what would St Kilda look like in 2050. But we thought, well, let’s have a look at the worst-case scenario with the high emissions, that actually not very much changes in the next few decades. 2050 is not very far away.

[JB]
No, it’s not. So, what did it come up with?

[SB]
What it came up with was that the natural heritage, I suppose unsurprisingly, is going to be the most seriously affected. That is due to changes in temperature, in particular marine temperature (the temperature of the ocean), which is increasing and has been increasing. And that impacts on marine life, including seabirds.

St Kilda is one of the most important seabird colonies in the Northwest Atlantic. That’s why it was inscribed on the World Heritage List – for its importance of seabirds. And that scenario showed that some of the seabird colonies, some of the seabird species will certainly have a devastating impact if we continue to see temperatures rise.

[JB]
Tell me about the existing colonies of seabirds and how they will be affected. Did you go into detail? Did you even talk numbers?

[SB]
We’re very fortunate in St Kilda in that we have really good numbers and data going back decades. We could see that some species were declining. And we did a census last year in 2023, which looked at the cliff-nesting species – that is our fulmars, kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills. On average, we’re seeing a decline of 60% since the last census was done about 20 years ago.

[JB]
60%, 20 years ago decline? And what was the model predicting then?

[SB]
The model is predicting that those species will continue to decline. Certainly, some species like kittiwakes, that was an average. We’ve actually seen a decline of around about 80% in kittiwakes. So, it may be that that sound will go; those birds will go. It’s been noticeable in my lifetime – it does seem quieter. And that data that we have absolutely supports that: that there are far fewer birds of some species.

[JB]
So, explain to me how that actually works? How do the changing sea temperatures lead to a decline in the birdlife?

[SB]
It’s to do with food supply; there just is not the amount of food out there. And climate change is one factor in this decline. There are other factors like pollution and overfishing, but a warming ocean means that some fish species that can’t tolerate warmer waters will move to deeper waters or they’ll move further north where the waters are cooler. So, a bird that has maybe quite a niche feeding zone just can’t exploit that. Maybe it can’t fly as far to get more fish or expending more energy. And so, they’re just not able to raise their young. Sometimes we see years where hardly any birds fledge.

[JB]
That’s the result of the rising land and sea temperatures. It also found that there could be frequent and more severe storms. What would be the impact of those storms?

[SB]
The impact on seabirds is, again, that they cannot feed. Although they’re quite robust and they are marine animals and they’re used to being in the ocean, if it is so stormy, they’re using a lot of energy to go out in high winds. One storm in a month, that’s fine – they can maybe sit it out and go fishing the next day. This year has been really unusual on St Kilda. We’ve been seeing really high seas for the time of year.

[JB]
And I’d imagine that would also have an effect on the built environment.

[SB]
Absolutely. I think the built environment is being affected by increased storminess, like higher winds, more frequent winds, increased rainfall on St Kilda. It’s not protected. It’s out into the Atlantic. It’s the first place that Atlantic gales hit.

[JB]
How high do they get on land?

[SB]
Well, the anonometer has been known to blow away! We certainly do record wind speeds in excess of 100 miles an hour. I would say every year we’ll get wind speeds of over 100 miles an hour.

[JB]
Alright. So, we’re looking at rising land and sea temperatures. We’re looking at more frequent and severe storms. What else did the model come up with?

[SB]
It also looked at, and this is perhaps more in the future, the changing ocean currents and a change in the warm water currents that come up from the Caribbean and keep Britain quite temperate. I’m not a climate scientist, but my understanding is that you’ve also got the melting of the Arctic ice. So, you’ve got a lot of cold fresh water coming into the ocean, and that is disrupting that cycle of warm water coming up. The whole ocean ecosystem has the potential to change quite catastrophically, I would say, for life in that ocean. It would change beyond all recognition if that happened.

[JB]
Alright, well, this is all pretty depressing. Having isolated the threats, can anything be done?

[SB]
Yes. I think the challenges for the natural heritage are more difficult because these are global changes. So, what we can do, as managers of the site, is try and take some of the additional pressures off. For St Kilda, we’re very fortunate we don’t have land-based predators for the seabirds. There’s not any rats or hedgehogs or stoats or anything that eat the young or their eggs. We absolutely make sure that those cannot arrive.

We’ve really upped our game in what’s called biosecurity, and that also includes things like pathogens. Some people may know there’s been avian flu recently that has had a devastating impact on seabird colonies. This year, we don’t have any, but we’ve introduced foot baths that you go through, disinfectant foot baths. Cargo is checked from ships to make sure there’s no rats, or signs of rats. Everything’s double checked to make sure that we can at least take that pressure off them.

[JB]
What we’ll do is we’ll take a short break; and when we come back, we’re going to talk some more about those things that you can do, specifically about the built heritage. There is a more optimistic side on that, to the conservation on St Kilda, and what good old human hard work can achieve. We will be back in a moment.

[FV]
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[JB]
Welcome back to the Love Scotland podcast. Susan Bain, it’s been a busy few weeks, has it not so far on St Kilda, in terms of what you’re managing to do for some of the really important projects?

[SB]
Yes, it has. Summer is absolutely our busiest season. We have quite a short working window, I suppose, for St Kilda because it’s inaccessible for quite a large part of the year. We can only get materials and people out really from the end of April, and we have to start thinking about getting everything back off by the end of August.

This year, we’ve done all our routine repair and maintenance over the summer and started on quite a large project, which is re-roofing the church.

[JB]
Now, tell me about the church.

[SB]
The church is a quite simple building, I suppose in keeping with the West Coast of Scotland. Very plain, no stained-glass windows – just a simple rectangular building built in the 1820s, actually by Robert Stevenson, of lighthouse fame. Yes, the only church he designed. It doesn’t have a big light on it! It’s just a simple church building. In some ways that makes it important, because he’s quite famous for designing and building lighthouses. But he was part of a society that was looking to build churches around Scotland in the remote communities that could not afford to build them themselves.

[JB]
I think, Susan, that we live in a much more secular society nowadays. And it’s very difficult, as you’ve hinted at, to overestimate how important a church was to islanders, especially islanders who were living in such a remote community that was so harsh and so self-contained. And the things they had to deal with, like the high infant mortality rates, for example, and how much the church, how much religion meant to them.

[SB]
You absolutely see through the historical documents just how important the Christian faith was in St Kilda, particularly in the 19th century. We don’t have a lot of documentation before that, but there was a sort of evangelical movement, I suppose, in the 1820s/30s. St Kilda was caught up in that, and you see them every day going to church or having some sort of religious instruction, but they’re also leading those prayers as well.

[JB]
I was looking back on my notes and on Sunday there was no work. There were three church services and no conversation.

[SB]
Yes, and that seems very strange to us now, although I recall growing up in Scotland in the 70s and there was no work done on a Sunday. Shops were not open. You went for a walk. And in some parts of Scotland that still continues. But Sunday is a day of rest and it’s not for, I suppose, frivolous talk. It’s about your spiritual advancement and reading the Bible. And that perhaps seems odd to many of us now, but not in the time and not in that place either. That was what Sundays were for.

[JB]
How many islanders were there then? About 100 or so, would that be fair to say?

[SB]
When the church was built, it was a little over 100 people. You look at the original designs and I think the pews can sit 109. It looks like everybody went, even children. And if you didn’t go, I’m pretty sure the minister would come up and visit and have a wee word. You weren’t expected to go if you were ill obviously; but yes, everybody would have gone. Now, we do see population decrease in the 19th century.

[JB]
Well, I read that in 1852, 36 of the islanders – and that was about 1/3 of the population – went off to Australia.

[SB]
They did, and that was partly to do with a change in religious practices in 1843 – it’s called the Disruption. You see the formation of the Free Church of Scotland. Before that, the established Kirk was the Church of Scotland. And then about 1/3 of the ministers basically left, walked out; and that was all to do with the right of the landowner to appoint the minister.

[JB]
There was a top-down approach, wasn’t there? They believed communities that moved to the Free Church (and this is a huge simplification) decided that they had the right to choose their own minister and caused an enormous schism. And as we see, it even reached St Kilda when 36 islanders thought, no, we’re off.
To go back to the renovation, it’s not easy to undertake any rebuilding work because we have to keep remembering that everything you’re doing there, you have to take with you. So, if halfway through the job you discover you haven’t got the right nails or you haven’t got a screwdriver that fits or you haven’t got a drill that works, you can’t get it really, can you?

[SB]
No! There’s a huge amount of planning, sometimes a year in advance, sometimes more than that. So yes, everything that you need has to get there. It’s not good on the nerves because we had to ship 8 tons of scaffolding out, all the slates, all the hand tools, wheelbarrows – just think, what do you need on site? I’m working with our contractor to make sure that everything was initially delivered to South Uist in the Western Isles, and then everything gets put on a landing craft. That’s a boat that basically you can put onto the beach and then drive things off.

Now, the beach disappears on St Kilda every autumn and it comes back over the spring, but a storm can take all that sand away. So, there’s that to deal with. And then this year we had good weather end of April, beginning of May, and we got a couple of sailings in and that was going great. And then the weather changed, and the scaffolding was still not there. Literally, it was the day before the contractors arrived that the scaffolding arrived. So yes, you’ve just got to hold your nerve sometimes and go ‘it will get there’!

And now, we’ve got to get it off. As soon as it arrives, I’m now going, ok, that’s great; everything’s there. When do I need to get the scaffolding off? When can I get that on the boat?

[JB]
You’re also working on the cleits on the island. Tell me about those and what you’re doing to them.

[SB]
Cleits are amazing little buildings. They are unique to St Kilda. They’re mentioned in that Statement of Outstanding Universal Value, as to why it’s a World Heritage Site. They are small – actually they’re different sizes, but generally small – stone-built, dry stone-built huts with a turf roof, and they were used for storage and they are all over the archipelago.

The main island of Hirta has over 1,200 of them, so they’re just scattered everywhere. If you see any pictures of St Kilda and you look at the hillside, it almost looks like little pimples. Those are all cleits. We know from historical records … Martin Martin was a Gaelic scholar that visited in the 1690s and he mentions them. He actually calls them pyramids, but he says they’re for storing their seabirds, seabird carcasses and feathers.

[JB]
And you just can’t patch them up in any fashion. They have to be repaired in the island style.

[SB]
Absolutely. They’re drystone; they’re constructed in a really unusual way. They’re quite open stonework because it has to allow the air to flow through, because some of them were used for storing peat or seabirds and the meat. So, you have to let that air flow through them. We’ve got a really skilled team of drystone dykers that we work with. We’re quite strict with them. We say no, it has to be done in the St Kilda style. Because to do it differently would just change something very imperceptible about St Kilda, but it would no longer be authentic.

And so, we try and replicate the style of St Kildans, which initially looks a bit random, but the closer you look at it, you realise that there’s a lot more skill involved in it. And the team we work with now, they absolutely get that. It’s almost like a language in stone, so that we’re keeping that authenticity throughout the stonework.

Before we even begin that though, we have photographed every single piece of drystone dyke work; every single cleit has at least six images and sometimes more, inside and out. Every aspect, every metre of drystone dyking – there’s at least a kilometre and a half of drystone dyking in the village alone. So, we’ve got record shots. When something falls down, we go to that record, we go to the historical record to check and go, ‘right, this is what it should look like’.

[JB]
What an enormous task and what a responsibility. But it is so worth it. As I said in my introduction, it’s on the bucket list of so many people. How many tourists do you get out there in that small window?

[SB]
We get just over 5,000/5,500 visitors.

[JB]
What’s their reaction?

[SB]
It’s lovely dealing with the tours because they are all so excited about finally getting to St Kilda; many of them, they’ve been trying to get there for years. Oh, it’s a bucket list destination for them. They just are so delighted to be there, and it's really lovely sharing that with them. It does remind, I think, myself and the team just how lucky we are actually to work in such an amazing place.

[JB]
Well, fingers crossed you actually get there, and fingers crossed maybe one day I will get there too. Thank you very much for your time today, Susan.

[SB]
Thank you.

[JB]
And a huge thank you to supporters of the islands for their donations, which have enabled Susan and her teams to carry out their work. If you would like to help, there is a Caring for St Kilda campaign, and all the details are on our show notes. And that’s it from this episode of Love Scotland. We will be back very soon. Until then, goodbye.

And if you’d like to learn more about St Kilda, the people who lived there and why they left, look out for a previous Love Scotland podcast: St Kilda – Life before the Evacuation.

[RH]
Here was this bizarre discovery, which supposedly had a royal family and supposedly had a parliament. It didn’t, of course. There was no royal family in St Kilda, and the St Kilda Parliament was just a grazings committee. It was just a meeting of the men to decide what to do that day or that week.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland, presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

Four speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; James Ryan [JR]; second male voiceover [MV2];

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
Today we’re discussing the life and achievements of a man regarded as the David Attenborough of his day. Hugh Miller was a self-taught geologist. He, through his vivid descriptions of prehistoric life, helped to popularise the world of natural history for his avid Victorian readership. He was also a theologian who played a key role in a split which rocked the Church of Scotland.

But Miller was a troubled man, who took his own life at the age of 54. The National Trust for Scotland cares for Hugh Miller’s birthplace and museum in his beloved Cromarty in the north-east of Scotland. And today I’m joined by the Trust’s Visitor Services Assistant James Ryan to discuss this brilliant but complex man. Hello to you, James.

[JR]
Hello, Jackie. It’s a pleasure.

[JB]
Well, it’s great to talk to you because the first point I want to make is, for a man whose books were mainstream and who played a huge role in popularising natural history, why is he not better known?

[JR]
It’s a question I’ve always been trying to figure out myself. There’s so many Georgian and Victorian individuals who’ve become almost legends. You think of Charles Dickens, you think of Charles Darwin, and Miller just seems to have fallen to the sidelines. And there’s a lot of reasons that may be.

It may just be simply a case of celebrity culture. Looking at modern celebrity culture nowadays, people are in vogue for a set amount of time and then suddenly they’re pushed aside as newer, more popular celebrities come about. And I think unfortunately, Miller … he’s well known in certain circles today, but based on my experience with visitors who come to the property, unfortunately they don’t really know who he is, which is both a blessing and a curse because … it’s a shame that nobody knows who this man is, but it’s a blessing because: let me introduce you to this man!

[JB]
Yeah, they don’t have any preconceived ideas. In my research, I confess I had a wow moment because I didn’t know that the famous Miller Oilfield in the North Sea, that I was very familiar with, was named after Hugh Miller.

[JR]
Geologists inspire geologists. Miller, you mentioned earlier with his geology, what’s special about him is he was one of the first geologists during the science’s infancy; and particularly in geological circles nowadays, those are the people who know him best.

[JB]
So, you work at the cottage where he was born, which is a museum. But the cottage itself, before we start to talk about Hugh’s life, that has a fascinating history! Tell us about that.

[JR]
Oh, it’s wonderful talking about the cottage. To give your audience an idea, the cottage is quite a large fisher cottage with a wonderful thatched roof. A bit like what you’ve got at Robert Burns’s cottage, but unlike Burns Cottage, we’ve got two storeys to our tiny little building. The cottage was built sometime in the early 1700s – there’s still a bit of debate. We know it’s definitely the start of the 18th century, but it was built by his great-grandfather, a man called John Feddes. Now Feddes’s story is recounted by Miller in his books. He was madly in love with another Cromarty-born woman called Jean Galley. However, Jean Galley had the audacity to go and marry another man. So, heartbroken, John did the one thing that all heartbroken men do: he becomes a pirate.

He teams up with a privateering venture. And according to Miller, he sails in what’s called Spanish America – the Spanish Main. Based on research I’ve done, this is during the Nine Years War, right towards the end of the 1600s. He’s there for five years. And he comes back, discovers that, oh my goodness, Jean has been widowed. John has come back loaded with gold and booty he’s swindled. And Jean decides, you know what, I think I will marry you! They build the cottage, and one of the stories we like to tell is the cottage is so large – because it’s a really big building, comparatively speaking – because it was probably built using Spanish gold.

[JB]
A great story to start with! Alright, let’s move on to Hugh Miller himself, born in 1802. You say geology was in its infancy. How great was the public’s understanding of natural science at this time? Was there an appetite for it?

[JR]
Natural science has been around since the ancient Greeks. People have been fascinated, wanting to understand the world as it is, and human beings are naturally curious creatures. But when we get to the Georgian and the Victorian era, things are, particularly in Europe, very much centred on the teachings in the Bible, particularly with the Book of Genesis and how the world came to be. The Book of Genesis makes out that the world was created 4,000 years ago, but then things start to come about which start to peel the layers off reality.

In the mid to late 1700s, the skull of a giant marine reptile is discovered in Maastricht, Netherlands; and then the woolly mammoth is famously discovered. These creatures are quite familiar with modern-day animals. But then at the turn of the 19th century, these remarkable fossils are discovered in Dorset and the Jurassic Coast, which, like a cannon, they just shoot out. And it’s like, whoa, this is unlike anything that’s been found before. There’s nothing alive like this today.

Miller would have been a very young boy when these fossils were first discovered. But I would argue that 1811/1810 is right when geology properly kicks off, and people are starting to realise, hang on, stuff doesn’t quite add up. There’s new stuff which is coming out, which contradicts this, and there’s wonderful theories that are coming out. Scientists are trying to say, oh well, how can we fit the scientific information that we’re finding into the story that’s told in the Bible? One of the theories that was put forward was perhaps the six days of creation shouldn’t be taken literally. These are six distinct geological eras spanning thousands of years.

[JB]
So, it was a time of discovery and perhaps a time of curiosity for people, as you say, scratching their heads and thinking these things don’t really add up. Alright, so Hugh Miller himself, his childhood – let’s talk about his early years. They were not happy.

[JR]
No, not at all. Miller is born in 1802. His father is also called Hugh. His mother is called Harriet. Hugh’s father was a sailor. However, tragically, in 1807, when our Hugh was just five years old, his father is lost at sea departing from Peterhead. What’s quite tragic is in the museum collection, we actually have the last letter that Hugh’s father wrote to his family, talking about ‘good fortune to the kids. I’ll see you soon, don’t you worry’. And then as soon as he leaves Peterhead, he’s lost forever.

Losing his father figure shakes Miller. He wasn’t really paying attention in school. He was an avid storyteller, and his teachers actually gave him the nickname of the seanchaí, which is Gaelic for the storyteller, because he would just distract people with stories. He didn’t care about schoolwork.

But when he comes into his teenage years, this is when he starts to get very rebellious. He plays truant. He has a local gang of youths which don’t go to school; they instead just explored the caves and forests around the Black Isle. When he’s 15 years old, he quits school after a fight with his teacher over the spelling of the word awful.

[JB]
And this is a physical fight?

[JR]
A physical fight. He describes in his memoirs that the two of them were wrestling on the floor.

[JB]
Oh dear. Right. So, he quits school, he has gone off the rails, and then, as life changes a bit, he becomes a stonemason.

[JR]
Although his father tragically died, he is fortunate enough that he’s got two uncles – Sandy and James – who work in stonemasonry and say, right, if you’re not going to go to school, you need to have something to keep yourself going. Come along with us and become a stonemason.

And this may have been perhaps the most important moment in Miller’s life because two things happen when he becomes a stonemason. First of all, it gets him travelling. He goes across the country, meeting with many, many different people around Scotland, and more importantly hearing their stories and their folk tales and their local history. Miller is able to collect these stories and save many of them from extinction. As well as working as a stonemason, he also works as a reporter for the brand new Inverness Courier and he publishes some of his stories in the newspaper.

But more importantly and more special for me, because he’s travelling around different quarries, he’s travelling around different geologically rich areas – and that’s what gets him into geology and fossils. He discovers his first fossil, a gorgeous ammonite, which are one of these coiled-shelled relatives of modern-day squid/octopus, not far from Eathie, which is just a few miles south of Cromarty on the Black Isle. He describes smashing open the rock with his hammer and describing this beautiful carved piece of nature.

[JB]
And Cromarty is a rich hunting ground, isn’t it, for fossils? Why is this?

[JR]
The rocks around Cromarty date to a period called the Devonian, which is about 385 million years ago, give or take a Tuesday. The rocks were deposited at the bottom of an enormous lake called Lake Orcadie, which spanned from the shores of the Moray Firth all the way up past Orkney and Shetland. At its greatest point, it may very well have reached the coast of Norway. Luckily for us, this is a sedimentary rock layer. Now, just to give the folks at home a quick geology lesson, there are three different types of rocks: we’ve got sedimentary rocks, we’ve got igneous rocks, and we’ve got metamorphic rocks.

Igneous rocks are formed through molten rocks. This is lava exploding out of volcanoes or magma formed/cooled underneath the ground.
You’ve got sedimentary rocks, which is rocks made up of, as the name suggests, sediments. It could be sand, mud, volcanic ash that’s been deposited and then squeezed and compressed and hardened into a rock; sandstone, for instance, is a sedimentary rock.
And the final kind, metamorphic rock, is any kind of rock that’s been subjected to immense heat and pressure, more so than when sedimentary rocks are formed. This can be formed when continents crash into each other, when mountains are formed, and continental plates are being pushed and squeezed against each other. If you want to see really great metamorphic rocks, Corrieshalloch Gorge for instance, a National Trust for Scotland property, that’s all metamorphic.

But the rocks around Cromarty, the old red sandstone rock, within certain layers of this build up. A good way to describe Cromarty’s rock formation is if you have a great big pile of newspapers with the oldest newspaper at the bottom and the youngest newspaper at the top. The news issue, if you will. As you look down that pile, you’re going to see lots and lots of layers. Imagine that each newspaper is a layer of sand and mud that’s been deposited at the bottom of this lake. Fossils can only form when conditions are perfect, and not every layer in that newspaper pile is going to contain fossils. Only select newspapers will. Those layers are what we call fossil beds, and it’s those beds which Miller particularly was looking for when he was trying to find his fossils.

[JB]
And did he discover he had a particular aptitude for it?

[JR]
He seemed to have the talent. There’s a wonderful quote in his book, which is ‘learn to make a right use of your eyes’, which is something that he did very well. He was able to identify the type of rock that he was looking for, and when it came to actually extracting and removing the fossil, he knew exactly what to do. A lot of the great talent with Hugh Miller is that this was all self-taught. Like I say, he quit school when he was 15. He didn’t go to higher education. So, this was all very much hands-on. He’s teaching himself to find these wonderful specimens.

[JB]
But as he got better at it, didn’t he attract the attention of some very serious people within the science?

[JR]
Yes, he did. Because he was self-taught when he was finding all these wonderful fossils, particularly in the 1830s when he finds his most famous Devonian fish fossils, which are Miller’s most famous fossils of them all.

[JB]
Tell us about this striking fish.

[JR]
Well, I can do you one better; I can let Miller describe it. I’ve got a copy of his book, The Old Red Sandstone. Miller’s greatest talent was his ability to take complex scientific matters and explain it to an audience in a really easy to follow way. You said yourself he was the David Attenborough of his day, as many people call him. His most famous fossil that he ever discovered is a fish called Pterichthyodes milleri. It means Miller’s winged fish.

[JB]
It was named after him?

[JR]
It was named after him, and it was an armoured fish. I joke: picture a trout and cover it in battle armour. And this is his description of Pterichthyodes: ‘Imagine the figure of a man rudely drawn in black on a grey ground, the head cut off by the shoulders, the arms spread at full as in the attitude of swimming, the body rather long than otherwise, and narrowing from the chest downwards. One of the legs cut away at the hip joint and the other, as if to preserve the balance, placed directly under the centre of the figure, which it seems to support.’

[JB]
OK. So, you can get that. Go on.

[JR]
Yes. Pterichthyodes was a wonderful kind of fish, but it was completely alien to the fish that Miller knew because he only knows modern fish like herring and salmon, which the local fisheries are bringing in. And here we’ve got these strange armoured fish and strange spiny-finned fish and fish with really, really long fins. What am I looking at here? So, he writes accounts of his fossils in his book Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland, which is his first big successful publication. And he just writes ‘here’s something crazy that I found in Cromarty’.

But it attracts the attention of Dr John Malkinson, who is an army doctor and an amateur geologist. He comes to visit, sees the fossils; and it’s that meeting which gets him in contact with other famous, well-respected scientists. This includes Sir Roderick Murchison and Adam Sedgwick, who themselves discovered the Devonian period, which Miller’s fossils date to. But it also got him a meeting with a scientist called Louis Agassiz. Agassiz was a Swiss paleontologist. He was the foremost fish expert of his day … oh, and he also discovered the Ice Age.

[JB]
Oh, right, OK, an influential man indeed.

[JR]
Absolutely. And it was that meeting which helped Miller truly understand what he’s looking at. The light bulb moment, that meeting. Ah, I see! But Agassiz went one step further. And because he had the contacts within the scientific field, he was able to take Miller’s discovery and scientifically describe and announce it to the world. And it was him who described Pterichthyodes, and it was him who gave it the name in honour of its discoverer, Hugh Miller.

[JB]
So, we have this incredible situation that a stonemason from the northeast of Scotland with absolutely no formal training is corresponding with world-leading experts.

[JR]
More than that, he himself becomes a world-leading expert. He publishes in 1841 the book I just read from there, The Old Red Sandstone, which is probably his most famous and successful book of them all. And that thrusts him into mainstream scientific academia, to the point where scientists are actually contacting him for information. And in the late 1840s/1850s, he’s actually elected as president to the Royal Physical Society in Edinburgh and he gives lectures to crowds of thousands of people.

[JB]
And again, I suppose it all comes down to the fact that he was self-taught. He was not an academic, and from what I’ve read about him, he never forgot that. He painted pictures; he was explaining it to people who were like him, and I suppose that was the basis of his success.

[JR]
Another wonderful quote of his, which I think can be attributed to all, particularly countryside and environment, of my colleagues in the National Trust for Scotland, is: ‘Let me quantify myself to become an interpreter between nature and the public’.

[JB]
Before we take a break, I’m aware that we haven’t actually described Hugh Miller himself, because he was a striking man.

[JR]
Yes, this is a man who would wander around the streets of Edinburgh, who would wander around geological formations and collect fossils on beaches. This is the man who would go to the office and write newspaper articles and edit his newspaper dressed in a tweed suit with a great big tweed shepherd’s plaid wrapped around himself. He had a great big fuzzy set of hair, enormously wonderful mutton chops, and he was a redhead. So, he was a really striking figure. And he walked around with a great big stout stick. If you want to see the stick yourselves, we’ve got this wonderful carved walking stick and the shepherd’s plaid he wore at the museum. It’s a really striking figure, that’s for sure.

[JB]
There is a photograph of him, but it doesn’t do him justice because obviously you see this massive amount of hair, huge sideburns, but the fact that he was a redhead and dressed like that, he would have been unmistakable. A bit of a showman, you would imagine?

[JR]
Oh yeah, his hairstyle, I could compare it to the wonderful facial hair you see in American Civil War generals, with the giant mutton chops and the giant sideburns.

[JB]
Well, let’s take that quick break and when we return, we’ll talk about the next stage of Hugh Miller’s life and his part in that seismic event for the Church of Scotland. We’ll be back in a moment.

[MV2]
Impressive. For a moment I thought she was talking about me. I meant Falkland Palace, she said with a smile. Course you did. The art, the architecture; Scotland’s history can really turn your head. So, we signed up to take care of it. Keep it looking dapper.

[MV]
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk

[JB]
Welcome back to the Love Scotland podcast. James Ryan, in 1840 Hugh Miller moves to Edinburgh. Why did he do that?

[JR]
The move to Edinburgh, the reasons behind it, stem all the way back to 1712. The British government passes a law called the Patronage Act, which effectively gives landowners the right to choose their own ministers for their local congregations. By the time we get to Miller’s time, this is seen as categorically wrong. Miller coming from really humble beginnings, he becomes an evangelical Christian in his 20s and he starts to understand that things are just not right in terms of the way the Church of Scotland is running and operating.

He doesn’t agree with the Patronage Act that’s still in force. He feels that because landowners have the right to choose the ministers, and not the congregation, it means the ministers have authority over men’s souls. And complacent ministers allow the congregations and lands that they’re looking after to fall into neglect and disrepair, and allow these people to be evicted off their lands.

Miller categorically does not agree with this. So, he writes a letter in 1839, I want to say it is, to Lord Brougham, who was the Lord Chancellor at the time. Miller is basically writing a letter stating that he doesn’t agree with the way the Church is being operated. He feels the Church requires reform. He wants to take it back to almost the Covenanter age of ‘Jesus is the head of the Church’. We can’t have people interfering and choosing the fate of people’s souls.

[JB]
It was becoming top down, wasn’t it, the governance? And he wanted it to be bottom up.

[JR]
Very much so, yes. The letter itself doesn’t really do much to sway what’s happening in the Church, and it doesn’t really change the Lord Chancellor’s mind. But more importantly, when he publishes the letter, it gets him again in contact with like-minded individuals, and he’s invited to come to Edinburgh and become an editor for a brand new newspaper called The Witness, which is going to push the evangelical message.

In January 1840, Miller and his wife Lydia and their daughter pack up their bags and set off for Edinburgh. It’s quite a moment for the family as well, because not long before Miller writes his letter, he loses his first child of 18 months to probably a fever. In fact, her gravestone is the last object that he carves as a stonemason. So, quite a deeply emotional time for the family. I feel like perhaps Miller could almost relate to the pain that people are having and thinking this is my chance to do something to help people. So, he sets up The Witness newspaper; he becomes an editor.

If you’re ever exploring Edinburgh and you head to Mary King’s Close, that building which the Mary King’s Close attraction is in, that was the offices for The Witness newspaper. And there is a plaque on the outside that commemorates the fact that this is where the offices were.

Just to showcase just how insane Miller is, not only does he act as the editor, but he writes most of the newspaper as well. He’s writing almost all the articles, but what’s wonderful about The Witness newspaper is it doesn’t just push the evangelical message. It’s not a solely fully religious newspaper. He’s also reporting on local news and his geological studies. Many of his later books, particularly Old Red Sandstone, start off serialised in his newspaper. And this is how the public are able to get a hold of this scientific thinking.

[JB]
And I think this is one of those occasions where we have to transport our modern-day thinking about the importance of religion in what is now an increasingly secular society to the mid-19th century, where it was front and centre. Because The Witness was an immensely important publication and so well read.

[JR]
I think it was something like the second-bestselling newspaper in the country besides The Scotsman.

[JB]
That’s incredible.

[JR]
Yeah, but you’re alluding to it earlier. Miller, you could argue, has an indirect involvement in this because he’s pushing this message out, and the need to reform is growing in the church. There are lots of ministers and members of the Church who agree with the sentiment. And this all comes to a head in 1843, in what’s called the Disruption or the Great Schism. This is when something like 470-odd members of the Church walk out of the General Assembly and they form the Free Church of Scotland to push the evangelical faith. They agree that they’re not going to be able to get what they want; they’re not going to be able to get the reforms. They’re going to set up their own Church, which will push their messages and what they want the Church of Scotland to be like.

[JB]
I can expand on that a little. Let me read something to you, which describes the Disruption of 1843. ‘The Church of Scotland lost about a third of its entire membership in the Disruption, and that included almost all its more active and committed members. It lost 474 ministers out of 1,226. In the Highlands, almost the entire population abandoned the parish churches. Virtually all the Church of Scotland missionaries went over to the Free Church.’
Now, Miller was part of that schism, but is it the case that he wasn’t really advocating initially a split?

[JR]
He didn’t want a split, no. He wanted the Church to fix itself. He didn’t feel that this was the right way to go about doing it. But in the end, he decides to stick with the Free Church nevertheless. He joins one of his friends on a trip around the Western Isles and the West Coast of Scotland whilst he’s doing his Free Church preaching on board a boat called The Betsey. Miller recounts this in his book The Cruise of the Betsey.

But of course, being Miller, it’s not all just about his religion. He’s got to do a lot of his geology as well. And during that visit, he discovers many, many wonderful specimens, including a brand new fossil bed on the Isle of Eigg.

[JB]
Well, let’s fuse the two then, because we’ve got his strong religious views and the fact that he’s a geologist. He was a Creationist, wasn’t he? How did that sit with his knowledge of geology and the obvious evidence of some sort of evolution?

[JR]
I mentioned a little bit earlier towards the start of the podcast about trying to fit things in with the Bible. And just like we’ve got this schism that’s happened in the Church of Scotland, there’s factions which are forming in the world of British science and natural history. Miller was of the mindset that the Book of Genesis shouldn’t be taken literally. He felt that science and religion had a way of coexisting with one another. He knew from his rocks and his research and his geology studies that the Earth was far older than the Book of Genesis made it out to be. He agreed with the idea that there were not set days of creation, but set distinct geological eras.

However, that being said, he still believed that each of these geological eras began with creation and then with destruction. There was inevitably a Creator who was responsible for creating life. And just to give another little history lesson, during this age, geology and natural history period in the early 1800s, Europe is a lot more accepting of evolution, particularly France, because France has had its revolution. It’s a lot more radical than conservative Britain was at the time.

British science very much stemmed on ‘it has to fit with the Bible’, and for a while that was the accepted norm. Any attempt of publishing evolutionary theory pre-Darwin was viciously attacked. There was a book that was published anonymously called Vestiges of Natural Creation, I think it’s called, or something like that, which pushed an early evolutionary theory. It was an outrage for British Victorian society, and it was viciously attacked by the pro-Creationist scientific agenda at the time in Britain.

Miller himself even went so far as to publish his own book called Footprints of the Creator, or The Asterolepis of Stromness – that’s its full title – where he’s using one of his fossil fish as a case against evolution. I mentioned that the fossil fish that he discovered, many of them were armoured fish. These are what we call placoderms: the front half of the body is encased in armour plating; the back of their tail is exposed. Miller couldn’t comprehend the idea that these placoderms, these armoured fish, would change into modern fish because modern fish don’t have these defensive structures; they’re not as advanced as these ancient fish. So why would these prehistoric fish change into less advanced forms?

Miller very much felt that in each of these distinct geological eras, a different life form had precedent. So, the first one could be the age of the insect and arthropod. The second one, which is Miller’s fish, could be the age of fish; then we’ve got the age of amphibians, the age of reptiles (which is the dinosaurs), the age of early mammals, and then finally the age of man. And man was the pinnacle of God or the Creator’s creation. Miller also felt that animals don’t have souls, so there’s no way that a soulless creature could evolve into a being with a soul – that just doesn’t fit right with him.

Now, unfortunately, Miller dies three years before Charles Darwin publishes his Theory of Evolution. The problem that the early evolutionists had was they knew that evolution happened; they just couldn’t explain how it happened. What makes Darwin’s book different is that he found the how and the why, which the early evolutionists couldn’t.

[JB]
But at that time, you could understand why Miller was so well regarded by his audience. Because they didn’t want the rock on which their religion was founded to be completely untrue, and therefore he managed to construct a narrative which allowed them to coexist.

[JR]
Absolutely. People at the time knew that this could shake the very fabric of Victorian society. This could change people’s understanding of where they fit in the world. It’s why Darwin’s book, when it eventually came out, was so revolutionary. And it is a shame that Miller wasn’t alive to see it, because I would love to have heard his thoughts.

Despite this, we can link the two of them together because Darwin actually wrote to Miller in a wonderful twist of irony. Miller being this big Creationist, Darwin actually writes to Miller asking for a copy of his Witness article, which he can then use in his own research for the theory of evolution by natural selection.

[JB]
Incredible. Why has a man whose work played such a huge part in our understanding of geology, if you divorce it from the religious side of things, fallen from prominence when we all know about Darwin, but hardly any of us have heard about Hugh Miller?

[JR]
I already mentioned this celebrity culture, and I think that’s got to play with that a lot. And this is a thing that we see with other scientists at the time. The Creationist scientists were the big celebrities in Britain in natural history. One of the most famous British scientists is a man called Sir Richard Owen. He was the one who would create the word dinosaur, and he’s the one who founds the Natural History Museum. But he, like Miller, is an ardent Creationist. The two were also in contact and actually met each other.

But once Darwin came about, once Darwin became popular and once natural history in Britain accepted the evolutionary theory that Miller had put forward, Creationist scientists were suddenly out of date. They were to be pushed aside. They were incorrect; they were wrong. We’re going to listen to the evolutionists, the Darwinists. They’re the ones who are right. They’re the ones we’re going to put up on the pedestal. So, I think that’s what happened with Miller. Unfortunately, again, he dies before this pushing of the Creationist side comes about. But Miller shouldn’t be remembered just as a Creationist, just as a geologist. There’s so much more to him than meets the eye. He’s a social justice campaigner, he’s a writer, he’s a folklorist. He preserves around 350 stories, which could have been at risk of extinction.

[JB]
And as you say, he dies. He dies at the age of 54 on Christmas Eve 1856 in horrific circumstances. I mean, he has a wife and a young family.

[JR]
Yeah. So, on the evening of 23 December, he kisses his kids and wife goodnight, he goes to his study to write some more stuff down, and then he goes to bed. At some point in the early morning of Christmas Eve 1856, he wakes up, he goes to his study, he takes out his pistol and he shoots himself in the heart. Now, the most commonly asked question we get asked at Hugh Miller’s, at the museum, is why does he do that?

We don’t know why Miller decides to take his own life. There’s a lot of theories that go around. The postmortem conducted on his body implied diseased parts of the brain. So, it could be that perhaps Miller was suffering from an early onset tumour. We know Miller was suffering from ill health throughout his life. He was suffering from silicosis when he was a stonemason breathing in the dust, and towards the end of his life he’s prone to blackouts and headaches, so it could have had something to do with that.

His wife Lydia comes up with the theory that his mother was responsible for filling him with horrible stories of these witches and demons and monsters when he was a kid, and it comes back to haunt him in his 50s. There’s the other theory that perhaps Miller was struggling to comprehend his scientific research with his religious beliefs. I’m not really keen on that theory because I feel that Miller was more than just that, and he was able to work around and find ways to fit the two of them together. There was no indication that he was struggling to comprehend why science and religion, his scientific beliefs, his religious beliefs weren’t fitting with the scientific theories at the time.

Honestly, I think it was just a case of bad timing, ill health. But what’s really, really remarkable is despite the taboo that it had at the time, despite Miller taking his own life, thousands of people came out to pay their respects as the coffin went its way to the Grange cemetery where he’s now buried. Despite the taboo, Miller was so well respected and so well regarded and so loved that people still came out to pay their respects.

[JB]
An absolutely tragic end to a brilliant man, responsible for great scientific discoveries. Taking everything into consideration, what, James, do you think his legacy is?

[JR]
Gosh. I think the biggest takeaway that Miller has, for me anyway, is a love of discovery and a love for sharing discoveries. Miller wasn’t one to keep the scientific research he was doing just for the scientists, just for the gentry. He made sure that people learnt about the leading scientific theories at the time. He made sure that people knew, oh, this is what I’ve actually been discovering; this is the work that I’ve been getting up to. And nowadays that’s coming much more prevalent.

During the Victorian society, only gentlemanly people could become scientists, and women weren’t allowed to become scientists. The fact that Miller was very much keeping that in the forefront of the public attention, letting people know what’s going on, just literally what’s happening in the world of science, making sure it’s acceptable or easy to access for thousands of people across the country. Another of Miller’s great quotes that we always love is ‘Life itself is a school, and nature is always a fresh study.’

[JB]
That’s nice. And you’re continuing that, aren’t you, at his birthplace and museum? Because you’re going to take people fossil hunting.

[JR]
Yes, we are. One of the things we’re trying out this year is citizen science sessions, if you will. The big one we’re doing are fossil walks. We’re taking people onto the very beach that Miller found his fossils, and looking for fossils of our own. But while there are many fossil hunting trips you can do around the country, the way we’re doing it is we’re trying to showcase how you can responsibly fossil hunt.

Several years ago the Scottish Government produced what’s called the Scottish Fossil Code, which are guidelines which you can get from NatureScot’s website, about how to responsibly fossil hunt in a way that generations down the line can enjoy it. Whilst we will be collecting from the shoreline, anything that is collected will stay at the museum for a brief amount of time before it’s then released back into the wild, put back on the shoreline.

But we’re taking notes and photographing all the specimens we find. And we’re also working with research fellows from the University of Aberdeen, who are actively studying the fossil beds around Cromarty, letting them know of the stuff we found. In that month’s period where they’re in the museum, it also gives them time to reserve anything that they want to have a look at.

[JB]
Well, I think Hugh Miller would have approved. James, thank you so much for bringing it to provenance once again, the life and the work of Hugh Miller.

[JR]
It was a pleasure. Thank you.

[JB]
And if you’d like to visit the cottage and museum where James regularly conducts his tours, you’ll find all the details for opening times on the Trust website. If you’re in Inverness, perhaps on a trip to Culloden, it’s not too far away. As ever, we couldn’t preserve places like this without your support and donations, so thank you. That’s it for this Love Scotland podcast. I’ll be back with another very soon. Until then, goodbye.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

Five speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Eric Melvin [EM]; female voiceover [FV]; Kate Stephenson [KS]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
There can be few streets in the world so steeped in history as Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. It’s the spine of what’s called the city’s Old Town and dates back about 900 years, as opposed to the New Town – a short walk away – which is Johnny-come-lately Georgian. Both have World Heritage status, but if you like your history grand and gritty, the Royal Mile is the place to be. Stories of kings and queens, of heinous crimes and their punishments, as well as religious and political intrigue, resonate from every cobblestone.

I’m near the top of the Royal Mile, about a nine iron away from Edinburgh Castle, at one of the Trust’s oldest properties: the time capsule that is Gladstone’s Land, named after Thomas Gladstone, who bought the tenement in 1617. Down the centuries, Gladstone’s has been inextricably linked to the history of commerce in Edinburgh, and inside you can tour the centuries, revealing various businesses and families it’s been home to.

Today, though, we are staying outside, despite the rain, because I’m going to meet the neighbours. And I’m doing it in the company of a man who plies his 21st-century trade here. Eric Melvin is an expert guide who leads historical walking tours. Today though, I have him all to myself. Hello, Eric.

[EM]
Good morning, Jackie. Thank you very much for the invitation to speak to you.

[JB]
You’re being very kind because I have to confess it is bucketing – it is Edinburgh, atmospheric, bucketing rain outside! But I’m sure that’s not going to dampen our enthusiasm. Now, for our purposes, let’s assume that you are a complete stranger to Edinburgh. Tell me about the geography of the Royal Mile. Where does it start, where does it end, and is it a mile?

[EM]
The Royal Mile starts from the castle, particularly the Castle Rock, which is a survivor of the last Ice Age when the ice glacier swept over Scotland, carrying away all vegetation, previous habitation and covering the country. But when it came to the Castle Rock, which was an igneous basaltic plug, it went over the top. And in going over the top, it left a spoil trail running to the east; the ice gouged a valley to the north, which is Princes Street Gardens, to the south which is the Cowgate. But Edinburgh grows on that spine of Ice Age debris.

[JB]
And this spine which became the Royal Mile, how long is it?

[EM]
I think Daniel Defoe, who came here as a government spy in 1706/1707, was first to comment on its length, and he said it was just over a mile. And that, I think, is a pretty accurate summation. It’s slightly longer than your imperial mile.

[JB]
And at the top we have Edinburgh Castle; and the bottom …?

[EM]
We’ve got Holyrood Palace. Originally, of course, it was the Abbey of Holyrood that was the bottom of the Royal Mile. The palace comes later.

[JB]
Now, it may be called the Royal Mile and it is physically one winding street, but it’s divided into areas.

[EM]
Yes, that’s right. There are four distinct sections. To the west, in the shadow of the castle, you’ve got the Castle Hill. And then the next section is the Lawnmarket, which is a 17th-century term, and it’s a corruption of the linen market. And Gladstone’s Land, of course, was originally the home of a clothier. Then you’ve got the Royal Mile itself turning into the High Street, which goes past St Giles’, and that section ended just beneath John Knox’s house at the Netherbow Port. To the east, until the 1860s, was a separate borough of the Canongate. So, there are four sections to what we now know as the Royal Mile.

[JB]
We’re outside Gladstone’s Land. Is this the more medieval part of the Mile?

[EM]
The medieval parts of Edinburgh are very few and far between. Edinburgh was burnt to the ground by Henry VIII’s army in 1544, so you only got scattered relics from the medieval period still standing. But this would be an integral part of the original historic Edinburgh in medieval times.

[JB]
The thing about Edinburgh is that it looks so very old. It looks like a film set. We’re surrounded by tourists who are all looking upwards, just astonished at what they see. Was there a conscious effort made at any time to protect what was left?

[EM]
That’s a very good question. Edinburgh was being demolished systematically in the second part of the 19th century. After a disaster where a tenement collapsed and 35 people were killed, Edinburgh deliberately destroyed something like 80% of the historic Old Town. What little we’ve got left really is down to a remarkable man called Sir Patrick Geddes who persuaded people that once you demolish history, it’s gone forever. So, he campaigned successfully to save what little we’ve got left.

[JB]
Your tour of a small part of the Royal Mile takes about two hours. Now, we haven’t got that amount of time, so I stress this is a whistle-stop tour. I’m in your hands. Where shall we begin?

[EM]
Well, I think we should start at the foot of the Castle Esplanade, where we’ve got one of the few surviving houses of the late 16th century, which we know as Cannonball House.

[JB]
Let’s head there.

[music of whistles and bells]

So, what are we seeing, Eric?

[EM]
We’re at the foot of the Castle Esplanade and we’ve got one of the most famous houses in Edinburgh facing us. This is known as Cannonball House. As you can see from the exterior, it’s a rubble-built house, which dates it to the end of the 1500s.

[JB]
What’s a rubble-built house?

[EM]
It’s like a drystane dyke, Jackie. You don’t have nice dressed stones squared by masons; you’re just piling the stones up. And at the top, there’s a little dormer window with the initials AM, MN and the date 1630. This was put up by a furrier called Alexander Muir to celebrate his wedding to Margaret Nielands. He extends the house to the north into the section of the Royal Mile we know as the Castle Hill.

It gets its nickname ‘Cannonball House’, because if you look at the second-floor windows, at 5 o’clock on the window to the north, there is a cannonball cemented into the stonework. And if you run your eye slightly to the right, to the next window, there’s another cannonball cemented into the stonework. There are three stories as to how this originated.

The best one is we’re standing on the siege lines of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army in September 1745. He’s won the Battle of Prestonpans and he now controls Scotland; only the castle holds out for the Hanoverian government. He’s lost his siege guns because they were sunk by the Royal Navy, and he tries to bluff his way into getting the castle to surrender. The garrison are terrified, but the commander is an 85-year-old Major General Guest, who hates the thought of the Stuarts coming back on the throne. So, he defies Bonnie Prince Charlie and orders his cannon on the Half Moon Battery to fire. For three days Edinburgh is pounded by the cannon off the castle, and a lot of damage is done. Bonnie Prince Charlie lifts the siege. And it’s thought that these two cannonballs thudded into the wall of the house during that bombardment.

More likely, after the bombardment and the occupation by the Jacobites had finished, the masons repairing Cannonball House just put them in as souvenirs.

[JB]
Oh, you’ve ruined it now!

[EM]
There’s a third story, which is just as good! Across the road from where we’re standing there is a flat building, and that is the original city reservoir. In 1680 the council commissioned a German engineer, Peter Bruce, to pipe water in from the Pentland Hills to the south to a reservoir, and then from there to city wells, because the supply of water from private wells and the lochs was running out. And so, they were put there to represent the gravitational height of the water coming from the Pentland Hills into the reservoir. So, you can pick which story you like best.

[JB]
I like the siege of Edinburgh Castle! When we’re talking Bonnie Prince Charlie, all the kings and queens must have processed along these streets.

[EM]
I think so, and I think probably we can trace that procession back to 1124, when David I, the third of the sons of St Margaret of Scotland to become King of Scots, gives Edinburgh its first charter. And thereafter, you would have had the monarchs of Scotland coming here to administer justice and they would process down the Royal Mile. Charles I comes here for his coronation beside St Giles’. He’s followed by his son Charles II, who’s a refugee from Oliver Cromwell. Thereafter, there was no monarch coming to Edinburgh until George IV came in 1822 and he processed up the Royal Mile from Holyrood to the castle. And then his niece Victoria started the trend of annual visits of the monarchs to the Scottish capital.

[JB]
Which continues to this day. The people who lived here – did you have to be wealthy to have a house on the Royal Mile, or was it more of a mix?

[EM]
Well, it would be very much a mix because wealthy people need tradespeople; they need retailers; they need servants and blacksmiths and stablers. And so, we can imagine the medieval castle secure on its rock and the High Street lined by timbered burgesses’ houses. The burgesses were the merchants. And then to the north and to the south, there was open land known as the backlands, where they would have market gardens, keep animals, stable their horses. There’d be workmen there; there’d be blacksmiths and goodness knows what – all protected by a town wall.

The first charter is guaranteeing the merchants of Edinburgh the rights to hold markets, to control trade, to set taxes. We’re celebrating the 900th anniversary of that first charter this year in Edinburgh, 2024.

[trumpet music plays]

[JB]
The Royal Mile seems to have been filled with more than its fair share of rogues and vagabonds, and there is one very well-known vagabond that’s a personal favourite of yours. Who’s that?

[EM]
That man was Deacon William Brodie. Deacon William Brodie stayed in Brodie’s Close, which was named after his father, Francis Brodie.

[JB]
Is it near here?

[EM]
It’s just across the road from Gladstone’s Land.

[trumpet music plays]

[JB]
Eric, this is another hidden gem. We’ve come away from the Royal Mile into a deep stone tunnel, which bears the name Brodie’s Close.

[EM]
This is the home of William Brodie, one of our most notorious citizens. We’re actually standing outside what is now a cafe, but that was his workshop where he and his men made very high quality furniture. He inherits his father’s business round about 1782 and, it was claimed, £1 million. He was the best-dressed man in Edinburgh, and he paraded up and down the High Street showing off his clothes; people imagined he was incredibly wealthy.

But within three years he’d blown all the money he had inherited from his father. He was a notorious gambler – cards, dice, cock fighting. He owned a fighting cock, but he blew it all. He also had two mistresses and several illegitimate children. By 1786, he’s looking at disaster. Because in those days, if your creditors called you out, you could be locked up in the debtor’s prison until you cleared your debt. But in 1786, at the leading gambling house in Edinburgh, Clark’s Bar down Fleshmarket Close, he met an Englishman called George Smith, who was on the run from Newgate Jail in London and a sentence of transportation. And the pair of them came up with a wonderful scheme for burglary.

For 18 months Edinburgh was shocked by a series of robberies, and nobody could explain how they had happened. There’s no forced entry, no broken windows, there’s no violence. But house after house is robbed; even the university was robbed of its mace.

And how was it done? Well, it was quite simple, because Brodie could quite legitimately visit his workmen as they were making repairs or constructing cabinets in people’s houses. And he carried a lump of putty in his pocket because the Edinburgh practice was to hang your household keys on a hook inside your door. All he had to do, when nobody was looking, was take an impression of the key and then get a fake key made, a skeleton key. He also knew the social comings and goings of his customers, so he could easily work out when the house was likely to be empty. He’d also had the chance to case the house, so he knew where valuables were.

For 18 months Edinburgh is plagued by a succession of burglaries. But then he gets greedy, and in March 1788 he learns that all the customs duties of Scotland are being collected in the Customs House in Chessels Court, just further down the Royal Mile. So, meeting here in his workshop, he gathered a gang of four: George Smith, a local sneak thief from Edinburgh called Andrew Ainsley, and another English robber on the run, a man called John Brown. They put on black veils, they carried hidden lanterns and they made their way down the Royal Mile to Chessels Court.

Ainsley was left at the court entrance on the Canongate. Brodie waited at the door of the customs house, and the two professional burglars got inside. All was going well until they were disturbed. A clerk of the Customs & Excise Office realised he’d left papers at his desk. The two robbers in the inner office hear him coming and have their pistols ready, but he finds his papers and off he goes. But the robbers all panic and they come back here to Brodie’s Close to get alibis for themselves.

Now, in the morning, the robbery or attempted robbery is discovered. This is a very serious offence, so the authorities round up likely suspects including Ainsley, Brown and Smith. Brodie flees and he escapes all the way down to London. He then manages to get on board a ship to take him to Amsterdam. And on that ship sailing to Amsterdam, he meets up with an Edinburgh couple, a Mr and Mrs Geddes, who are on their way back to Edinburgh. He asks could you take letters back to Edinburgh for me?

Now to cut a long story short, they arrived back in Edinburgh. All the talk is about the forthcoming trial and the missing Deacon Brodie. They look at the letters and hand them to the authorities. In the letters he says, ‘I’m heading to Amsterdam, I’m getting a ship to New York. I’ll send for you – this is one for his mistress – come with my tools’. So, the hunt is on. He’s taken off a ship in Amsterdam and he’s brought back here to Edinburgh. He’s put on trial with George Smith. He’s sentenced to death. Nowadays he’d be unlucky to get community service, but he’s sentenced to death. And in front of something like 20,000 people, he’s hanged outside St Giles’.

He had hoped he could escape death by arranging with a French doctor to revive him. They cut him down. They tried to revive him in the workshop here, but he was gone.

[JB]
Gone but not forgotten, because about 100 years later he was immortalised.

[EM]
That’s right. Robert Louis Stevenson, a great fan of Edinburgh history, picks the story up as a factual account of Deacon Brodie, but then gets the idea of the good man by day, the monster at night, and writes Jekyll and Hyde. Deacon Brodie is revived in literary terms in 1886 when the book is first published.

[JB]
So much history, Eric, and we haven’t even moved 100 yards away from Gladstone’s Land. Now, I did notice a plaque on the wall celebrating a man who was very successful in Edinburgh and on the Royal Mile – and that is one Robert Burns.

[EM]
That’s right. Robert Burns has published an edition of his poems in his native Ayrshire and has been encouraged to come to Edinburgh by several friends to get an Edinburgh edition of his poems and wider circulation of his work. So, he clatters up the West Bow in November 1786 and lodges in Baxter’s Close, just beside Gladstone’s Land.

Edinburgh society opens its doors to the ploughman poet, and it’s at one of these tea parties that he meets a beautiful young woman called Agnes Maclehose. She had married at 17 a Glasgow merchant. She’d had four children, but her husband was pretty awful. They separate and he goes off to the West Indies.

There’s an immediate attraction between Burns and Agnes Maclehose, or Frances Maclehose, and they arranged to meet. But Burns is tipped out of a sedan chair on his way to a tea party and damages his leg. He’s an invalid for about six weeks. So, the two correspond. He takes the name Sylvander; she’s given the name Clarinda. And it’s the most passionate correspondence. I don’t think they ever consummated the relationship; Burns for once respected the reputation of a woman because her guardian was a law lord. So, the pair just correspond, and Burns has to make his mind up. Does he keep the relationship going? Or does he go back to Ayrshire to marry his pregnant fiancée Jean Armour?

He goes back to Ayrshire. But in memory of that wonderful relationship, he writes one of our most beautiful songs, ‘Ae Fond Kiss’.

[JB]
And Agnes Maclehose is buried just at the foot of the Royal Mile. So, Eric, from the poetic to the barbaric. The Royal Mile wasn’t short of crime, as I said in the introduction, and punishment. Let’s take a quick break, and we’ll be back with more dastardly deeds in just a moment.

[FV]
Downtime? Rare thing these days. So a family day out, well, that was a real treat. Seen Crathes Castle 100 times but still gets me. Stunning gardens. Wee ones going daft in the play park. Good for the soul, so we signed up to support it … as good souls do.

[MV]
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk

[JB]
Welcome back to Love Scotland, and you know we do love Scotland but sometimes we don’t love the weather. You can probably hear it is absolutely bucketing down in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, where we’re following in the footsteps of some of the most notable characters who frequented these streets. Eric Melvin, you’re doing a great job in terrible conditions! Where are we now?

[EM]
Right, we’re standing on the site of the last public execution that took place here in Edinburgh in 1864. But the most infamous man who was executed at this spot was William Burke of Burke and Hare fame. It’s often thought that Burke and Hare were body-snatchers and they robbed graves – but they didn’t. They just killed people. Over a 10-month period in 1827/1828, they murdered at least 16 people.

[JB]
What was the background to this? Because I believe that Edinburgh had one of the biggest and most successful medical schools, so they needed bodies.

[EM]
They needed bodies, and the problem was there was such a demand that the legal supply was just insufficient. Legally, the medical school could only get the bodies of condemned criminals, if that was part of the sentence, or bodies of unclaimed people who were just found in the street. But Edinburgh had, as you say, one of the largest medical schools in Europe, and it’s reckoned they needed something like 30 bodies a month to keep the students going. There was no refrigeration, of course. The only way you could preserve a body was in a barrel of whisky, which might not have been a good use of whisky!

And such was the demand that the university allowed private anatomy schools to be set up for that particular part of the curriculum, leaving it to the runners of these private schools to find their own bodies. And the most famous of these was in Surgeons’ Square. It was run by a man called Dr Robert Knox, who’d been educated and trained in Edinburgh. He’d served in the British Army and dealt with casualties after Waterloo, but he comes back to Edinburgh and opens up his private school of anatomy.

He had a reputation as an excellent demonstrator. He attracted some famous students, including James Young Simpson, who goes on to find the powers of chloroform here in Edinburgh. And he always seemed to have a good supply of bodies, and that was because he paid good money. And as a consequence …

[JB]
Did he know what he was paying for, or was it a case of he knew but he didn’t ask any questions?

[EM]
I think he knew very well what he was paying for. How did Burke and Hare do it without raising suspicion, including the suspicion of Dr Knox? And that was they devised a means of killing people that showed no signs of violence. So, bodies were not turning up with stab wounds or signs of strangulation. They looked perfectly peaceful at sleep. And what their method was, they would come out here onto the High Street, they’d pick up people who are maybe coming into Edinburgh from the countryside or coming and looking for work or lodgings or relatives. They’d take them for a drink and then they’d take them down to Tanner’s Close at the west end of the Grassmarket where they had a little lodging house.

And at the back of the lodging house was what became known as the Killing Room. They would get their victims drunk, take them into the killing room, put them on the bed. Burke was a heavy man. He sat on their chest, and Hare just closed their nose and mouth and suffocated them. So, there’s no sign of violence.

They came into the whole business by chance, because one of the lodgers at the guesthouse, a man called John Donald, an old soldier, died owing £4. And there’s no way they were going to get the money back from the family. So, they filled the coffin with sawdust, gave it to the family, and sold the body – and they got £8 for it. And £1 was a very good weekly wage for a working man; £8 is a fortune. So, there’s the temptation.

[JB]
Before we leave Robert Knox, though, there’s something else particularly unsavoury about him. Didn’t he have one of Burke and Hare’s victims painted? I mean, the portrait painted after their death?

[EM]
That’s right. Mary Patterson, she was the only victim not killed in Tanner’s Close. She was killed in the Canongate in Dickson’s Close, which was the home of the brother of the bidie-in of William Burke. Burke and Hare were in having a drink with this man, and they saw Mary Patterson and one of her friends just walking past, and they called her in for a drink. So, the two girls are sitting drinking, and one of them gets suspicious and makes an excuse and leaves. But Mary Patterson gets drunk. And so, she’s killed in the shop in the Canongate in the usual way. She’s put into a chest, taken down to Surgeons’ Square, and her body is revealed – and she’s very, very attractive.

Knox sends for an Edinburgh portrait called Mr Oliphant to paint her, and the image is still there. She’s looking like a sleeping model painted in the nude, and her body’s still warm. She’s only just been killed. Burke then shaves the hair off and the body’s put in a barrel of whisky for three months.

[JB]
So, what eventually happens?

[EM]
What eventually happens to Burke and Hare is they just get careless. They’ve killed at least 16 people. They pick up an old Irish lady round about December 1828 and they take her back to Tanner’s Close and just something isn’t right. To get the killing room, they had to put out a couple who were sleeping there as guests. They’re put out next door and this old lady is brought in, partly drunk, but she suddenly realises this isn’t right and she starts to struggle. Hare punches her in the face, breaks her nose, blood scatters everywhere but she’s killed in the usual way.

Her body is covered with straw, left in the bed and the pair of villains go off to sleep off their drink. Unfortunately for them, they sleep in and the next morning the couple come back to get their room but they discover, to their horror, bloody straw and this hand coming from underneath the straw. They pull the straw back and there’s the dead woman. So, the authorities are sent for. They arrive and Burke and Hare and their two women folk are arrested.

The problem for the authorities is they need corroborating evidence. This can only be got from one of the two killers. And so, Hare turns King’s evidence. It’s on his evidence that Burke is condemned to death, unanimously. He’s in the Calton jail. He’s Catholic. He asks for a confessor who turns up with a reporter from the Scotsman and he confesses to killing after killing after killing. The judge is so horrified, the sentence is very severe: he’s going to be hanged, his body is going to be publicly displayed and then publicly dissected.

So, he’s hanged in January 1829 at that spot marked on the pavement with these brass sets. It’s said 30,000 people turned up to watch the execution. He’s then publicly dissected and you can come face to face with Burke in the Surgeons’ Hall Medical Museum, about 400 yards from here.

[whistle and bells music plays]

[JB]
We are still within a stone’s throw of Gladstone’s Land. We have come just behind the magnificent St Giles’ Cathedral and we’re looking at a car parking space. Why are we here?

[EM]
We’re here because beneath our feet is the grave of John Knox, the leader of the Scottish Reformation in 1559, and for some years he’s the minister of St Giles’.

[JB]
And of course, best known, I suppose, as the tormentor of Mary, Queen of Scots.

[EM]
That’s right. He starts life as a Catholic priest. But then, like many Scots, he reads of the work of Martin Luther on the Continent, and he becomes one of the leaders of the Reformation in Scotland.

[JB]
How did John Knox end up being buried under what is now a car park?

[EM]
That’s a very good question because underneath this car park are the bones of thousands of people. This was the burial ground for medieval Edinburgh. By the time Mary comes back here in 1561, it’s overflowing. So, the Edinburgh citizens petition her to find them a new burial ground, and she provides them with a new burial ground in the area where Greyfriars Kirk now is, which had been a monastery; it was destroyed in 1559. There’s a new graveyard just about 800 metres to the south of us. John Knox, though, asked to be buried beside his church, so he was the last person to be buried here in 1572.

[JB]
Well, it’s a marker of how popular Edinburgh is, Eric, that we’ve been interrupted by … I think I’m looking around – I can see about three or four very busy tour guides plying their trade. As we reach the end of our story about Edinburgh, tell me, we’ve talked about the highs and lows of the Royal Mile. When did it lose its cachet? Was it as a result of the building of the New Town?

[EM]
Yes, I think you’re absolutely right. For centuries, rich and poor, the great of the land were here, living in Edinburgh. But the importance of the Old Town is diminished as soon as work starts in the New Town. The first house is open or built in 1767. Within a generation, anybody who could afford it had abandoned the Old Town of their ancestors and moved to the wonderful houses to the north.

[JB]
And when the tourists come here that you guide, what are the high spots for them? What are the stories that they’re most interested in?

[EM]
They sometimes come with a shopping list! They’ve heard of one or two of the characters, usually Mary, Queen of Scots, but normally speaking, they just want to learn something of probably the most famous historical street that there is in the United Kingdom.

[JB]
You’ve certainly done it justice. Eric, thank you for braving the rain. It’s been absolutely fascinating. Thank you for my personal tour.

[EM]
Thank you very much for the opportunity. It’s been a fascinating but wet morning!

[JB]
We’ve just dipped into a tiny fraction of the history of this amazing place. Eric’s book, A Walk down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, is a great companion guide if you’re here and Eric’s not! It’s available at all good bookshops. And if you’d like to start off your tour at Gladstone’s Land, details of its opening times and tours are on the Trust website.

Gladstone’s would have been demolished, but it was saved by the National Trust for Scotland –we couldn’t protect our heritage without you, your membership and your donations. Thank you for listening. Until next time, goodbye.

A special thank you for the music during that episode, which came from the Edinburgh Renaissance Band. And you can catch up on 500 years of history inside Gladstone’s Land in a previous podcast in the Love Scotland series. Look out for ‘Time travelling through Gladstone’s Land’.

[KS]
We started renovating it, stripped back plaster ceilings and rediscovered the 17th-century ceilings underneath. An incredible discovery!

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

10 speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Dave Allan [DA]; golfer 1 [G1]; golfer 2 [G2]; golfer 3 [G3]; golfer 4 [G4]; Hannah Fleming [HF]; female voiceover [FV]; Claudia Noble-Pyott [CNP]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[DA, outside]
The greens are smaller than you’re used to. There’s only one bunker, so there’s nothing to worry in that direction, but when you do find it … it’s right in front of you, right in front of the green, but I’ll point that out to you later; don’t worry.
Clubs-wise, you’re both right-handed? Right. In your bag you will have one wood, three irons and a putter. That is all you need. The only advice we give people: with a hickory shaft, what you’ve got to do is slow your swing down.
So, let’s get you out in the first tee. I’ve done enough talking for you. Let’s get you out in the first tee and show you where you’re going.

[JB, in studio]
What you heard there were some keen golfers getting a hands-on history lesson. They were about to step back in time and challenge themselves to play a very special golf course: Kingarrock, the only remaining hickory golf course in the UK. Never heard of it or even know what hickory golf is? Well, that’s because the course is found in the front garden of Hill of Tarvit Mansion, which happens to be one of my favourite Trust properties.

And hickory … well, we’ll come to that. There’s an added attraction for golf fans. Our location – Cupar in Fife – means we’re only a few miles away from the hallowed St Andrews, the home of golf itself. We’ll rejoin our novice hickory golf players a little bit later to find out how indeed they did get on. But first, you heard him giving them the once-over there. Dave Allan is Kingarrock’s curator. Dave, welcome to the podcast.

[DA]
Thank you very much.

[JB]
Basic questions first. What is hickory golf and how different is it to the modern game?

[DA]
It’s almost a different game completely. Hickory golf is the golf that was played between the mid-1800s through to the 1930s. It was a version of golf. It was cheaply available at that time, and development then moved on to the steel-shafted clubs in the 40s and the 50s, to the modern clubs we’ve got now. So, it was what was available to people at the time and it was developed as it was at that time.

[JB]
I don’t want to pre-empt how our golfers are getting on, but I think they’re in for a surprise, are they not?

[DA]
They are. It is played differently; it’s almost a totally different game. The main thing you’ve got to do is swing slower. Modern golf clubs are flexible, very flexible indeed. These are not. These are natural wood. And because of that, there isn’t the same flexibility. Yes, there is flexibility because they’ve got oil to get looked after, but there isn’t the same flexibility that a modern club has. So, the main thing is you’ve got to swing slower than you would do.

[JB, outside]
Can I ask you guys where you’re from?

[G1]
We’re from Orlando, Florida.

[JB]
What brought you to Kingarrock?

[G2]
Just really interested in the history of the golf and playing with historic clubs.

[G1]
It was more to see how golf originated in, to see exactly where it came from; see how everything hits; just the diversity of where the game went.

[JB]
And you just had a presentation from Dave. Has that inspired you or terrified you?!

[G1]
I know that we’re going to lose a lot of balls and it’s going to be daunting going out there, but it’s going to be interesting just how everything works out – just what I’m used to and where we’re going to go from there.

[G2]
And losing a ball is in the rules. Dave said it, so we’re good with it!

[JB]
And the rules also say that you can use your lawful spouse – these are rules obviously written in the 1920s – to be a caddy. How do the spouses feel about that today?

[G3]
I’m ready to be a caddy and do my job diligently.

[G4]
I’ve been training; I'm ready for this moment!

[JB]
OK, well, it’s a Scottish summer. You are from Florida. It is blowing a gale out there and it’s not particularly warm, so may your God go with you.

[G1]
Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[G2]
I have something to blame my bad shots on, so it’s good!

[JB, in studio]
And as today we are going to be exploring not only Kingarrock’s history, but also Scotland’s unrivalled place in the history of the sport, I’m joined by golf historian Hannah Fleming, a curator at the R&A World Golf Museum at nearby St Andrews. Welcome to you, Hannah.

[HF]
Thank you very much, Jackie.

[JB]
Now, golfers, as we said, have been thrust back into history in a practical sense. As an overview, how does your museum tell the history of the sport?

[HF]
Our museum documents, through our collections, the development of golf from the very early period of golf history. We know that golf has certainly been played in Scotland for over 400 years, some would say 500 years; and it was a Scottish sport for so much of that history. Whilst we delve into the history through our collections that came to us from the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, our collections tell the story of world golf as well, and how it has moved on from that hickory sport to be a sport that’s played throughout the world. I think it’s celebrating what makes, as Dave said, hickory golf/Scottish golf, so important to our Scottish heritage and culture.

[JB]
So when are we talking about? When did people start playing it here?

[HF]
The first time we have a written reference to golf is in 1457, and it’s actually the Act of King James II who banned football and golf. Can you imagine not being able to play those two pastimes in Scotland?! But that’s the first time we have the word written down. He wanted his people to be practising their archery skills for the defence of the country. But we know that there were people playing in an even earlier period, particularly the landed gentry and the members of the royal family themselves, who would carry on to play throughout the various acts of the royal family who banned this game.

When we get to about the late 1500s/1552, St Andrews golfers have been given the land through a charter, to say you can play golf here in the town. So that’s when we start to see more and more golf being played, and throughout the 1600s working people also being given the opportunity to play golf.

[JB]
I know that Mary, Queen of Scots’ grandfather James IV had his own set of clubs, and there are lots of stories about Mary, Queen of Scots playing golf, but we don’t know if it’s apocrypha.

[HF]
Yes, I would love to show you – and I’m sure lots of National Trust properties would love to say this is where she played golf. If only she’d played here at Kingarrock, but she didn’t. There’s no actual evidence to say that Mary, Queen of Scots played golf. There have been various myths and stories that she had been accused of playing golf when her husband Lord Darnley was murdered. There has been modern research carried out by historians into this subject and other myths of golf history, but we can’t say for definite that she ever actually took to the course with a wooden club. She was very athletic and loved tennis, as we know, and other hunting and male-dominated activities, but sadly I have to burst that bubble.

[JB]
Well, maybe it’s still to be discovered. Let’s look on the bright side. Dave, we’re telling two stories today. We are talking in general terms about the history of golf itself. We’re also talking about this fabulous place. Tell me about the history of Kingarrock.

[DA]
Kingarrock only comes about simply because of the two people that stayed here at the time in the 1920s. It was a father and son who were members of the R&A: Frederick Sharp and Hugh Sharp. They were what you would call ‘new money’. A family from Dundee, moved into the estate to have a sporting estate, somewhere where they could relax and enjoy themselves and get the benefit of the funds that they had.

And it wasn’t good enough to be that close to St Andrews. They also wanted to have their own golf course out on the front lawn. They apparently designed it themselves, and as far as we’re aware, it was opened in 1924 – certainly after the First World War for definite. They kept it to friends, family, business associates, and strangely enough, they also opened it to the estate workers. The estate workers created their own golf club and it became Hill of Tarvit Golf Club and it played matches against Cupar, Cupar Postal, Auchtermuchty. Of course, it’s no longer there. It seemed to be quite successful.

[JB]
And although that sounds really egalitarian, as it was, I think Frederick Sharp, who was very, very wealthy but he was a self-made man from comparatively humble beginnings, he saw it as a vehicle for social advancement, didn’t he?

[DA]
Yes, he did. That’s the reason he probably bought the estate in the first place, because it was social advancement, because the Fife Hunt came through here. So, he was moving himself into the landed gentry and that was an area that he wanted to get into. The R&A helped in that direction as well.

So, he did want to move himself up in the world and he was trying all avenues to better himself and his family. He had come from not a poor background, but a background where the finances of the family had gone up and down throughout the years. And it was only once his grandfather left him the money in the 1860s that you could see there was significant advancement in their status because of the money.

Well, in these days it was £750,000 that was left to him, but before that the family had also gone bust in the jute industry. So, they had had their ups and downs. And there is a quote saying that he was once told that he wasn’t to forget that he came from the banks of the Tay and he could end up on the banks of the Tay. So …

[JB]
That’s something to remember. You don’t forget advice like that.

[DA]
That probably in a way drove him on to what he tried to achieve for the family. He didn’t want the family to go back to that.

[JB]
No. Hannah, when we’re talking about the 1920s, where was golf at that time?

[HF]
For me, in my mind, the 20s and 30s is when golf was at its peak of popularity. It’s fashionable to be seen at that point as being a golfer; we see it in popular culture. Again, our galleries reflect that. We have, from the Victorian period onwards, people using the railways to come to Scotland to play Scottish golf and to play in this ‘links land’, to play in Scotland. Really young fashionable people coming to be seen as golfers, what they wanted to be depicted as golfers.

We even have film stars being shot as golfers, Hollywood film stars coming to play in Scotland. Bob Hope, Bing Crosby came at a later point in history to play in St Andrews. And you see that in popular culture in films and in books and plays.

Even the clothing. The traditional view of a golfer wearing plus fours, a Fair Isle jumper, Argyll socks and brown leather shoes – that comes from that era, from the 20s and 30s. And we still see visitors to St Andrews wanting to adopt that look, to feel like they’re at home. I love that period in golf history because it’s also where women have more freedom to start becoming members of golf clubs, to become even professional golfers we have in the 30s.

[JB]
Absolutely, because I do want to talk in a bit more detail about women’s place within the sport. But before we do that, Dave, can I talk about the nuts and bolts of the course itself? Because it’s all very well having a very, very large front garden. How do you plan a golf course?

[DA]
It’s a good question. We don’t really know how they planned it because when you see the map of the golf course from 1924, it doesn’t take up the whole area it now takes up. It only took up about ¾ of it, and we feel what they did was basically cut a fairway into the meadow that would have been there in the early spring, to make the fairway. We don’t know if they actually maintained them over the winter; that’s something we don’t know. But he had a plan of the course that he set to and kept. The greens and the tees would be kept more stable throughout the year. We don’t know about the fairways; they were just cut straight into the rough.

But when it was redesigned to be reopened in the 2000s, it couldn’t be opened the way it was, just simply because it was such a difficulty, because it criss-crossed so badly. And with it being a private golf course, that didn’t matter …

[JB]
It didn’t matter if you hit your dad on the head with a ball!

[DA]
The rule was that if father and son were playing, no one else was allowed on the golf course. And there is a story that the son didn’t even bother teeing off from the first tee. He teed off from the lawn in front of the big house and hit it straight down to the big oak tree that’s on the first fairway. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but that’s the way they looked after it and cared about it.

But when it was redesigned, it had to be changed because it did criss-cross quite badly, and they had this habit of putting the tees back in front of the greens. So, you’d end up playing over the tee to get to the green, which on a modern golf course would be totally useless. So, it got redesigned and some of the original holes were used, some of them were changed direction and new ones were brought in. The whole field that it was, the whole parkland area, was utilised to make it into a beautiful 9-hole golf course.

[JB]
And in terms of the kit they were using then, it must differ immeasurably from the highly technical materials that golfers are using today.

[DA]
Definitely. I’d love to know where the father and son’s actual golf sets are.

[JB]
Oh, we don’t know? They’re not here?

[DA]
No, they’re not here. There is a set in the big house which comes from Hugh Sharp’s uncle, but they’re steel-shafted. They were donated at a later date. The chances are, when tragically the two of them died in the 1930s, probably more so when the son died in 1937, that the mother and daughter got rid of the clubs, probably gave them to cousins or something like that, or even to the R&A. We don’t know. They’ve just disappeared. They would have been proper good matching sets of clubs.

[JB]
Perhaps that’s one for you, Hannah, to delve into the archives. You must have a terrific set of archives there.

[HF]
Yeah, we have thousands of objects in our collections, and I don’t actually know that we have them, if they donated them back to the R&A, but that’s something for me to … People are always amazed at the breadth of collections that we have in terms of the equipment. So, from the very earliest feathery golf balls – that was the original Scottish ball, a ball made with geese and chicken feathers – right up to our more modern equipment as well.

Certainly, in that period we have a lot of items. The equipment was becoming more readily available, so there were higher volumes being made by makers in this area of Scotland. In Fife alone, in St Andrews, there were dedicated makers sending out their equipment across the world. In the East Neuk, where I’m from, there were small makers, and right up to the Second World War they were producing in vast quantities. You see that development when you go around the galleries, starting with wooden clubs, feathery golf balls to our more modern equipment that the tour professionals and club golfers play with on an everyday basis.

[JB]
Did the advancements in manufacturing help expand the game of golf, or did the number of players drive the manufacturing base?

[HF]
That’s a good question. I think there was certainly a huge demand for equipment, and also as the 20th century moves on, we see a greater ability to produce in mass quantities and larger factories employing more people to do this.

[JB]
So, the costs would have been coming down.

[HF]
The costs started coming down in the 1850s onwards, with the ball changing to the gutta-percha ball. Is that the ball that you use here?

[DA]
No, not anymore. That’s probably the ball they used.

[JB]
What is that?

[DA]
It’s an old-fashioned golf ball which nowadays to produce is very expensive. We have to put replicas on the golf course nowadays because they’re too expensive. So no, we’re trying to do it with replicas and modern balls instead. It’s the only one thing we don’t replicate.

[HF]
The gutty ball was a kind of rubber that was heated, and you can mould it into different shapes. Gutta percha was used in different industries. But that was about the late 1840s, 1850s. And that started this revolution in the club design, and then also a huge boom in people having access. So, you didn’t have to go directly to a maker who lived in his house and buy his clubs or his golf balls. You could buy it at sport shops; you could buy it in department stores. Certainly by the 1920s, that’s where people would buy their clothing, at their outfitters; buying the equipment from these larger department stores. You even have players from the Edwardian period onwards really having almost brand deals with some manufacturers, putting their names to certain branded equipment.

[JB]
Even then! Before we actually stop for a break, Dave, what I have to make clear is, and obviously this could not be conveyed in the audio we heard earlier, the way that the young chap from Florida, his eyes lit up when you gave him his golf bag – an authentic golf bag from when?

[DA]
The bag? The bag was probably 1920s. The clubs, yeah, they’re around about the same period of time.

[JB]
I can’t wait to see how they get on. Anyway, let’s just take a quick break and when we come back, we will talk about that vital part of golf’s history that Hannah touched on earlier: the women’s game.

[FV]
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[JB]
Welcome back to the Love Scotland podcast, coming to you from our home of golf, the Kingarrock Hickory Golf Course in the garden of Hill of Tarvit Mansion in Fife. Hannah Fleming, when did women start getting into the swing of things?

[HF]
I have to say that women in Scotland have been playing that we know, documented, from really the 1800s, on a more formal basis, but there are earlier examples. 1758 I think is the date of two married women playing in Edinburgh. There’s an account in the Caledonian Mercury newspaper of two women playing golf in Edinburgh, but that was a one-off occasion.

[JB]
Was that acceptable behaviour?

[HF]
Well, the description is quite lightheartedly saying that they were dangerously exposing their ankles and things like that, with the costume that they were wearing, but their husbands were there. They were acting as their caddies. The first time that we see women formally playing is actually the fish wives of Musselburgh. They had access to play the course. They had the time. I’ve also learned recently that the Musselburgh fish wives had the money as well. They really controlled the money within their families and had the access to the course at Musselburgh to play.

There are minutes, I believe, at Musselburgh of the women competing in a New Year’s Day competition, and their prize was a creel and two Barcelona silk handkerchiefs. I would like to do more research about that. I think it’s a fascinating topic.

And then it was the women of St Andrews who were the first women to form a golf club for themselves, and it was what is now known as the St Andrews’ Ladies Putting Club. And they of course play their golf over the Himalayas putting ground in St Andrews, which is open to the public and great fun.

But the women, the ladies, mostly the daughters of the R&A members, wanted to have a course to play. The women were having an interest in playing golf and they were taking over the caddy space in St Andrews. And the R&A decided to instruct Tom Morris Senior to create a dedicated course for the ladies. Their history is fascinating and they’re a really important aspect of St Andrews golf, because the women of St Andrews inspired women across the country to form their own clubs and their own sections within male clubs as well.

[JB]
But Dave, the Sharp women – there was a sister, Hugh had a sister, and of course there was the mother – they didn’t play.

[DA]
They didn't play golf at all. No, the mother was old generation, if you like, and the daughter was more into … she was an outdoor lady, very much so, but she was heavily into her Girl Guides. She never approached the subject of golf as far as we know.

[JB]
As we are recording this in the clubhouse here, the wind – I don’t know if we are picking it up – is whistling around us. It’s early summer and that begs the question … ok, it’s a sort of two-part question. We talked about the ancient history of sports 400–500 years ago. Why did golf become predominant in terms of those ancient sports? Why aren’t there millions of people now spending the weekend practising their archery? Because we don’t really have the weather for it. Or do we? Come on, you two.

[DA]
Never rains on a golf course.

[JB]
Not the first time you’ve said that!

[HF]
I think there’s so many elements to it. I think it’s that natural feeling of being out on the course. And, as you must know, Dave, that feeling of being in nature, whether the rain is shooting down and just frighteningly windy, golfers will go out in all weathers. Even in St Andrews, there’s always been this feeling of ‘you just go out and play’. And people ask why St Andrews is the home of golf, and a lot of it is to do with the natural course and how it is laid out and how it’s configured in its natural form – and that is the draw for so many people. To experience it similarly here, it’s completely different conditions and an experience playing in this natural way.

[JB]
Hannah was talking about the importance of the environment. Now I know there’s another special element to Kingarrock in that it’s maintained authentically. What does that mean?

[DA]
It’s maintained … Owen will not put anything artificial … Our greenkeeper Owen Brown, he will not put anything artificial on the golf course whatsoever.

[JB]
And is that unusual?

[DA]
In the modern game, yes, for fertilisers and things like that. But he’s determined that everything is as it was. We use natural plants to suppress the rough; we use natural fertiliser; we use sheep if we can get them in the winter to take the rough down further. Anything that keeps it as authentic as it was is what he uses, and he is a fantastic greenkeeper. That course at the moment is playing better than it’s ever played in the time I’ve been here.

[JB]
Lovely. Well, our guests were based at St Andrews and are playing a lot of golf there. Hannah, people come from all over the world to visit St Andrews and you’ve spoken to many. Can you define the lure and what it means to them?

[HF]
I think about this quite a lot, and I speak to visitors every day who’ve travelled hundreds, some thousands, of miles to be in St Andrews, whether that’s just to experience the atmosphere or to actually play a course. I think for so many, it’s they’ve grown up watching it on the television. They have links to their families; a lot of North American visitors actually are descendants of Scottish people and want to trace their family history. A lot of that is tied in with how they feel about the place.

But as I say, I think the things that make St Andrews special is what has always been special. It’s a pilgrimage for people. It’s been a religious pilgrimage, with the cathedral and all of the history that’s there. But also a golfing pilgrimage. It’s always been known as the Metropolis of Golfing.

[JB]
Are there any reactions that particularly stick in your mind that you’ve experienced?

[HF]
I’ve worked at the museum this year for 19 years, and when I first started as a museum assistant, pretty much in my first week, I met a man when I was walking to work who was outside the R&A clubhouse, and he was completely lost in thought and there was nobody else there. It was a quiet morning and he just sort of said to himself, more than anything, ‘I can’t believe I’m here’. And I could see on his face how much it meant to him, and that interaction has never left me. I could tell by our visitors who had travelled and made that journey to be in St Andrews how much it meant to them.

[JB]
Well, it certainly meant a lot to the Sharp family who owned Hill of Tarvit House. And as you said, David, their story is not a happy one. Frederick died in the 1930s, not an old man. And Hugh, who was the mad-keen sportsman who had everything to live for, a war hero, died in a terrible train crash in the 1930s too. But it’s wonderful to know that their legacy lives on, and the fact that you’re able to meet and greet excited visitors today. What do they get when they come here? They get a little bit of tuition from you, they get a golf bag, they get their clubs, and they get sent out to do their worst.

[DA]
They get everything. They get the full experience.

[JB]
And how do they react?

[DA]
If they come off the golf course, saying ‘yeah, that was OK’, we want to know what was wrong, because that’s not a good enough response! They’ve got to come off there saying ‘that was fantastic, thoroughly enjoyed myself’ because that means we’re doing our job properly.

We want them to step back in time. It is living history. We want them to step back in time, play golf the way it was played. Our tee-off times are half an hour apart – we do that deliberately so that they can go out there and experience how the Sharps played the golf course. There’s no one pushing behind them. We want them to relax, enjoy themselves, get to know the clubs, get to know the course – stop and take photographs if they like. We don’t care, as long as they’re going out there and saying ‘that was fantastic’; that’s what we want to do.

When they come in, they don’t know what they’re coming to. They’ve read about it, they’ve seen leaflets on it, they’ve heard about it. We bring them in, we introduce ourselves, we relax them down, we get them sitting in the clubhouse for 10–15 minutes and just go through the history, how to play the course, how to play the clubs, escort them out onto the first tee, show them where they’re going.

[JB]
And hope they come back! As you said.

[DA]
I hope we don’t lose them on the way round. They can do … and then get them off. When they come off, bring them back here, relax them down again, let them enjoy the old traditional ginger beer and shortbread – and they can take as long as they like to leave.

[JB]
And this is a very special year for Kingarrock because it’s a hundred years old. We sincerely hope it has a great future ahead of it. Hannah, generally winding up now, the future of golf? You were saying it was at its peak in the 20s, or it certainly expanded in the 20s and 30s. We do hear – because it’s expensive to maintain a golf course – of some municipal courses closing these days. How is the future looking?

[HF]
I hope it’s bright. And that’s what our governing body, the R&A, is doing to ensure that golf is thriving 50 years from now. And there’s various ways into golf. As I touched on earlier, there’s the traditional view of playing golf, but there’s also lots of special additions, like here at Kingarrock. Whether that’s playing in the city, playing urban golf or going to Top Golf or playing putting or crazy golf, there’s lots of threads of the sport. I hope that the R&A and lots of other organisations across the world are ensuring that more people have access to play golf. That’s what Dave and I are both doing, is to celebrate that heritage, learn from it and share it with a wider audience so that hopefully it inspires people.

It certainly inspired me to want to go out and play. Today, it’s beautiful out the window there! I hope that that’s allowing more people to have access through various projects that are happening across Scotland.

[JB]
Well, good luck with those centenary celebrations, Dave. Thank you for hosting us today. And thank you, Hannah Fleming, from the R&A World Golf Museum in St Andrews – well worth a visit too. Thank you both.

[DA]
Thank you.

[HF]
Thank you.

[JB]
And remember our golfers who set out earlier? Well, here’s how they got on.

[G1, outside]
When you’re hitting the driver, you’re telling to go slow. So, I’m hooking everything now because I’m not used to … because I’m ahead. So, I’m hooking everything. And then you get in the rough at all and it’s gone. It’s gone! But there is a ball over on the 4th tee – there’s that fence line that goes there.

[G2]
Yeah, that didn’t go in.

[JB]
How was it?

[G2]
It was great. It was a really beautiful course. It played really well. It’s a hard one; that rough will get you, but it was a lot of fun.

[G1]
Probably the hardest course I’ve ever played in my life. The wind gets you every time. And the clubs, though, Dave wasn’t lying earlier! You got to take it slow because if you don’t, it doesn’t go anywhere.

[JB]
But well worth stepping back in time, a piece of golfing history.

[G1]
It was amazing. I think that’s the coolest part of the whole thing, is seeing all the old history of it. Dave did a great job of explaining the history of the house and the history of the course and everything. I think that’s the coolest part for me.

[JB]
Do you think you’ll do it again?

[G1]
Next time I’m in Scotland, of course.

[JB]
So, a renewed respect for the game when you get back to Florida.

[G1]
More respect than you’d ever get out of the game.

[JB]
And what about the caddies? How did you get on?

[G3]
Very windy, but very beautiful, well worth it.

[JB, in studio]
I think we can fairly say a good time was had by all! And that’s it from this edition of Love Scotland. You can visit Hill of Tarvit House and play at Kingarrock. Head to the National Trust for Scotland website for opening times and information on how to arrange your round. That’s it from this edition of Love Scotland. Until next time, goodbye.

And if you’d like to know more about the history of Hill of Tarvit Mansion, you can find out in a previous episode.

[CNP]
Well, they were absolutely grief-stricken. It is said that the ladies had a bonfire with a lot of family photographs, family outings, Hugh’s photographs – and a lot of paperwork was allegedly burnt in that bonfire because they were so grief-stricken; they just couldn’t bear to have it anymore.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

Five speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Steven Veerapen [SV]; second male voiceover [MV2]; Steven Reid [SR]

[MV]
This is Love Scotland, with Jackie Bird.

[JB]
You join me in a place where kings and queens have knelt in worship, where the body of James V, the father of Mary, Queen of Scots, lay for a month before his burial, and where royal matters of life and of state were contemplated – and I’m sure a bit of divine guidance was sought.

This is the Chapel Royal in Falkland Palace. This is 500 years of Scottish history. Falkland in Fife was a fun palace for the Stuart dynasty, a holiday-home-come-hunting-lodge where they attempted to escape the trials of rule, but also a place of refuge in troubled times.

And a royal who experienced several seismic moments in his life here was King James VI of Scotland, who in 1603, after the Union of the Crowns, became James I of England. Now, we’ve covered James’s early life in a previous podcast, but a man with such a notable place in history deserves a sequel. So, I’m joined in this quite stunning chapel, with its striking painted ceiling and ornate tapestries, by Steven Veerapen, who is the author of a book about James called The Wisest Fool. Steven, welcome to the podcast.

[SV]
Thank you, Jackie, for having me. Looking forward to it.

[JB]
And what a place in which to record.

[SV]
I know, yes. Steeped in history and steeped in James’s somewhat tumultuous life as well.

[JB]
Tumultuous indeed. Now, if only these beautiful walls could talk! The title of your book, The Wisest Fool – that’s not you being judgmental about James; that’s a quote. Tell me the origins of that.

[SV]
The origin of the ‘wisest fool’ title is actually from Sir Anthony Weldon, or at least from a book ascribed to him. The Court and Character of King James, it was called. It wasn’t an entirely flattering book, but it was the one that gave him, I suppose, the most famous reputation – or I suppose you could say the most infamous reputation.

When we think of King James, we tend to think, unfortunately, of a slobbering, cowardly, somewhat odd man. And this all gets traced back to that single text; that text really cemented his historical reputation. One of the things I wanted to do with the book really was to see how much of that was true, how much of it was invented, how much of it was just political slander, really.

[JB]
So you think he’s had a bit of a bad rap?

[SV]
I do. I think it’s one of those things that happens to some leaders, some monarchs as well. Bloody Mary, for example, in England – whether that title is fair, whether it’s deserved or not, the name has stuck. With James, it was the ‘wisest fool’. Elizabeth got off quite lucky: the Virgin Queen sounds fairly nice!

[JB]
He’s been somewhat overshadowed, hasn’t he, by his mother in terms of iconic status, Mary, Queen of Scots, and also I suppose when he took the English throne by his son Charles I. He’s sort of sandwiched between them.

[SV]
Yeah, I think that’s a really good way of putting it. There’s this iconic reign before him and Elizabeth, this iconic reign before him and his mother; and then after, the still somewhat iconic, if tragic, reign of Charles I. James was almost a victim of his own success. He was good at what he did! He was good at his job. That maybe makes for less good copy, I suppose.

[JB]
We’re going to delve right into it, but we’re not going to start at the very beginning because, as I said, we’ve had a previous podcast. So, to get us where I’d like to start, let me just fill in the background. You’re the expert – if I get anything wrong here, jump in, promise?

[SV]
Yeah, I will.

[JB]
Right. He was born in 1566. His father was murdered, probably by the man who then married his mother. He last saw Mary when he was less than a year old. He was proclaimed king a few months later, after his mother was forced to abdicate. In his childhood, he was a pawn. Nobles were vying for control of him and the country. His main tutor beat him. He saw his murdered grandfather die in front of him. He was 16 when he was abducted and held captive for nearly a year. As a teenager, he also fell in love with a glamorous male cousin who may or may not have groomed him.

Steven, those are just the headlines. Now, some experts believe that what happens in your formative years decides the sort of man you’re going to be. So, James was always going to be a pretty complex character.

[SV]
Yes, when you lay out like that, you realise how dramatic it is. You think, where’s the mini-series just covering those events? So yes, his childhood was unorthodox, I think even by 16th-century royal standards. One of the unusual things, and I know we’ve spoken before about his childhood, wasn’t that he was separated from his parents – that was fairly standard for royals in that time – but he was actually taught to hate and detest and fear his parents. He was being really taught to dislike the concept of monarchy, to think it wasn’t important. And what seems to have happened, I think, is that he took refuge in the completely opposite view of these things.

He decided, no, monarchy’s not unimportant; it’s the most important thing in the country and the world, and God has chosen me. He found refuge in all these attacks on his family by becoming obsessed with the idea of family, by becoming really desirous of creating a family for himself.

[JB]
I was going to ask, of all of those events that I listed, what do you think defined him? And really, they all defined him.

[SV]
Yes, it’s difficult to say. I suppose the big one would be Esme Stewart, because in Esme Stewart, his cousin whom he made Duke of Lennox – the man who groomed him, who was the same age as his mother, actually – we find not just the seeds of his famous later sexuality, but also that obsession with family, because Lennox was his cousin. And I don’t think it’s coincidence that the first person he fell in love with was a family member. And he carried that through his life, right until his last lover, Buckingham. He was still using the language of family. He would call Buckingham ‘his wife and son’. He would call himself ‘your dad and husband’.

[JB]
Let’s look at the bigger picture: the court that was supposed to serve him. If you’re after people with principles, your book makes really depressing reading because probity among the Scottish elite was in short supply.

[SV]
Yes, I remember when I was writing the book, with each new chapter, I thought, my God, another betrayal, another drama, another bit of misery! How did this guy get through it? But he did. One of the things I have to say for James, and Anna actually, is they were consummate survivors. I mean, they really knew how to survive. Mary went under; James and Anna did not.

[JB]
Anna was his wife-to-be, but before he met her, the nobles were all either vying for power independently or so many of them were in the pay of Elizabeth I, who is the shadow overlooking the Scottish court. Is that a fair representation?

[SV]
Yes. At every juncture in James’s young life, you find Elizabeth interfering, meddling, causing mischief. And it almost felt, I suppose, that she was the villain of the piece. I think in her defence, she was looking out for England; that was her job. So, if she could take advantage of warring Scottish nobles, if she could pay them off, if she could cause trouble, if it worked in England’s favour, good on her I suppose – that’s what she was being paid to do.

[JB]
I began by feeling sorry for young James when you hear about that awful back story. But as it unfolded and the extent to which he used his mother who was in captivity, which is where we take up our story, I lost that sympathy. Is that unfair?

[SV]
It might be slightly unfair. James is quite often criticised for not doing enough to help his mother, perhaps even being secretly relieved when she was executed, because it took away a potential rival for the throne. She was still claiming the throne.

James had no relationship with his mother, which I think was unusual. She became a source of fascination, I think, from a distance. But he did what he could to save her. Right up until the end, he did not believe Elizabeth would do it. It’s easy to look back and think, oh, of course Elizabeth executed Mary. She was always going to execute Mary. At the time, that was a big deal, executing a monarch and a monarch executing another monarch, trying another monarch. This was big stuff. It was cited later in the 17th century – those who were trying to get rid of Charles I could look back and say there’s precedent; we’ve done it before. At the time, it was a huge deal. Elizabeth didn’t want to do it. James, I think, did not think she would really do it. He actually wrote south with alternative possibilities – you could confine her more strictly … One, my favourite, was marry me! James offered to marry Elizabeth in the closing months of his mother’s life.

[JB]
And there was quite an age difference there!

[SV]
There was quite an age difference: 30 years. Yes, he was going to take one for the team!

[JB]
So, in the final years of Mary’s life, he was writing letters to her saying yes, yes, everything will be fine. I’m doing this and we may do this; we may get you into Scotland; we may do this. He was playing her along.

[SV]
Yes, that does with hindsight look cruel. I think if there had been a means by which Mary could have been returned to Scotland, but not to power, James might well have taken it. Certain ideas were floated over the years, but it was never a realistic prospect. International politics played a role as well; religion played a role. It was never really going to happen. But yes, it does look cruel. Looks like it was exciting Mary’s hopes of freedom. Ultimately, she’d been imprisoned for nearly 20 years for something she didn’t do. She definitely didn’t do … in terms of murdering Darnley. That was why she was ostensibly kept in prison for all these years in England.

When she first fled to England for help from Elizabeth, Elizabeth gave her this sham inquiry, the show trial into whether or not she had played a role in Darnley’s murder. Elizabeth eventually decided we’ve found no evidence for it, but no evidence against it. So, we’re going to just keep you in prison for the rest of your life!

[JB]
But what about Elizabeth’s claim that she intended to play a part in an assassination of Elizabeth herself?

[SV]
I think that was certainly true. Ultimately, Mary was convicted and found guilty, obviously, of plotting to kill Elizabeth. It was a hands-off approach. Mary’s principal goal was freedom; she wanted to be freed from her English captivity. If certain Catholic hotheads were willing to kill Elizabeth in pursuit of that, she was willing to turn a blind eye to it.

[JB]
Well, let’s get back to James then, because I’m not letting you off the hook here. He was obsessed with gaining the English crown, surely?

[SV]
Yes, this is one thing that really frustrates me about James, and to some extent his mother as well. They played Elizabeth’s game. Elizabeth held out the idea that she held in her hands the rights to the English throne; it was entirely up to her whether she said yea or nay to any candidate.

As it turns out, as we know from history, when she died in 1603, she didn’t say a word. It didn’t matter. They’d wasted all these years trying to convince her, trying to wheedle her, trying to goad her into making some pronouncement. It didn’t matter. It was the politicians that ended up doing the job.

[JB]
Part of James’s plan to reach the English crown was to show that he was a family man, unlike Elizabeth. So, he needed a wife, and he needed a wife who would be deferential. How did that turn out?

[SV]
In fact, I was going to say not particularly well – that’s a lie. It worked out massively well, if we look at it from the standards of the period. Once Mary, Queen of Scots was gone, once she had been executed, James suddenly was a much more attractive prospect. He was now a sole king. He was in charge of his realm. There was no mother in captivity claiming his crown. He was really in charge.

What we find then is almost immediately he starts seriously looking for a wife. Given his early experiences with Lennox, when it was clear that he was groomed by a man, was in love with this older man, it’s quite often written that this was just political necessity. There was no such thing as having a homosexual lifestyle. A king had to marry, whether he loved his wife or not.

James, I think, was almost certainly bisexual. How do we know this? Well, there’s several pieces of evidence. One of them is he cleared out his bed chamber of these handsome young men that had followed in Lennox’s footsteps. He really seemed keen on finding this wife. When he found Anna, or when he decided on Anna, he was desperate to be married as quickly as possible. He was a young man; he wanted to perpetuate the dynasty, all of this sort of thing. He was so desperate that he sailed out to Denmark and Norway to retrieve her himself, which was quite a bold move at the time – a monarch to go visiting in another country. He did that. He brought her back.

But James had somewhat misogynistic views on women. He expected women to be submissive. He expected them to be deferential. James had a really strong streak of the teacher in him. He wanted a young woman that he could mould, that he could take charge of, which I should say wasn’t unexpected in the 16th century. A 16th-century autocrat was obviously going to want a submissive wife.

James, after he had married Anna, I think very swiftly found out that this ornamental bride had a mind of her own, and that was troubling to him, but it certainly didn’t drive them apart. Interestingly, during their time in Scotland, I’ve been able to find no evidence that he was cheating on her, apart from potentially one time with another woman actually. No young men are really in the picture. He seems to have been faithful, and they were having a lot of children!

[JB]
They got married in 1589. Anna was 16 and James was 23.

[SV]
She was 15 when they got married by proxy, so she was extremely young, and I think that was part of the attraction. At the time, that was obviously acceptable. He wanted a young, fertile bride.

[JB]
How did his and Anna’s relationship evolve? You’ve intimated that it was a loving one. They had seven children, after all.

[SV]
Oh yes, James was no ‘heir and a spare’ man. I think that gives the lie to the idea that he was only interested in men. He was certainly interested in women as well. What he seemed to discover is that Anna really was politically active. One of the first things she did actually was try and reform his court. James’s court had been fairly laddish, a place of mucky riding boots and all of this sort of stuff, running off to the chase. Anna very swiftly tried to institute a Danish formality to it. Some of the courtiers complained about this, saying ‘there’s great alterations since we got this queen’!

[JB]
So, he didn’t actually get his biddable queen, but she was almost more of a partner with him, wasn’t she?

[SV]
I think she was; I think much more than history has given her credit for. There are some really scathing things written about Anne of Denmark right up until the mid-20th century. One of my favourite, or the most infamous, comments about her was ‘Alas, the king has married a stupid wife’, which was written I think in the 1950s.

[JB]
After the trials and tribulations of his early ‘reign’ when he was a boy king, how did he rule Scotland? Was he a good king? Did he manage to rule it with all the warring nobles?

[SV]
I think, again, James was a real survivor. James’s biggest struggle in Scotland wasn’t so much against the nobility as against the Scottish Kirk.

[JB]
It was a tinderbox as far as religion was concerned, because the Reformation wasn’t all that long ago.

[SV]
It wasn’t all that long ago. And also, the infrastructure of the Scottish Kirk – what should it look like? How should you worship? All of this stuff hadn’t really been settled right at the Reformation, so you still get a lot of people arguing reform hasn’t gone far enough – we need to do this; we need to do that. And James was there trying to carve out his own position. He wanted to be head of the Church. He wanted to be head of the Kirk. A lot of the hotter Kirk ministers: ‘absolutely not; you’re just a member of the Kirk like anyone else’. So, there was a running battle throughout his reign as he was trying to gain mastery of the Kirk. It really makes me almost more appreciative of Mary, Queen of Scots hanging on as long as she did as a Catholic, when James faced so many struggles as a Protestant.

[JB]
Well, something tells me that James is going to get a new job, or at least an additional job. A vacancy is about to arrive in London, so let’s take a quick break and we’ll be back in a moment.

[MV2]
Impressive. For a moment I thought she was talking about me. I meant Falkland Palace, she said with a smile. Of course she did. The art, the architecture. Scotland’s history can really turn your head. So, we signed up to take care of it. Keep it looking dapper.

[MV]
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them.
Support us at nts.org.uk

[JB]
Welcome back to the Love Scotland podcast, coming to you from the Renaissance splendour of the Chapel Royal at Falkland Palace. Steven Veerapen, before the break we talked about how James had acquitted himself rather well at the Scottish Court, but things were about to change. In March 1603, Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth I finally died, but without actually naming James, as you said at the beginning, as her heir. So, how did he manage to claim the throne?

[SV]
Well, James had been extremely sneaky in the 1590s.

[JB]
That’s another black mark!

[SV]
Sneaky in a way that I suppose worked though; it worked effectively. I’m making a case for him; I’m really standing up for James.

During the 1590s, James was obsessed with getting recognition of his succession rights. That does look again horribly ambitious and really, again, sneaky, but that was normal in the period. If any monarch had any succession rights to any territory, however big or small, it was dishonourable if they didn’t pursue it – it was dishonourable to their family name, all of this stuff. James was really doing no more than was expected.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, almost seemed to increasingly enjoy not giving him what he wanted! It was one of my favourite things to write, actually, was that relationship between James and Elizabeth. They were both Protestant. They both had to be locked in this weird dance where she had something to give that she wasn’t going to give. He had to play nice, try and get it, but you could almost hear the simmering fury that he wasn’t getting it! So, what he did was go behind her back.

First of all, he tried writing to the Earl of Essex, who wrote back. But that was backing what turned out a dead horse actually, when Essex had his head chopped off for rebellion. He then made a wiser choice in Robert Cecil, who was Elizabeth’s final chief minister. Cecil was a really effective and consummate politician. What he did was start writing to James. Essentially, they were saying to each other, she’s not going to live forever. She’s not going to name you as her heir. It’s not going to matter. We’ll deal with this politically; we’ll deal with this quietly. And they did.

So, when Elizabeth died in 1603, there was no civil war. There was no great outcry. James was just very quietly, very smoothly proclaimed king. He was happy. Delighted!

[JB]
Of course he was! He hot footed it south as soon as he possibly could.

[SV]
Couldn’t leave Scotland fast enough!

[JB]
He promised to come back, what, every three years?

[SV]
Every three years, so he claimed. He stood up in the High Street in Edinburgh, said don’t worry guys, I’ll be back every three years, it will be fine. He came back once, as it turned out.

[JB]
How is he viewed at the English Court?

[SV]
James at the English Court in those opening years was viewed with huge acclamation. There are fantastic reports of him travelling through England, meeting cheers, meeting crowds, meeting all this enthusiasm. People really were excited. Why? Because if you think about it, they lived with a lot of uncertainty underneath Elizabeth. She was an elderly woman. She had no heir. No one really knew what was going to happen. James’s path to the throne was being worked out very secretly. So, people didn’t know for sure if he would become king. They don’t know who would.

But when he was proclaimed king, this was great. He was a married man. He was a family man. He had heirs as well. So, the succession in the future looked, for the first time in most people’s memories, really stable.

[JB]
And what about the Court itself when he got down there? Naively perhaps, I had no idea of the extent of anti-Scottish feeling.

[SV]
Yeah. And that rose partly I think in reaction to James’s actions. But I think one thing that we have to keep in mind that often isn’t, is James was still King of Scots at the same time. He was wearing two crowns. He was King of Scots and he was King of England. That meant he had to juggle two traditions or two jobs. One of the roles of the King of Scots, for example, was they were supposed to grant certain levels of access to their Scottish subjects; in England, the monarch could be slightly more distanced – they could create a barrier around themselves, retreat into their privy chambers and so on.

So, James was doing that. He was doing the English thing, retreating into his privy chambers, but he was still giving these Scots access because he was still King of Scots. From an English perspective, I don’t think they particularly cared, these English courtiers, that he has two jobs to do. They just wanted a King of England. And what they saw was a King of England who was allowing privileged access to these Scottish incomers.

[JB]
He brought down a sort of Scottish mafia with him.

[SV]
Yes, he did and surrounded himself, ringed himself with these Scots. I think partly because he trusted them, he’d known them, but more so because that was still his job. He still had to keep these guys sweet.

[JB]
Did he have a grand plan to do something within his role as king in England to make big changes, or was it just a destination? Was that all he wanted, to get onto that throne?

[SV]
Oh, that’s a really good question because yes, part of James’s problem was he had too many grand plans. He was a really idealistic man. He had a lot of big ideas, big picture ideas, big ticket items on the monarchical agenda. And that was the problem, I think. He also had to try and sell the idea that he was the continuity candidate. He was Elizabeth’s heir. He’d become successor to Elizabeth, and he wanted to say we’re going to do this big, noble, laudatory thing. We’re going to end this war, we’re going to unite these crowns, we’re going to unite our religious faiths. But there’s going to be no change. Everything will be done very smoothly and calmly.

Now, these things didn’t quite sit nicely together. His big goals were that union of the crowns – he wanted to take that further. He wanted full integration of Scotland and England. He wanted to really put an end to all the religious wars, which I think is a really laudable goal. He’d looked at his own life, I suppose, all the conflict. He could look at his mother’s reign and see all the conflict – and what he wanted to do was put an end to conflict. He’d had enough of conflict. He wanted to create peace in terms of ending Elizabeth’s old Anglo-Spanish War. He wanted to create peace between these warring Protestant faiths, and then after that, I think he really hoped that we can make peace with the Catholic Church. Everything will be rosy. Now, no one man could do these things, but James had a very high opinion of himself and thought he could.

[JB]
That’s really interesting because, using a bit of cod psychology, it comes back to what I said earlier about what happens in your childhood defines you.

[SV]
Absolutely. It comes again back to family. What kind of rhetoric was he using? What kind of language was he using? ‘I’m the father; this whole isle is my wife.’ He was using the language of family. ‘Parliament are my children’, all of this. He clung to that, not just in his domestic life really, but in his political public life as well; he was clinging to this idea of family.

[JB]
And as you say, that is in contradiction to the values of the times, because he was supposed to be a king. I’m on the throne. Let’s start a war with you. I quite fancy taking over your lands. No, he baulked.

[SV]
Yes, this is something you see a lot through history that’s always a bit annoying – when there’s a war on, people are saying, this is terrible, isn’t it? This is terrible – we’re sending people over to die. Let’s put an end to this. James did. And yes, there was a window of popularity in the back of that. But within years, people were starting to look back and say, oh, remember when Elizabeth was queen and England was great and Protestant and militant. Why can’t we go back to sending people off to die? So yeah, it’s sad, but I think that’s still human nature, I suppose.

[JB]
Well, he had that lovely window when he was acclaimed, and he made his family front and centre, as you say. The succession’s all sorted out because I’ve got lots of sons. But things started to go awry, and I suppose partly because of his spending. It seems like a small thing, but it wasn’t.

[SV]
It wasn’t. No, it’s one of those things. And I know various attempts have been made to defend it and say, well, he was the king. He had to project an image of majesty and all of this. Yes, but not to that extent, James! Throwing money away at favourites, throwing money away at everyone, really just enjoying yourself. Which makes for great drama because without international wars and things going on, it’s a soap opera. His life in England was a real soap opera, so it’s great fun. But yeah, the spending was out of control. He was having these elaborate masques. He was really having this extremely lavish life; that’s the subtitle of the book, The lavish life of King James.

But I think the other reason for the turning point, the reason his popularity started to fade, was that when he’d been trying to game the system, when he’d been trying to win the English crown, win support for it, he’d made quite a lot of promises to people, that when he became king, he didn’t keep.

The big one is obviously to Catholics. In the 1590s, the Kirk had been constantly berating him, saying you’re too soft on Catholics. Well, he was, I say as someone that was raised Catholic. He was politically being very forgiving towards Catholics.

[JB]
He wasn’t burning many of them … or any of them?

[SV]
Yeah, absolutely. Why was he doing that? Because he didn’t want any Catholic resistance to his English claim. So, what he did was promise Catholics the Earth. There will be more tolerance. When I’m king of England, things will be easier, your lives will be easier. And that didn’t happen because again, when he actually gained the English crown, it was very much: I’m the continuity candidate. Things haven’t changed from Elizabeth’s day. Tried to keep that going. The Catholics, I suppose, fairly felt very hard done having been made all these promises, and it’s just more of the same now we’ve got a new king.

[JB]
And we have the Gunpowder Plot.

[SV]
Absolutely. I think that was the big – I was going to say the big explosive without even meaning it! – the big explosive event that really showed the Catholic discontent. James, to his credit, didn’t take bloody reprisals against the Catholics. He could see as well as anyone that this was a small extremist band of terrorist Catholics. So, what happened as a result of that? Nothing bloody against the Catholics, but also nothing that really made their lives any easier.

[JB]
There’s a quote from your book, and it comes back to that anti-Scottish feeling, because I did not know this, that there was a quote from one of the accomplices, I believe, who took part in the Gunpowder Plot. James had been on the throne now for about two years in England and ‘he wanted to blow the Scottish beggars back to their native mountain’.

[SV]
Yes, I had to get that quote in! It’s such an amusing one. And that was Guy Fawkes, I believe …

[JB]
That came from Guy Fawkes himself?

[SV]
Yes, quite bold and open in it. It just reveals, I think, that that was as much xenophobic as it was religious, the Gunpowder Plot. There was a sense that these are Scottish interlopers. We have a foreign king that no one asked for. Let’s get rid of them.

[JB]
That’s the last time I attend a firework display then if that’s the case. So, he’s got problems, he’s spending too much. He has not really paid his dues to the Catholics as they thought. He also falls in love, really in love, with a man, and he does this a few times while he’s on the throne in England. But he was very public about it. And when he had his favourites, they were favourites and they leapt above the other nobles, and this did not go down well.

[SV]
I think it’s no coincidence that Anna’s last pregnancy was 1606, and it was the next year that Robert Carr makes his appearance. The king falls in love; Anna no longer gets pregnant. She was still relatively young. I think this is really the first time that James had an emotional break with his wife. Now, what’s interesting though, is they certainly didn’t lead separate lives or anything. That concept didn't exist in the period. She was still queen, she still had a job to do, and they still had a very, I suppose, affectionate relationship.

[JB]
But it reduced her political influence.

[SV]
Yes, and I think that’s what annoyed Anna. She tried various things to try and retain political influence. She combined with her son Prince Henry. Both of them hated Robert Carr, and I think with good reason. Robert Carr was supposedly very attractive physically but intellectually somewhat lacking. James liked a pretty face, but he fell in love with this man, with the idea that he could again teach him, almost take him on like a disciple. In that very early relationship, there are reports of him trying to teach this guy Latin. Very little interest, I would imagine, in learning Latin from the king. But that was James’s way of showing affection, of showing love is I want someone that can learn from me, that I can teach. And Robert Carr, I think, was happy to take the positions, the titles, but he wasn’t equipped to do the job that came with being a royal favourite, which if you were a man meant political influence. It meant political office.

[JB]
We know that the other courtiers were not best pleased about this. What about the public? Did it feed down to the streets? Did they know this was the way the king was behaving?

[SV]
Yes, and it did to some extent, less so because of the sexuality, which is interesting. The attacks don’t seem to so much be about the king is in love with a man. It seems to be the king’s in love with a Scottish man. We don’t like him.

[JB]
Really! This whole xenophobic thing is gaining ground all the time. Then in 1612, there is a colossal family tragedy. The beloved heir, his son Prince Henry, dies unexpectedly at the age of 18. Henry sounded like a completely good egg but obsessed with exercise.

[SV]
Yes. 1612 was a climactic year because Cecil died. Robert Cecil, who’d been the architect of the succession, was a really stabilising political influence and he again was feeding political information to Henry. He presumably didn’t see himself dying, but he died in 1612 without really being able to groom Henry politically as much as he might have liked.

And then Henry fell ill in the summer, and we think it was typhoid. Seems very likely, but medical practices at the time were not the best. Henry’s approach to falling ill was to push his body even further – to exercise, to swim, to ride, to run. The doctors prescribed, bizarrely, slicing a live chicken up the spine and applying it to his shaved head, which, unsurprisingly, didn’t do much good. And he died in pain.

[JB]
Things were changing, weren’t they? Because Parliament was becoming more powerful, at least it wanted to be more powerful. James was an exponent, as we’ve heard, of the divine right of kings, so this was never going to end happily. What were his later years like?

[SV]
Though there were clashes with Parliament, yes, I’m going to defend James again a little bit. James is often criticised for this. And people can try and see the seeds of the later civil war, shadows of civil war in James’s reign. It was James’s belief in the absolute divine right of kings. And yes, he did believe in that. And of course it was silly, but the Tudors had believed in that as well. Elizabeth had clashed with Parliament; Elizabeth had locked MPs up in the Tower if they’d got a bit bolshy. So, it goes back further than James. James’s beliefs weren’t all that unusual for the time. Henry VIII believed he was divinely appointed by God as well. They all did at the time.

James’s mistake was being quite vocal about it. He wrote it down. He wrote a book about his belief in the divine right of kings. So, it’s almost become more associated with him, but it wasn’t an unusual belief. Parliament actually, in James’s reign, said to him in one of the early sessions, we’d planned to set our rights and liberties before Elizabeth, but they’d only refused to do it because of her age and sex. That was the only thing, apparently, that held them back from making their demands. They made them of James.

[JB]
And as the years went on, he was constantly criticised for not getting involved in foreign wars, which was seen as rather unkingly.

[SV]
Yes, this initially came to a head in his later years, James’s daughter Elizabeth had married the Elector Palatine Frederick. And that was great. James wanted this; James had set up this marriage. It took place – it was slightly delayed because of Prince Henry’s death – but it took place in 1613. And James’s idea, again, was about balance. It was about his role on the world stage. He wanted a Protestant match for his daughter and a Catholic match for his remaining son, Prince Charles. And the idea was I’ll be the counterweight or they’ll counterweight each other.

Unfortunately, the Elector Palatine, Elizabeth’s husband, accepted the Crown of Bohemia, which was Catholic Hapsburg property. It was hereditary possession of the Hapsburgs. But the politicians there were very Protestant, and they invited Frederick and Elizabeth to take the crown and they did. And this wound up the Hapsburgs, the Catholics. And this – what James I think hoped would be a bit of a family squabble – became the 30 Years War.

[JB]
Oops.

[SV]
As happens in slightly higher up noble families, a war breaks out! James was adamant that England and Scotland wouldn’t get involved in this. He really wanted a diplomatic out. He thought, OK, my somewhat foolish son-in-law and daughter have got themselves in a bit of hot water. I’ll find a way out of this.

One of the ways out of it was by really pressing that Catholic match for his son. If his son married a Catholic Hapsburg, it would keep it in the family. This again would just be a family squabble, but it didn’t quite work out.

The 30 Years War, as we know from history, was one of the bloodiest wars in Europe. It was horrific. James was under huge pressure to get involved. This really excited particularly Protestant MPs, because what they could see is a chance to make England great again. We can go and play our part in this war. We can go and defend Elizabeth and Frederick, really wave England’s banners as a militant, Protestant state. And this horrified James. He was really upset, emotionally upset. He cried. There are reports of him crying that he was being dragged into war after a successful decade of peace. His peace.

[JB]
And things got worse for James because Anna, his beloved wife – and they were still on very good terms despite his favourites – she died in 1619 at the age of 44. Now, James was in his early 50s then. He was not a well man. He liked to drink, did our James.

[SV]
He did, and I’m not judging him for that. Good on him! He was enjoying himself. He liked to drink, he liked to eat. He gained weight, his teeth began falling out. I think it was actually a really nice and quite endearing relationship between James and Anna. There are reports of them – and I mean, they weren’t old people at all – but by the standards of the day, their healths both were declining. She possibly had some early tuberculosis, she’d all kinds of health problems, but they would retreat off to spas and things together.

There was certainly again no sense that they lived apart, which has very often been written. It’s often written that when they came to England, they led separate lives, but they didn’t. They were still very much in each other’s pockets, very affectionate towards one another. When she died, it was a blow. It was a massive blow. He determined that three times the amount that was spent on Elizabeth I’s funeral should be spent on Anna’s. He had no money to do that, we should point out, so it took months before he could raise the funds. But yes, when she died, it was a family member going, and family always meant a great deal to James.

What seems to have happened is that his last favourite Somerset had been jettisoned some years before. Into his shoes had come George Villiers, who became the Duke of Buckingham. He really took on the role of, and it sounds odd to say, James’s wife. How do we know this? Because James called him his wife! He would write letters to him calling him ‘my sweet child and wife’.

[JB]
And his last years were decidedly odd because when his son Charles, latest to be Charles I, went off to Spain to try to claim his Spanish bride – and that didn’t go well – he went with George, who he was very, very close to.

[SV]
Yes, at first Charles disliked Buckingham and was suspicious of him. But Buckingham was much smarter than Robert Carr had been. Robert Carr had really enjoyed being the king’s lover because it gave him lots of perks, but he’d made no effort to ingratiate himself with James’s family. Buckingham knew better. Whether he just instinctively knew it, he seems to have been quite an ambitious but not an unpleasant person. He ingratiated himself first with Queen Anna, who liked him. Yes, he was having an affair with her husband, but he was very deferential towards her. He treated her well; she liked him. He won over Charles eventually, and Charles seems to have looked at him as kind of an older brother figure. Whether he knew what might have been going on between his father and Buckingham, he probably just didn’t want to think about it. Who wants to think about their parents’ sex lives? No one!

[JB]
Who does indeed. James died in 1625, aged 58. Obviously not old by our standards. But even that was surrounded by intrigue. Did he die naturally or was he murdered?

[SV]
James died a natural death. He’d been failing for years in health. He’d been going downhill for quite a while. What there is no doubt about is that Buckingham and his mother were very close to the king in his final years. Again, James was always desperate for that sense of family, which I keep repeating. They were there in the royal bedchamber at James’s end and they did give him dodgy medicine, but they weren’t trying to kill him; they were trying to save him. If they could have saved James’s life, Buckingham’s credit would never have been higher! He would have been a saviour.

James was having all kinds of medical treatments from all kinds of doctors. And we know from reports of early modern healthcare that these things were horrific. They were giving people things that were almost guaranteed to kill them rather than cure them. James, I think, died not as a result of any deliberate murder, but of failing health and bad medicine that was probably entirely well-intentioned.

[JB]
And as you said, he had only managed to come back to Scotland once and it included a visit here to Falkland. Almost certainly he came into this room and spent time worshipping in this Chapel Royal. His life, even as a young boy, as a teenager, had been fixed on gaining the English throne and achieving some sort of union. He didn’t really achieve total union. Was that a big regret?

[SV]
I think it was in the early years because James, when he first went to England, thought that it would be a relatively smooth process. He thought this is just a bit of business, I’m in charge, I’m the king. If I say that I want it, it will happen and it will be a minor bit of business. I think he was really surprised at the resistance in Scotland and England to political union, and it never came about. He never achieved it. I think he did think it would come eventually.

What I would point out is when there was political union in 1707 between Scotland and England, it still wasn’t as comprehensive as James had wanted. When James came back here, to this room in 1617, he was really pressing the case for religious union between Scotland and England. He, based on his experiences, did not have a high opinion of the Scottish Kirk. He wanted it to incline more towards English religious practices. In England, the monarch was the head of the church, still is. In Scotland, that’s not the case.

He wanted Scotland to follow England’s example. So, when he came back here in 1617, he was really covertly trying to push a religious agenda. And in 1707, that never happened either. Scotland has always retained its separate church.

[JB]
Looking at the big picture then, as you seem to be the lead witness for the defence, James, the wisest fool – wise, foolish? After spending so much time researching, what are your feelings about it?

[SV]
Well, it’s interesting because that title from again Anthony Weldon, ‘the wisest fool’. The fool thing runs that he was wise in small matters, unimportant things, but a fool in big matters. I would say the opposite is true. I think in big matters like peace, religion, James was actually quite forward-thinking. He was wise, tolerant as well. I think in small matters he could be a bit of a fool. In things that were maybe relatively unimportant, he could be quite foolish. In domestic and love matters, he could certainly be foolish!

[JB]
Fascinating. Stephen Veerapen, thank you for taking us through the life of King James. This has been a whistlestop tour. There is much, much more in your fabulous book: The Wisest Fool, published by Birlinn. So, thank you.

[SV]
Thank you very much Jackie, really enjoyed it.

[JB]
And Falkland Palace is cared for by the National Trust for Scotland so that you can enjoy its history and its marvellous grounds. Details of opening times are on the Trust’s website. I heartily recommend a visit, so thank you for listening. Until next time, goodbye.

And if you’d like to hear more about King James, look out for our earlier Love Scotland episode, James VI: The Childhood Years with the historian Stephen Reid.

[SR]
When his grandfather, Matthew Stewart, the Earl of Lennox, is assassinated, he’s killed just outside Stirling Castle. And the body is brought in just as he’s dying for James to see. He’s not much older than 5 at this point, so seeing that must have been really quite shocking for him.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

Five speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Andrew Dempster [AD]; female voiceover [FV]; Andrew Warwick [AW]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
‘Let me say that I look back upon the days I have spent in pursuing this quest as among the best spent days of my life. Amid the strange beauty and wild grandeur of rock face and snow slope, scaling tops where literally almost foot hath never afore time trod, I have indeed come face to face with the sacred sanctities of nature. And he would be indeed dull of heart who could see her beauties thus unfolded, feel her hand on his brow, her breath on his cheek? Who could see and feel that unmoved?’

Hello and welcome to Love Scotland. Those were the words of the Reverend A E Robertson, who we’ll hear more about later. He was describing a uniquely Scottish outdoor pursuit, one which takes in a gamut of abilities, from strenuous strolls to superhuman tests of fitness and endurance. We are talking Munro bagging.

Now, if this description leaves you in the dark, or if you already have a few under your belt but wondered about the origins and people who’ve been consumed by the cult of the Munros down the years, you’ve come to the right place. There are currently 282 Munros in Scotland, that is mountains over 3,000 feet. And the National Trust for Scotland hosts 46 of them, stretching from Ben Lomond to Torridon. My guest today is familiar with them all, and then some. His recent birthday treat was to climb them all for the third time. Andrew Dempster – congratulations! Is that the right word?

[AD]
Yes, I suppose it is! But thank you very much for your introduction.

[JB]
Well done you! Now, you’ve written extensively about Scotland’s landscape and I’ve just finished your recent book, The Munros: A History. I don’t really know what I was expecting – I suppose it was just a list of great climbs and views, and I got all that. But what I also got was a slice of social history and some fascinating characters predominantly. The mountains seem to attract mavericks. Is that fair?

[AD]
Yes, they do, but also I think they attract normal people from everyday life who just enjoy climbing hills. And I was one of those people many years ago. I completed my first round of the Munros in 1988, and I started climbing Munros on Ben Lomond in 1978. That was my first Munro. And since then, the Munro phenomenon, if you like, has accelerated and it’s gone from a trickle to a torrent. It’s incredible now; 7,000 people have climbed all the Munros, and rising.

[JB]
You wrote a forerunner to this book, and you say you wanted to re-evaluate the book’s – and I’m quoting – ‘aims and conclusions’. Now, that’s intriguing.

[AD]
Well, The Munro Phenomenon came out in 1995. And when I write books, I always like to find a gap in the market. And to me, there was a gap in the market as regards Munros. There were plenty of Munros guidebooks even then. There was at least two or three Munro guidebooks out then, and now there’s about 7 or 8. But there had never been a book written about the people who climb Munros, and the compulsions and the philosophy behind the pursuit. So, I decided there and then. I had already written a book, Classic Mountain Scrambles in Scotland, and I was looking for an idea for another book. And this came about, The Munro Phenomenon, and that did reasonably well.

But obviously, that was nearly 30 years ago. It was in the COVID lockdown I decided this book drastically needs an update, so I decided there and then that I would do another. Not The Munro Phenomenon repeated, but a book similar to that. The Munros: A History came out a few years later.

[JB]
It is super, and it’s got so much more – as I said in the introduction – because it’s also about class; it’s about social changes; it’s about economic changes and how that’s impacted on the people who take to the mountains, which we will touch on later. But let’s begin with the entry level stuff, because this is a chat for all. For complete newcomers: what is a Munro specifically? How is it classified, and why is Scotland so well served?

[AD]
Well, a Munro is … it sounds easy to state it’s any mountain in Scotland over 3,000 feet. And because Hugh Munro himself, who classified the Munros, he did not leave any specific criteria as to what he regarded as being a Munro. So, we are left in the lurch here, and lots of people have been putting their oar in and deciding for themselves what Munro might have meant. And someone else says the opposite!

[JB]
Let’s talk about Hugh Munro, the latterly Sir Hugh Munro, born in 1856. Who was he and what led him to the hills?

[AD]
He came from fairly well-to-do stock. He was the son of a landowner, Lindertis Estate up near Kirriemuir, and he travelled about a lot. He didn’t join the SMC I think until 1889.

[JB]
SMC?

[AD]
The Scottish Mountaineering Club. He spent part of his time in London, but he also spent a lot of his time up in Kirriemuir, and obviously that’s quite near the hills. So, he had plenty of time to explore the hills, and I think he just grew into a love of climbing and walking. All that started, I think, in Germany. He was on holiday in Germany and the Alps and Switzerland. And that was the big thing that got him started.

It just takes over your life. I mean, I know from experience that when you start climbing Munros, it becomes a bit of a compulsion. But of course, at that time, he was just trying to work out a list. People didn’t call them Munros then. He was the one that actually produced the list. So, he was on a mission to try and find out exactly how many 3,000ft mountains there were in Scotland and produce the ultimate list.

[JB]
But what about the figure of 3,000 feet? Was that just arbitrary?

[AD]
I think it was in some ways. I think, in my book, I remember explaining that if you look at the height of the original plateau in Scotland, but long, long, many years ago, millions of years ago, there was a huge mountain chain that was worn down. And the worn-down remnants of this mountain chain were around about 3,000ft high. And then of course, when the successive ice ages came in and cut into that 3,000ft plain, you’re left with mountains which are round about 3,000ft high.

And often when you stand on a Munro and you look out and you see other summits, they’re all of that same level. Again, it’s just a nice round figure. To be honest, it sounds good: 3,000 feet. The measurement of foot came from the Romans and the Greeks, so in some ways you could say they’re responsible for the Munros that we see today.

[JB]
So, in the mid/late 1800s, how many Munros did he find and how did he formalise this?

[AD]
He wasn’t just interested in the actual summits over 3,000 feet. He was also looking at what we now call ‘subsidiary tops’, which are subsidiary summits over 3,000 feet but they’re not classified as separate Munros. And if you include all these, you come to a figure of well over 500. So, his aim, his mission was to try and classify all these as well. It was only later really that the specific Munros that we call today Munros are the 282 that people want to climb.

And it’s sad in a way that an awful lot of people that do it today don’t bother with doing the tops. They’re just happy with the minimum requirements of 282 Munros, and they don’t bother with the other 200-odd tops as well.

[JB]
We have Munros, and we have a Munroist. What’s that?

[AD]
A Munroist is basically someone who’s climbed all the Munros.

[JB]
And the first Munroist, if I’m correct, was the chap I quoted at the beginning: the Reverend Robertson, whose eloquent words. And then following closely behind him, there was another reverend, a Reverend Burn, who was the first person to climb the Munros and the tops. Why so many men of the cloth? Because there are quite a few in your book.

[AD]
Yeah, well again, that was a rhetorical question in the book. Was there any reason why the first two Munroists were both reverends? And again, is it to do with the fact that maybe reverends are closer to heaven, and I lift my eyes to the hills, and all this kind of stuff? Or is it maybe they’ve just got more free time, like teachers?!

[JB]
You speak as a former maths teacher!

[AD]
I’m not sure entirely, but it’s probably got something to do with both those things and more.

[JB]
This is where your book I find gets particularly interesting, because you’re talking about the climbers in the late 1800s and it’s a very different Scottish Highlands from what it is today. It’s that golden age of travel: far more rail links, and a lot of the crumbling bothies that we see by the roadsides today, they were inhabited. You could traverse the landscape and meet people.

[AD]
Well, that’s one of the things which really fascinated me about the early Munroists, particularly Hugh Munro and Heddle, that we’ll probably come to later, and Robertson and Burn – it was that they all preferred doing long multi-day jaunts into the hills unencumbered by having to return to a car. And in some ways today, the car is almost a bugbear because you’ve got to return to a car. You drive somewhere. The natural thing to do today is you drive to near a Munro, you climb the Munro and you come back to your car and drive home.

In those days, the advent of the car was only just coming in. So, in a sense, there was more freedom to just go off and travel about – and you could stay overnight with people in the hills and the glens. There were often cottages occupied by keepers and crofters and shepherds, and that’s where these people stayed. They were often given a great welcome because some of these people wouldn’t have seen anyone for maybe months. They were quite glad to put people up. And often these cottages now, a lot of them will be bothies, as you’ve already mentioned. Camping wasn’t a big thing then. You think of the weight of camping gear in those days – people would not think about wandering about in the hills carrying a huge tent.

So, in some ways, the early pioneers did have a golden age of travel in the Highlands. The rail links were better, and they often could get boats sailing up lochs and deposit them in a remote place. There were no enlarged reservoirs formed by hydroelectric, so some of the Munros were far more approachable than they are today. So yeah, they didn’t have it too bad.

[JB]
No, they didn’t. Now, you mentioned Heddle. That’s Matthew Foster Heddle. He was born about 30 years before Hugh Munro, but you believe he’s been overlooked.

[AD]
He has. That was one of the spurs really that made me write this book, because I was looking online one day and I saw this book by his great-great-grandson and it had just come out in 2015, I think. He was saying that Heddle was a way ahead of the game as regards climbing Munros, and he was a contemporary of Hugh Munro. I tried to look in SMC and I couldn’t see anything about this Heddle. I was fascinated and I bought the book, and I really don’t understand how he has just fallen into this trough of obscurity, that he’s become this person that no one talks about. Even in the latest edition of the SMC Guide to the Munros, he’s not mentioned in the introduction at all.

[JB]
Was he listing the Munros too?

[AD]
It was almost certain that he had a list of 409 Munros because at one point he said he’d done 350 tops in Scotland. Obviously, because he’d mentioned this, people were thinking, well, where is this list that he has? He must have a list. And no one has ever found this list. Munro himself complimented Heddle on being such a way ahead of the game, that he climbed more 3,000ft mountains in Scotland than anyone … way more. I think it was only because he became ill in his later life and he couldn’t really do any more climbing that he didn’t finish them. I think if that had not been the case, I am sure that Heddle would have been the first Munroist and would have got far more publicity.

[JB]
People could have been climbing Heddles.

[AD]
Yes, well, possibly!

[JB]
He sounds like a fascinating character. Born 1828, he was a doctor. He was a geologist, professor of chemistry – trained Britain’s first female doctor. But as you say, just by that quirk of fate, we are not climbing Heddles now. So many of the early Munroists were polymaths. They were extraordinary people. They had strengths; they were scientists; they were endurance sportsmen. When I say men, what about women? Because in your book you describe the Munro baggers in the early days of the 1930s and 40s – we’ve moved on a bit – as ‘a male-dominated brotherhood with a classist and sexist tradition’. Oooh, that’s harsh!

[AD]
Well, that was the SMC. I think those words are probably pretty accurate. In those days the SMC were very sexist, very classist. They didn’t allow any women into the Scottish Mountaineering Club.

[JB]
They didn’t allow women?

[AD]
No, it was only men that were …

[JB]
What, because women didn’t have any legs to climb?

[AD]
I think they do now. There was a Ladies’ Scottish Climbing Club formed in 1908 and so they were catered for from then on. But they didn’t seem to think that men and women climbing mountains together was a good idea. The whole thing seems very strange.

[JB]
All those boots and beards. So, when did women make their mark?

[AD]
I think it was probably with a Mrs P Hirst, who was married to a Mr Hirst, who was in the SMC. She became the first woman Munroist in 1947. The first 9 Munroists were all men; it was very male-dominated up to that time. But even probably after then, there were still very few women that would be climbing Munros.

[JB]
I suppose the interwar years, where money was tight, held a bit of a silver lining because it became more popular for working class men and maybe a few women to take to the hills too.

[AD]
In the depressed years of the 30s, working class people who were on the dole found that time hung heavy with them during the week when they weren’t going off to work, so a lot of them would just escape to the hills. They would think, oh, that’s one thing that I’d like to get – freedom from this economic depression. And you can imagine some of them looking out their tenement block in Glasgow and seeing the Campsie Fells hanging on the horizon over the smog of the city, and thinking it’d be lovely to go there.

And of course, they were only 10 miles away, so a lot of them could easily escape to there. And then of course, Ben Lomond was literally 15/20 miles from Glasgow as well. That’s the most southerly Munro. So yes, there were an awful lot of working class people, in particular people like Jock Nimlin and Tom Weir and Alastair Borthwick, all these quite well-known ones. But there were thousands of others who just took sanctuary in the hills and enjoyed the escape, and then went back to sign on the dole maybe once a week.

[JB]
And finally, just before we take a break, did the inception of the Youth Hostelling Association in the early 30s, did that help? Did that encourage more younger people?

[AD]
It did. But again, the real working class people just preferred to be living in what they called howffs, which were kind of caves, and they didn’t really have much money. They slept on newspapers; they made their own sleeping bags. There were a certain section of society that found youth hostels a good idea, but again it was to do with money. These places cost money. And obviously the people on the dole didn’t really have much at all. They were quite glad just to be anywhere, get their head down anywhere.

[JB]
Well, let’s take a quick break from the hills for just a moment. And when we come back, Andrew Dempster, we’ll talk about how the cult of the Munros has continued to evolve, and the weird and wonderful attempts to tame them.

[FV]
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[JB]
Welcome back to the Love Scotland podcast. Today we’re reaching the heady and majestic heights of Scotland’s mountain landscape. Specifically, it’s Munros and the people drawn to climb them. Now, let me quote you this, Andrew Dempster:
‘I have emerged from a world of monochromatic monotony to a higher plane of resplendent technicolour and clarity that seemingly stretches out to infinite horizons. But I’ve also been transformed from a sluggardly gloomy merchant to a buoyant, revitalised hillwalker, skipping and dancing along with a fresh spring in my step.’
Your words, as you well know! Is that representative of how you feel when you’re out there?

[AD]
On some occasions! I think the language there maybe got a bit too flowery, but I love …

[JB]
I disagree; I think it’s lovely. Because you do describe, I think it was a hard climb – your head was down; you didn’t quite fancy it. But then you reached …

[AD]
It was just that feeling of getting out of the cloud. I’d been in thick cloud for a good few hours and I had this feeling that it was never really going to lift. But it was one of those magical days when you come out of the cloud, you rise out of this constricting grey mass, and you’re up and you see blue sky and you think, oh, wonderful! And then you go up a bit further and there’s just a sea of cloud with peaks rising up above. I think any hillwalker will know that that is one of those magical occasions, which happen now and again. It’s wonderful to experience it. The problem is, you’re never quite sure when there will be what’s called a temperature inversion. That’s when you can get above the cloud. But in that particular case, I was very, very surprised. I really thought I was going to be walking in cloud for the whole day.

[JB]
Because anytime I’ve ever been up a hill and it’s been fairly strenuous and it’s been very cloudy, you get to the top and you know what? It’s still cloudy and you can’t really see very much! Isn’t it amazing to think that Hugh Munro and the contemporaries, even until the early part of the 20th century, managed to achieve what they did, wearing clothes that we would find laughable now, and without all the technology we have now?

[AD]
Well, even when I started out hillwalking, I can remember wearing what I call britches, plus fours. They weren’t tweedy, but they were quite heavy wool or woollen garments that came down to just below your knee. And then you had long socks and you had these buttons on them, and gaiters. Of course, we still have gaiters now, but you never see anyone now in britches.

But when you think of what these guys used to wear: heavy britches and kilts and capes and all sorts of things. Everything very heavy, but they’d be warm. But the warmth-to-weight ratio was terrible when you look at the gear they have today.

[JB]
What about the technology? Great as it is, do you think it’s given us sometimes a false sense of security?

[AD]
Absolutely, yeah. I think people now – I’m not saying everyone – but there are people now going up on the hills with GPS and satellite phones and all this stuff, and they don’t have a clue how to use a map and a compass. If any of this technology goes wrong, which can happen quite often, they’re lost. And then they phone mountain rescue. I know there are far more cases of people getting rescued off the hills today than there were in the past. I’m sure it’s because of technology – people just accepting that technology will get them out of the situation. It’s so easy to phone mountain rescue or dial 999, even for people who are maybe not in a particularly dangerous situation. It’s so easy to do that. So yes, I think technology in a way has detracted from safety in the hills. I think it’s got worse.

[JB]
Because we often see in guidebooks ‘this is an easy Munro’, but the mountain rescue and the police often say there are no easy Munros. It’s Scotland and things can change.

[AD]
The weather can change just like that. I’m retired now, so I can easily just look at the forecast. I only go out on days when I know that the weather is going to be settled for the whole day. But you do get people that have maybe travelled for hundreds of miles. They might have just travelled up from England for a few days to do some Munros and they’ve got no Plan B. They’re just doing these Munros as what they want to do, and regardless of the weather, they’ll go up.

I just wouldn’t even dream of setting off to climb a Munro if it was raining and the mist was down. I just don’t see the point of that at all.

[JB]
That’s really interesting. Even you.

[AD]
I used to, in the past – certainly when I was finishing my first round of the Munros, there were occasions when I maybe had 20 Munros still to do and the weather … I knew I had to get these finished because I’d arranged the date for the last Munro and had to get these done. So, I went off in horrible conditions and squelching through bogs and the rain coming down – it was awful!

[JB]
There is a lot of humour in your book and a lot of self-mockery, because you talk about the varying degrees of Munro-itis, which begins with ‘a sudden unhealthy interest in books, woolly hats and the latest breathable garments’! And then you start to list some of these amazing people and how they have managed to complete all the Munros. The couples who complete them together; we’ve already spoken about the Hirsts. The night walkers, people who complete … that doesn’t sound at all safe.

[AD]
It’s something that I’ve often thought might be worth giving a try. I have a friend who climbs Munros by moonlight. He reckons he’s done Ben Lomond 200 or 300 times. He used to do it every night on the Wednesday night and I’ve often been invited to come with him on this.

[JB]
Some people watch Coronation Street; he goes up a Munro!

[AD]
Maybe if I tried it … I’m probably getting too long in the tooth now, to be honest, going up Munros in the dark. But I’m often worried about just tripping. Obviously, if it’s dark, you’re not really seeing where your foot placements are. You would have a head torch, but I think I’m too old now to think about that. I can understand why people want to do it. And the thing about being on top of a mountain and watching the sunrise – that would be incredible. I think I’ve only bivvied on a mountain a couple of times and seen that, but that’s quite something to behold.

[JB]
In terms of the current breed of super-Munroists, if I can call them that, who managed to traverse the country on foot, by bike or swim, who impresses you? What do you think of those endeavours?

[AD]
Somebody who’s done all the Munros in a continuous expedition, I’ve always held this fascination about that and a slight feeling of awe and almost like a ‘I’d like to do’. Certainly in my younger days, I seriously did think about trying to do all the Munros in a single trip. Not trying to break any records, but just for the fun of it.

[JB]
What is the record?

[AD]
You see, you’re now getting into fell running. But originally when Hamish Brown did a single round of the Munros, he was about 112 days. And he wasn’t trying to … well, he couldn’t break records then because he was the first person to have done it. But he wasn’t trying to do them in as fast a time as possible; he was just wanting to enjoy the experience. It’s only over the years that gradually people have wanted to see how fast someone can do all the Munros and of course, fell runners.

Now, Donnie Campbell – I think he was mentioned in my book – and he had done them in under 32 days. And I remember saying in my Munro Phenomenon book that the big challenge would be to do all the Munros in a month, and not really thinking that that was possible. But then this Donnie Campbell came along, and he’s done them in under 32 days. And now a woman has actually beaten that record, under the time that Donnie Campbell did them. I think it’s 10 hours or 15 hours less. And her name is Jamie Aarons. So, a woman has now broken the record.

[JB]
That’ll teach the Scottish mountaineering lot not to allow women into their ranks.

[AD]
Yes! Another woman has also beaten the winter round record. Again, there are some people that want to try and do all the Munros in the winter months, and a woman has now just done them in 83 days – Anna Wells. That’s the same time as Martin Moran, who was the first person to do them in winter.

[JB]
Well done the girls! You have completed, as I said, three entire rounds. How do you celebrate your last Munro of a round? Is there a tradition?

[AD]
There usually is. For most people, it seems, champagne seems to be the big thing, but when I did my last one a few weeks ago, yeah, there was champagne. There was also some whisky involved and there was lots of M&S party food: sausages and chocolate and all sorts of things. So, we’re kind of staggering down the hill after that! There was lots of people there and it was a fun occasion. Couldn't see anything! The mist was right down. Unfortunately, that day out of my three completions, that was probably the worst day weather-wise – couldn’t see a thing from the top.

[JB]
There’s a sense of elation, but there’s also a sort of plummeting of emotions because you write from your diary: ‘the end of an era has come. So much water has passed under the bridge, so many happy memories. It has meant so much for so long. The challenge now lies dormant.’ Is that a sense when you manage to complete something as awesome as that?

[AD]
There was a sense of … it’s a mixed sense of elation and also slight depression that you finished them all. And what do I do now? Of course, it wasn’t long after that I decided to go on and do the Corbetts; I had to have another challenge. I’m the kind of person that’s driven by challenges. I like to have something, like I’m working my way around the coastline of Britain just now in chunks. I like to have something that I can get my teeth into and that I enjoy doing and that I can write about afterwards. It’s just what keeps me going.

[JB]
We’ve talked about the rise of ‘taking to the hills’ and we’ve talked about the peak period, no pun intended. What’s the situation now? Because it was very popular for the Baby Boomer generation, what’s the current situation and what’s the future?

[AD]
There was a huge surge in Munro bagging from about the 70s onwards, and it was rising exponentially. Now it’s settled down, maybe roughly 200 people a year completing the Munros. So, there’s a steady increase in the number of people who’ve done all the Munros, and I think that will continue. It’s a very popular pursuit and I hope it is in the future. I’m hoping it continues to be; I don’t see why it shouldn’t be. It’s something which will continue to fascinate people, I think, throughout the years. I’d be very surprised if the number of Munro baggers per year started to decrease and the activity became less popular.

[JB]
And Hugh Munro, the man who started it all or at least formalised it, he died in 1919 at the age of 63. Did he manage to complete them all?

[AD]
He didn’t. He still had three left to do. He had one planned quite near his Lindertes estate that he planned to keep for his last one, which ironically now is only a Munro top. It’s a subsidiary top, not an actual Munro. Another one on Skye, the Inaccessible Pinnacle, which is commonly regarded as being the hardest Munro; he still had that to do. And there was one other one, Càrn an Fhìdhleir, which he hadn’t done either. So no, he didn’t; he still had three to do.

[JB]
That’s a shame, but at least his name lives on. We can’t let you go without getting the benefit of all that experience and knowledge. As I said at the start, the Trust has 46 Munros in its properties. Can you talk about a few of them that you’re particularly keen on, or that you would recommend?

[AD]
Well, the first one that comes to mind, I suppose, is Ben Lomond, the most southerly Munro, which was my first Munro. It’s commonly often the first Munro of many people. In fact, many people would climb Ben Lomond, not even having heard about Munros. They would just climb and think, oh, that’s a nice hill. And then they might look across and say possibly let’s do some other hills.

[JB]
It’s a gateway drug, then, Ben Lomond.

[AD]
Yeah. My favourite Munro, I think, in the NTS Munros would be Beinn Alligin in Torridon. I just love Torridon, and I think probably most other hill walkers would agree that Torridon is a fantastic area. Superb mountains, great scrambling and what we call steep pointy mountains rather than flat top ones like the Cairngorms. And that’s always been my preference. Beinn Alligin in Torridon is definitely one of my favourite Munros, and I haven’t been up it for nearly 30 years, so it’s due another ascent.

[JB]
So, it’s probably calling you. Well, Andrew Dempster, thank you for your time and wonderful insight. Andrew’s book, The Munros: A History, is published by Luath and is a great companion on those hills. Andrew, thank you.

[AD]
Thank you very much.

[JB]
And if you love to take to the hills, look out for a previous episode of Love Scotland called Mountain Birds, where I head for Ben Lawers and the hunt for the elusive ring ouzel.

[AW]
There, right on the horizon, just landed on the top of the rock. You see it, it’s on the horizon. On that there’s a rock. Yeah, yeah. That’s a ring ouzel!

[JB]
And that’s all from this edition of Love Scotland. We’ll be back with more very soon. Until then, goodbye.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions, on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

Six speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Roger Hutchinson [RH]; archive recording; archive audio; second male voiceover [MV2]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
The National Trust for Scotland isn’t just the custodian of historic properties but also the artefacts within. And if, as they say, every item tells a story, there are countless tales to be told. Today, our focus is on a couple of bottles of whisky and a typewriter, all kept at Canna House on the island of Canna, which was gifted to the Trust in 1981 by its owner, John Lorne Campbell.

John had been a close friend of a certain Compton Mackenzie. It’s his typewriter. And the bottles, as if you hadn’t guessed by now, are part of the booty that inspired his famous novel Whisky Galore!, the tale of a wartime shipwreck off a Hebridean island and the islanders who ‘rescued’ part of its cargo. The entire whisky cargo consisted of, wait for this, more than a quarter of a million bottles.

In the late 1940s, Mackenzie’s book was made into a highly successful movie, largely a tale of good-hearted subversion by the islanders in their pursuit of a dram. But the reality of Whisky Galore! was much darker, involving wartime secrecy, a fair bit of menace by the authorities, and the eventual trial and imprisonment of islanders. It’s all revealed in a book called Polly: The true story behind Whisky Galore, and its author, Roger Hutchinson, is my guest today. Welcome to the podcast, Roger.

[RH]
Hi, Jackie.

[JB]
Well, let’s begin with the famous fiction, and I think the best way to do it is to hear the trailer for the film, which was released in 1949.

[Archive recording]
North-west of Scotland lie the lovely islands of the Outer Hebrides. But in 1943 disaster overwhelmed this little island. Not famine, nor pestilence, nor Hitler’s bombs, but something far worse …
There is no whisky.
We have a very valuable cargo on board. Several thousand cases of whisky. Anything might happen. You can’t trust these people.
Would it be so terrible if the people here did get a few bottles?
Once we let people take the law into their own hands, it’s anarchy.
This is lunacy.
Whisky Galore!

[JB]
You can get a real flavour of the film and the story there, Roger. Now, your book isn’t a new one – The real story of Whisky Galore! – but it’s never been out of print. Now that is a testimony, is it not, to our fascination with the story. Why do you think it endures?

[RH]
Well, it’s always been a hit from the moment Compton published his novel in 1947, and then Ealing Studios turned it into the movie that we’ve just heard trailered; shot, by the way, on location in Barra, one of the very first location/feature films made in the British Isles in, as you said, 1949. And Compton himself had a bit part in it, which delighted him, coming from a theatrical family.

But the book itself was an enormous bestseller, particularly in the States and in France. People said then that he was probably hitting on the aftermath of wartime austerity. The very title Whisky Galore!, plentiful whisky was itself temptation. And also, it’s a damn good comic novel; it’s very, very appealing. It’s a lovely book – may well be the best book that Compton Mackenzie wrote, and he wrote lots.

It goes back, though, to not 1943, as they say there in the film, but 1941, when Compton himself was living in Barra. He was actually Captain of the local Home Guard and he had one of the two cars in the island, going around a rough circular road. The doctor had the other. Compton himself, who didn’t drive, hired a chauffeur – a man called Neil McCormack. And one morning Neil appeared for work at Compton’s house – Suidheachan in Barra – covered in oil, one morning early in 1941. And Mackenzie asked him what this was all about. And McCormack eventually explained, a bit reluctantly and shyly, that he’d been out with a lot of other men in the Sound of Eriskay, a bit to the north and east of where they were, where a cargo ship had run aground and they’d been saving some of the cargo.

Mackenzie then got to hear what the cargo was. Of course, he got some bottles and took great delight in presenting it to distinguished guests, including the Scottish Secretary of State Tom Johnston, who he offered a dram to, which Johnston refused slightly later in the war! But a couple of those bottles would be the origins of the bottles that are now in Canna House that you referred to. John Lorne Campbell, his old friend, had left Barra to go to Canna, which John Lorne Campbell and his wife Margaret Fay Shaw bought in the late 30s. So, they weren’t around in Barra to get any of the pickings themselves. Compton himself, obviously as a friendly gesture, let them have some of his own bottles.

[JB]
Tell me about the real ship that was involved. It was called the SS Politician.

[RH]
It was called the SS Politician. She was quite a fast, light and manoeuvrable boat and sailed out of Liverpool. She was a Harrison Line steamer and she’d been all over the world actually, transatlantic and the coast of Africa.

When the war came, she was like all the Merchant Navy. She was sequestered into use for wartime stuff. Now, there were raids on the Clyde, air raids on the Clyde, which are very well known of course, in Scotland. A lot of people died, but incidentally several distilleries were also bombed accidentally. I don’t think the Luftwaffe intended to bomb distilleries, but they did. And there was a fear that Scotland’s whisky stocks would disappear. So, before that could happen, they decided to sell them in the USA.

This is the origin of that enormous sack. It was actually, as you said, a quarter of a million bottles of high-quality malts and some blends that were then promptly transferred down to Liverpool in February 1941 and put ashore this cargo ship, the SS Politician of Liverpool Docks. And she was then sent to the captain, a man called Beaconsfield Worthington – wonderful name.

She was then sent north to go up the Minch between the Outer Isles and the mainland of Scotland, the idea being that she would either take a sharp left at the Butt of Lewis in the very north of the Outer Hebrides, or perhaps – and this is less clear – through the Sound of Harris.

In fact, come the dawn of a second day at sea, the watch saw South Uist appearing immediately ahead of them out of the dark. So, they went hard to port and took a sharp left turning. They didn’t know where to – they didn’t know where they were – and ran aground on some rocks and reefs in what turned out to be the Sound of Eriskay between the small island of Eriskay and the larger island of South Uist.

[JB]
So, Christmas had come very, very early for the islanders, and I suppose the important thing about this was that the whisky was to be sold, but not a penny in duty had been paid.

[RH]
Absolutely, because it was for export, no duties were payable because they hadn’t been retailed or even wholesaled in the UK. That made it an extra special sensitive cargo to the Customs and Excise, who have always had a presence in these waters. And they had, as it happened, a local officer based in the south end of South Uist, a man called Charles McColl, and a senior officer in Portree in the Island of Skye called Ivan Gledhill.

[JB]
Before they get involved, let’s talk a little about the fact that this is all happening against a backdrop of war. Because that’s an important part of the real story, isn’t it?

[RH]
Very important part of it. A lot of the men were away; an awful lot of them were in prisoner of war camps after the 51st Highland Division was forced to surrender at Saint Valery in France. And a lot of the rest of the men were up in the Faroes. A lot of them were also members of the Lovat Scouts and they were sent to garrison the Faroe Islands.

[JB]
It’s fair to say that a lot of the men who were involved here were not young men. A lot of the young men were away. So, the men who were involved in the ‘rescuing’ – I shall say that just now, it’ll become obvious why – they were established fishermen. They were men from the island who found out this wonderful thing for them had happened, and they started to salvage the whisky on board.

[RH]
They took the seamen off the Politician. They took the crew off and took them to safety in Eriskay, and some of the guys from the ship came ashore with bottles of whisky. There was never a secret from the start as to what the Politician was carrying. And if there was, it didn’t last for very long.

And so, the crew of the Politician were then picked up and taken away to safety by the Barra lifeboat and other vessels. No sooner had they gone, then of course, the men got back in their own boats and went out to the Polly to have a look for themselves.

[JB]
How were they doing this? Was this some sort of flotilla setting off?

[RH]
No, well, not really. I mean, they operated individually in their own skips, little sailing boats. No, they wouldn’t go up mob handed. But when they got there, there were plenty of others there that they knew. And increasingly, as I said, from further afield. They said it was like … they call the bridge in Glasgow by the station the Heilanman’s Umbrella, because all the Gaels from the islands used to congregate under it and shelter, pass the time of day and chat. And they said going out to the Polly was like going to the Heilanman’s Umbrella in Glasgow, and that you’d see people you hadn’t seen for years, for decades – people from further up on the Main and from Ullapool and Gairloch and from Lewis and from Mull. Increasingly there was a real ceilidh going on there! Assisted, I should say, by the fact that one of the other items that was being carried by the Politician over the Atlantic was a really delicate and extremely precious German piano, which was put to use!

[JB]
So, there was a bit of a party on board. Now we have an excerpt here from an islander talking, obviously years after the event, about just what happened. Let’s have a listen.

[archive audio]
I remember one poor old man that went out along with young fellas. Oh, he would be about 80 years of age, as I’d say, and they got something like 40 kisses. But they had only a rowing boat, and they had a long way to go. So on that way coming back with her haul, they saw MacIsaac’s boat coming after them. The old man said to the anglers, he’ll give us a tow, all right, because I’m a great friend of MacIsaac’s. MacIsaac was the ferryman, of course. The boat sheared off a bit, and he said that’s funny, he couldn’t have recognised me. But all of a sudden she sheared the other way and came alongside. But who was aboard there but the Excisemen or the police?

[JB]
As I said earlier, Roger, there was a difference of opinion as to what was happening to the whisky. The islanders were using words like ‘rescuing’ it and ‘saving’ it. Customs, who were onto this and who realised there was a lot of money at stake here, they were talking of ‘theft’, of ‘plunder’ and of ‘looting’. And this is when things began to take a darker turn.

[RH]
Indeed. The islanders had always had things washed up on shore. They were quite used to this as little bonuses, little additions to everyday life. They could get barrels of food or preserved goods or even just ships’ provender from the wrecks in the Atlantic. It happened all the time. And when it washed up, they saved it. They went out themselves. They weren’t wreckers as in the Daphne du Maurier sense. They didn’t try to make ships run aground, wave lights off headlands and things like that. They obviously went to save people too, if they could.

But when a ship like the Politician was wound up on Cowbay Island on the rocks there, it was clearly not going anywhere. And just as clearly, they saw no reason why they shouldn’t save those things that were on board. The fact that they happened to be whisky, well, that wasn’t their fault. And so, they went for it. Sure. There were also telephones there. They had no electricity, but plenty of them took away telephones and put them in their front rooms. Seriously!

[JB]
Tell me, you spoke to the islanders decades on too, and you heard their stories. What are the most memorable stories that they told you?

[RH]
I mean, so many. I was lucky because, as I say, there weren’t really very many young men involved at the Politician from the islands. And when I was out there talking to people about it, it was older men. It was some decades ago. There was several … I remember a couple of old boys, Callum and Alec, I think their names were, telling me the great practised story that they’d obviously dined out on for decades. I was asking about how they saved it; what did they do with it when they got it back to the croft? Alex said, ‘well, he would take it out to the machair, and he would dig a hole in the machair’. And the other one butted in with ‘just as he might dig a grave’. And then the person came back with, ‘but with a little more care’.

[JB]
Dead-pan island humour. There was another story from your book that I loved. One man – they were taking cases of whisky, remember – this man had 25 cases of whisky anchored to his boat and he was drunk all the time, so much so that he was reported to Customs by his wife!

[RH]
That’s right, yes! I mean, obviously not everybody was stone cold sober throughout this period. I think that would have been the case wherever she’d run aground, actually. I don’t think we can particularly say that was … but yeah, that’s right!

[JB]
So where were they hiding the whisky?

[RH]
Oh, I mean everywhere. As the two old boys said to me, they dug holes out on the machair; they put it in their peat stacks. Remember, every house had a huge peat stack with the year’s fuel beside it. They put it under floorboards; they put it behind lining in the houses. They’re still cropping up. Until quite recently, when they renovated old houses in the Southern Isles, they’d strip away the old boards and find bottles of whisky, which newcomers to the islands just couldn’t understand, whereas the locals would say, oh, yeah, it’s Polly. They called the whisky Polly in the end – a bottle of Polly.

[JB]
There’s another part of your book where you’re saying that they used to hide the bottles down rabbit holes, and that it got to the stage where you couldn’t put a bottle down a rabbit hole because they’d get it so far and it would clink on another bottle that was already there!

[RH]
Absolutely. Well, this was all fun and games for the guys in the islands, perhaps less so for some of the wives, but to the Customs & Excise guys, it was terrible because, well. They put a stamp on the whisky; it was all in hold #5, a big, cavernous hold. And it was just for these cases of whisky. Customs & Excise shut down the hatch at the top of hold #5 and put their stamp on it, which should have been like holding up a clove of garlic to a vampire. It should have just warned anybody off, kept them off, but of course, it didn’t mean anything. They wouldn’t pay any attention to it.

So, it was just ignored, which was insult to injury, because as you said, no duty had been paid on this whisky. They refused to believe that it was not salvable officially. And there was perhaps as much as a quarter to half a million pounds worth of export goods there, if they could just get it safely out and over to New Orleans.

[JB]
So, we have the local people having a great long party and knowing that they had to hide the whisky and finding all sorts of ingenious places to do it. We have the Customs officers, this Charles McColl, a local customs officer, and his boss, Ivan Gledhill, who are becoming very, very annoyed at what is happening and their inability to stop the islanders. In the movie, this was portrayed as a bit of slapstick, with a rather pompous Home Guard man playing the part of the Excise officers in terms of trying to stop it. But things are going to take a darker turn.

And on that note, let’s take a little break just now, Roger, and we’ll be back in a moment to pick up the real story of Whisky Galore!

[MV2]
You need to smell the flowers, said my bro. Turns out wild heather works just as well. We were up Ben Lomond like mountain goats. Couldn’t believe it was so close to home. At the top though, life was a million miles away. So, we signed up to help look after it. We all need looking after.
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them.
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[JB]
Welcome back to Love Scotland and to the real story of Whisky Galore! Roger Hutchinson, the part of the story we’ve covered so far, largely allowing for the name changes and artistic licence, follows the narrative of the comedy movie Whisky Galore!, which is very light-hearted in a sort of sanitised version of events.

Now things change. McColl and Gledhill, the two customs officers, decide to step in. But Roger, they just don’t want to uphold the law; they want to make an example of the islanders, isn’t that the case?

[RH]
Very much so. For a long time the word was pretty much as Compton had portrayed it in the book, that any friction was just slapstick and that it was wacky islanders getting the best of clumsy officialdom. But I got hold of the Customs & Excise papers while I was researching this book.

[JB]
Before you tell me about the customs papers, though, can you explain how you got them? Because that’s a story in itself.

[RH]
Well, they were – and still are, I think – embargoed on a 100-year embargo until – you’re not supposed to see them, the Politician papers and Customs files – until 2041. I was researching this book in the late 1980s and I thought, well, I’ll go along to Petty France, in London, the customs buildings, just to see if anybody could help me at all. I got nowhere on the phone to them. I was just repeated that nothing was available.

It was this weird, weird business: I walked in there and introduced myself and I was taken up to a small room, told that I couldn’t … I had a tape recorder with me. It was a small cassette recorder. I took it around almost everywhere those days as a journalist, as you often did. I had to hand in a pen that I had and any notebook, and I couldn’t make any notes or anything like that. And these big hefty files were plumped down on a table in front of me. And there was all the correspondence, all the papers that was supposed to be embargoed. I had no means of writing them down. So, I got the tape recorder out and just dictated them word by word into the tape recorder, and then transcribed it all when I got back.

And I worked my way through all the files. As I was doing that, I realised I had gold dust there. It wasn’t just a book; I had fantastic material for a book explaining in their own words what they thought should happen to these guys. They got the police involved, the Northern Constabulary from Inverness, because they also had a police constable in Lochboisdale. And for a few months, the police went along with the Excise, got into the Excise launch and went with them on punitive raids. They went around crofts in Eriskay and South Uist, in particular. Barra didn’t actually get much of the brunt of this, which is perhaps why Compton Mackenzie didn’t know much about it.

[JB]
But they didn’t just search the houses, Roger. They turned them upside down.

[RH]
They did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They tore it apart and everything they could do, and they arrested as many people as they possibly could.

[JB]
They took boats, didn’t they? They actually took away some of the boats from the islanders. And these boats were not pleasure cruisers; these were their livelihoods.

[RH]
Yeah, they were fishing boats. With their fast launch, they took to intercepting these small sailing boats in the water, in the sea. And once they had the local policemen and a couple of others assigned from Inverness with them, they began to charge them.

[JB]
Before we find out any more though about what you found, back to the fact that you were offered a look at government papers that should still be embargoed for another 20 years. Do you think this was a mistake or intentional?

[RH]
I think it was a mistake. Why would they want deliberately to leak it all to me? I think some clerk made a mistake actually. Tempting as it would be … There were questions asked in Parliament! It was all a bit weird.

[JB]
And from the papers, you also discovered from those letters that were being sent back and forth – thank goodness for the days of letters – between the islands and Customs headquarters, and between Customs and the local police, that the authorities, that McColl and Gledhill really wanted to punish anyone involved, and not just on a charge of theft.

[RH]
That’s right. They thought that – well, Gledhill and McColl, Gledhill in particular – theft was too lenient, and he wanted them charged on offence against the realm, which in wartime would have amounted to a charge of treason, which is actually a capital crime. I’m not suggesting he wanted them shot, but he wanted them sent down for a long time. Now, the cops weren’t too interested in all this because they had to be there when the Customs have lost interest and do business with the men.

I think it all came to a head – in fact, it certainly all came to a head – when McColl’s car in South Uist in Lochboisdale was burned. McColl kept his car in a small outshed, and one night some people climbed up on top and poured petrol through the roof and chucked lit matches down after it. And the car was destroyed. The cops never found who did it, of course, but it was a big signal – not good for community relations what they were doing.

[JB]
Let me quote a little bit from your book, and this gives us an idea really of the tone of the letters between Ivan Gledhill, the boss of McColl. This is a letter from McColl saying:

‘You wouldn’t recognize the ship now. Everything that could be taken away was taken, and the rest smashed. Cases of wireless sets were opened, and the sets deliberately broken to pieces. I should imagine that 300 cases have gone out of her. That, I believe, is a conservative estimate. The only thing I do hope is that even that we can’t say we have the wreckers among the looters, that those who do go before the sheriff will be dealt with mercilessly.’

So, they were then accusing the islanders of not just taking the whisky, but of deliberately wrecking the ship. Is there any truth in this?

[RH]
No, not really. Look, the ship had her back pretty much broken when she ran aground. She was not going to be salvable and nor was her contents. The reason that the guys were covered in oil when they came back up, when McCormack went to see Compton Mackenzie in the morning for instance, was that the fuel tank had been exploded. The whole thing, all the holds in the Politician were awash with oil and whisky, and everything was contaminated. Obviously not yet the whisky – that would come later, the contamination of what was left of the whisky, and there was a lot left.

But, highly ingenious! They didn’t have to do any of this, but if they were going to do it, they may as well do it well! There were great balls of linen, which were also due to be sent out on part of the Politician’s cargo, which were destined for the Caribbean. And they used these balls of linen to fashion ropes and slings and hoists. They’d lower themselves down into hold #5 on these linen, massive thick ropes, and then haul back up crates of whisky on the same device. All this linen drenched in oil was all over the place, all over the deck. Of course, it was a mess. But it was a ship that had run aground. And as I said, its fuel tanks had been punctured. The guys who went out there, they weren’t particularly concerned about rescuing or saving the ship, not least because they thought she was beyond it.

[JB]
If you look at this dispassionately, though, sort of devil’s advocate and say, well, OK, the islanders were breaking the law. They’d been told not to go near the boat, and they did, and duty had not been paid. Do you have any sympathy for the authorities at all? Was there any sympathy for that point of view on the island?

[RH]
I do, actually. Interestingly, the director of the film of Whisky Galore!, Mackendrick, was a Glaswegian with a very stern Presbyterian upbringing. He thought that the islanders were wrong, and that the Customs & Excise had been right to pursue them. And obviously, it was war time and people were struggling. Until I saw the correspondence.

Gledhill, and McColl to a lesser extent, were taking it personally at that point. And it never was personal, but they were taking it personally. These islanders, these men and the women who were involved, too, remember that their sons were away at war. Many of them were on merchant ships, highly hazardous lives. Many of them wouldn’t come back. Those that did often came back as a result of having spent four years in the Prisoner of War camp. They were losing and giving up a lot. A few bottles of whisky here or there were surely not worth enough to swing the balance against them in terms of morality.

No, I think that Gledhill and McColl are – actually, I’m not alone here; we’re not alone here in favouring the islanders – because the Chief Constable of Inverness, after a couple of months of this, just withdrew all assistance and refused to help Gledhill and McColl. Gledhill complained bitterly to the Customs commissioners at Petty France in London about this and asked for government pressure to be put on the chief constable to send more police out, to send some police out. But he wouldn’t have anything to do with it. He just thought they were overreacting wildly.

In the end, they tried to sail the Politician again. They pulled her off the rocks and she got a short distance down the Sound of Eriskay, just a few yards, and then sunk completely. Her back was broken. She went to the bottom; she’s still there. Well, she was down there then, with the contents of hold #5 – still the vast majority of bottles of whisky that she’d arrived with a few months earlier, now on the sea bed. And McColl and Gledhill could then surely have just said, OK, that’s it, let’s go home. They still couldn’t bear the idea of somebody taking away and using or drinking undutied whisky. So, they blew it up – blew the hold up.

[JB]
So in all, how many islanders faced court action? How many were charged? How many were imprisoned?

[RH]
I think it was 15 or 20. I’m not sure. They were given sentences of between a couple of weeks and a couple of months in Inverness prison.

[JB]
And what was the reaction to this? Were the men shamed?

[RH]
No, I don’t think … I mean, their families would have been, but they weren’t the shameful sort. But they were angered. The community was angered, deeply offended at having collected criminal records for this. They never thought that they were doing anything wrong.

[JB]
And when they look back on it all these years later, or their descendants look back on it, what’s the general view on the islands?

[RH]
Just one of pleasure. It was a time out of war and there are a lot of funny stories connected to it, which they still tell to each other and to anybody who wants to listen.

[JB]
And do we have a final tally of how many bottles of whisky they managed to get away with?

[RH]
Not that many – probably about 10%, about 20,000. It’s quite a lot when you look at it that way! But given what was there … About 20,000 I think, in the end.

[JB]
And oral history is such a key part of the Scottish islands. There’s a quote in your book that the whole event was ‘a gift from God, and that had it run aground anywhere else, it may well just have been forgotten about’. Do you think that storytelling has kept this tale going strong for so long?

[RH]
Oh yeah, and of course, the film and the book. The first people to dramatise it were the islanders themselves. They made a little play out of it in Gaelic after the war, and took it around town halls in the Southern Isles, in the southern Hebrides, which went down very, very well. And there was songs written about the Politician, again Gaelic songs. They’re still around.

And then, of course, Compton took the whole thing worldwide with his book. The film did the same. The film spread even further and still does. And now, of course, it’s an international property that everybody’s heard of, the true story of which only the islanders really know.

[JB]
And as you say, the Polly now lies at the bottom of the ocean. Bottles are still popping up. In fact, there was a move to try to salvage what was left down there, but that didn’t come to much.

[RH]
Several attempts by private people, by divers and that sort of thing. I’m not sure how much is left down there now.

[JB]
Is the whisky still drinkable?

[RH]
No, no, no, no, it actually isn’t. I mean, it depends when it was brought up, but any whisky that was brought out of the hold before she went underwater, under the sea, it was generally OK. It might have some oil on the bottle, on the cork even. But remember, they were cork stoppers, so they weren’t totally waterproof. Anything that spent some time in salt water, in the sea, it seeped in. I’ve actually tried to taste it. It’s just impossible, even for me!

[JB]
Well, thank you for your investigation. Your book is a great read. The book is Polly: the true story of Whisky Galore! and it’s published by Birlinn. And I shall end, with your permission, with a line from your book, Roger: ‘A wind never blew that did not fill someone’s sail’. I think that sums up the whole story, don’t you?

[RH]
Perfect. Thanks a lot, Jackie.

[JB]
Thank you very much for your time. And if you would like to visit Canna and see those famous bottles, I’m afraid you might have to wait a little bit. Canna House, along with its incredible Gaelic archive, is undergoing extensive renovation and should be reopened by the summer of 2025. But of course, the beautiful island itself is there for all to see.

And that’s it from this edition of Love Scotland. We’ll be back very soon. Until next time, goodbye.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

6 speakers: Male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Antonia Laurence-Allen [ALA]; Sally Tuckett [ST]; second male voiceover [MV2]; Viccy Coltman [VC]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
Today, we’re going to talk about the life and career of a man who was among the greats of British portrait painting. But this is also a story about class, wealth and ambition. Allan Ramsay was born in Edinburgh in 1713. He was not only talented artistically, but by all accounts hugely cultured and oozing with charisma. His friends were part of the intellectual hothouse that was the Scottish Enlightenment. His patrons were at the highest levels of British society, and many of his paintings tell us a great deal about how those Georgian movers and shakers wanted to be portrayed amongst their peers and for posterity.

An exhibition called Ramsay & Edinburgh Fashion is currently running at the National Trust for Scotland’s Georgian House. Where else but in Edinburgh? It’s where I’m sitting right now, alongside the exhibition curator Antonia Laurence-Allen from the NTS and Dr Sally Tuckett, a lecturer in dress and textile histories at the University of Glasgow. Welcome to you both.

[ALA]
Thank you.

[ST]
Hello. Lovely to be here.

[JB]
Now, Antonia, it’s billed as Ramsay and Fashion. So, what does the exhibition consist of and what’s the thinking behind combining these elements?

[ALA]
Actually, if I’m honest, I was standing in front of a Ramsay talking to a visitor, and I realised that we didn’t know who the lady was in the portrait. It’s downstairs in the Georgian House, in the big drawing room. And I thought, oh, wouldn’t it be interesting to see how many women painted by Ramsay we have in the NTS portfolio?

So, I looked at the range and then I thought, well, we know about Ramsay. People have written about Ramsay; there have been shows about his work. What about what they’re wearing? Because when you look at a portrait, you want to touch the fabrics that they’re wearing. The dresses are so glamorous and they’re so glossy and beautiful. I actually was in America at the time, working away, and I called Sally and said, Sally, what do you think about doing an exhibition that looks at the fashion and the fashion trade of that period in Edinburgh? Because I wanted to focus on the city of Edinburgh.

[JB]
Sally’s here. What did you say?

[ST]
Oh, do it, do it! Straightaway!

[JB]
Why? What’s your thinking behind it? Why is fashion so important?

[ST]
Fashion speaks to pretty much every level of society, I think. You start at the top with government and politics and trade, and that dictates what materials you get and where it comes from and how it can be used. You go down the social scales and you’ve got to dress according to your status – and then you’ve got individuality and personality. So, it goes all the way through, and I think there’s so many different layers you can do to it.

[ALA]
Yeah. And when we were talking actually, Sally said, oh, don’t you have a wonderful dress at Newhailes? And I suddenly realised, yes, and it’s exactly the same period as the Ramsays that I’d found in the collection. We had women from 1739 to 1769, that mid-18th-century period that Ramsay painted, in the NTS collection; and we have this dress at Newhailes which is dated from the 1760s. I thought, it’s too good to be true!

The other part that’s so important for me as the curator of all these properties is to bring them together under an umbrella, so people can see how they’re related. Because a lot of the people, especially in the Edinburgh properties and the people who owned them, they knew each other. The Georgian House here, which wasn’t built at the time that Ramsay was painting, but the idea for the New Town was fermenting at the time that he was living in what is now called the Old Town. But the dress that’s owned is at Newhailes, and he painted the people who lived at Newhailes.

[JB]
Well, the dress is in the corner of this room.

[ALA]
It’s a bit glamorous, isn’t it?

[JB]
It is magnificent! Sally, can you describe the dress for us?

[ST]
So, what we have, as Antonia said, it’s from the 1760s. It’s a sack back gown. It’s called a sack back – that’s that huge swathe of fabric that you can see coming from the shoulders, going all the way down to the hem, trailing behind her. It’s an open gown, which means you’ve got a matching petticoat underneath.

[JB]
What’s it made of?

[ST]
It’s a beautiful cream silk, brocaded and possibly damask, looking at the sheen that you’re getting off the different kind of flowered patterns here. So, an expensive dress; highly, highly expensive. It’s got beautiful detailing with these rococo scrolls coming down the side of the gown and the robings, and then a matching stomacher, which is very rare to have those 3 components together: the gown, the petticoat and the stomacher.

[ALA]
The stomacher …

[ST]
Are you going to tell me it’s not the original one now?!

[ALA]
No, no! It’s completely original. It’s just a brand new thing for me. I’m not a textile expert, so when I first saw this – and it’s basically just a simple piece of fabric, like a V shape that covers your bust – and I was thinking, how on earth do you keep that on?

Well, when we did some filming for the exhibition, one of the volunteers, Emma, she makes her own 18th-century dresses, and she has not a corset, but a stay. The stay is underneath, which are boned, and she literally pins the stomacher into the stays. I was thinking, is that how they used to do that every single day, be pinned into their dress?

[JB]
Every day’s a school day, even for you! Tell me, we don’t know who exactly owned that dress, but what would it have said about the wearer because this is what this exhibition is all about? It’s how your clothes spoke for you.

[ST]
This would have been an elite woman. This is an expensive gown in terms of fabric. And in the 18th century, you are literally wearing your wealth – you’re displaying how much you own. In a dress like this, because it’s got quite wide skirts, she would have had a hoop underneath it. You’re displaying more fabric – it’s not essential, it’s not doing anything, it’s just display. So, she would have been an elite lady.

Chances are she might have been involved in the salons that were going on around Edinburgh at the time. As a woman, it was unlikely she would have been going to the taverns or anything like that, but who knows what women get up to behind closed doors? But she would have been taking part in assemblies, hosting dinners – the elite lifestyle that you would imagine an 18th-century woman to be doing.

[JB]
Did the Georgians do anything differently as far as fashion was concerned?

[ST]
I think the main difference is, by the time you get to the Georgian period, people are starting to talk about fashion as perhaps we would define it today. Throughout history you’ve always got people changing styles and you’ve got evolutions in shapes and what people are wearing. But by the 18th century, you’re starting to see people talk about it as more of a seasonal thing. You’re getting people talking about what they’re wearing for summer dresses, winter dresses …

[JB]
It’s almost like the beginning of a fast fashion, but very much slower than our fast fashion!

[ST]
Very much slower. Very much more bespoke. Women of this status would have had different clothes for different times of year. You would have a different dress for morning vs evening wear, and it’s that kind of language that’s starting to creep in. I think that’s probably the biggest difference compared to earlier periods.

[JB]
So, that’s the dress of the time and why it was so important. But obviously we’re here to talk about Ramsay as well. Antonia, tell me about Allan Ramsay’s early years and when this incredible talent came to the fore.

[ALA]
Yes, well, he was born, as you’d said at the beginning, in 1713, which is a really interesting period, just when the Act of Union 1707 came together. You’ve got a Hanoverian monarch on the throne the very next year. And so, there’s this new ferment in Edinburgh, this keenness for a lot of people to make Scotland part of the union and a happy, prosperous, positive place. So, he’s born into that.

And he goes to the High School – he’s sent to the best school in Scotland, which is off the High Street in Edinburgh, when he’s 13. And then he goes to study art in Edinburgh and London, and he goes to Rome. He’s sent off and given money. His father’s the one who writes to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh saying ‘I want my son to go; he’s a genius, he needs to go and paint in Rome’.

And also, the other thing that his father does, in 1729, which is only when Ramsay’s 16, is he makes Ramsay one of the founding members of Scotland’s first art school: St Luke’s, which is on the High Street of Edinburgh. So, Ramsay’s automatically in the art circles of Edinburgh as they are literally beginning and becoming international. The art school was designed to be this international place of study, not just for Scotland but to reach out over into the continent.

Then by the time he was 20, he’s studying at St Martin’s Lane Academy, which is the big London art school, and he’s already settled in London. He’s painting some of the socialites in Edinburgh. He paints Lady Katherine Hall, who’s a friend of the family. He paints her looking like Diana, goddess of the hunt. As he grew, he became steadfastly known as a very intelligent person, so he was just as erudite as he was artistic.

[JB]
And he trained a lot in Europe, and that was to be very important when he came back to Britain and to Scotland.

[ALA]
Absolutely. He travelled through France with Alexander Cunningham, who was a friend, and went through Paris and then down to Antibes and Cannes, and then went to Rome and studied in Rome under some of the biggest names at the time – that would infuse him with a new way of painting. When he was born, it was Dutch painting that was really popular in Scotland and that was where the tradition really was fostered. When he was in Rome, he studied at the Académie Française and really started to pick up on the new trends in French painting, and that’s what you see in his art, I think.

[JB]
So, we had a young man of undoubtedly great talent, but when you were telling me about his early life, you mentioned his father a lot. And that is because I understand that his father was absolutely pivotal. He had an immense impact on Ramsay’s life and his career. Tell me about Allan Ramsay, senior.

[ALA]
It’s quite funny because this is an exhibition about Allan Ramsay the painter, but I’m completely obsessed by his father! I think what’s really interesting about the senior, about the father, is that he was 15 when he was apprenticed as a wig maker.

[JB]
So, he had comparatively humble beginnings then?

[ALA]
Well, his dad was Superintendent of Lord Hopetoun’s lead mines in Lanarkshire, so they had a decent life; they weren’t poor.

[JB]
They were far from the circles in which Ramsay eventually moved in.

[ALA]
That’s right. When he came to Edinburgh, he was an apprentice and he was working his way up. But what I love is that this is an exhibition about fashion, and the wig was such a fundamental part of men’s fashion. Would you agree women weren’t wearing wigs particularly, at the time?

[ST]
Not at this time, but like you say it’s all about the head, isn’t it? And the close attention to details. So, he would have grown up in a household where his father was paying close attention to what people’s heads look like, crafting these things. I think that might have helped him get his eye in.

[ALA]
I agree, but the other thing is the charm and the ability …

[JB]
I said he was charismatic. How charismatic?

[ALA]
I think Allan Ramsay senior was supremely charming. And the reason why I think this is because there’s quite a lot of anecdotal evidence, written down by Victorian writers and people before, that Allan Ramsay senior’s shop … So, once he’d finished his apprenticeship, he opened a shop and it was on the sunny side of the street opposite the Tron Kirk, and people came down every week. You had to get your wig cleaned and de-loused because lice is a problem. And there seems to be stories about every week the daughters of the men who needed their wigs done were free and available to walk down the High Street, to go and hang out at Allan Ramsay senior’s wig shop, to chat to the man because he was so charming.

The other thing that happened was because every week you had to have this done, he developed this network of Lords and Dukes and merchants and lawyers and advocates, all who are coming to his shop. He’s talking to them, but he’s also writing poems. He’s a very observant man. I think the observation, the chat and countenance and the wit then folds over to his son, who’s realising that if you’re charming, if you’re good at reading people, that you can build up this loyal network.

What Allan Ramsay senior does is he writes these little pamphlets and sells them for a penny. He’s writing little poems and he’s sending them down to London, and he’s painting a picture of Scotland and Edinburgh as this really positive, charming place, full of really interesting people. He’s amazing!

[JB]
He’s clearly aspirational for himself, but also aspirational for his son.

[ALA]
His son’s watching all of this and learning. Absolutely.

[JB]
Sally, to begin to talk about the portraiture, how important was how you looked in a portrait within this high society?

[ST]
Bottom line is, you want to look good, don’t you? If you’re going to have this thing sitting on your wall for the rest of your life and hopefully your descendants’ lives as well, you want to make an impression. You want to look refined, polite, elegant and fashionable.

[JB]
You also wanted it to tell a story of your life and your status. Now, we are surrounded by some of Ramsay’s finest paintings. Could you choose a painting from the wall? It’s always difficult in audio, but I’m sure you’re more equipped than most to tell us and talk about the fashion within one of those paintings and what it’s saying.

[ST]
It’s very hard because they’re all beautiful. Actually, in the room that we’re sitting in, you can see Ramsay’s early work. He’s gone through the trend of having plain white silk gowns with the blue wrap, but there’s one in particular, which is …

[ALA]
Janet Dalrymple, painted in 1749 for her wedding.

[ST]
This is a beautiful double portrait, with another portrait of her husband done by a different artist. But she is wearing a gorgeous plain, silvery-white silk gown. Plain white silk would have been very hard to paint like this; you can get lots of shadows. It’s decorated with jewels at the sleeves to bring the arms up. And you can see a very fine linen shift underneath. In this era, if you’ve got clean white linen worn next to the skin, that’s a sign of status. It means you’ve either got a lot of linen, so you can change it when it gets dirty, or you’ve got somebody to wash it for you. Both are very high-status things. Linen shifts like the one you can see on her arm are very important because they keep the outer garments clean. You want to have lots of clean white linen available. So automatically, even just a plain thing like that, says ‘status’.

And then you’ve got the jewels that she’s wearing on her wrist. She’s got pearls looped around her bodice with a lovely blue ribbon. And for modesty, she’s got what is probably called a neckerchief or a fichu – it just covers her shoulders and her chest. It looks like it’s beautiful plain muslin with a lace border at the edges. These are all highly expensive materials, all coming together, that speak to elegance and expense and wealth, but it’s also slightly understated.

[JB]
Understated!

[ST]
Compared to some things that you could see. If you compare it to the gown that’s in this room as well, which is highly decorative – lots of woven patterns throughout, different coloured threads and silks – it is a bit more understated.

[ALA]
Would you say, though, that that dress is 100 years old compared to when it was painted? 1749 when it was painted, but actually it’s not fashionable anymore. It’s not worn on the street, so it’s a dress for portraiture.

[JB]
It’s a throwback.

[ST]
Yes, you get this trend for historicism. People would bring in elements of an earlier period and sometimes it is part of fashion. You do sometimes see people wearing things that are like this.

[JB]
Retro, almost as we would wear retro today.

[ST]
Exactly. When it comes to portraiture, it’s a bit more complicated because there are so many reasons why you might get a portrait painted. It’s sometimes thought that the bringing in of historical elements make you look more timeless; you don’t age as quickly. If you’re wearing the most up-to-date fashion in your portrait, and in the next five years it looks completely different, people are going to be able to age you by looking at that portrait. So, it’s thought that they bring in this ‘hearken back to a different time’ to make you look more timeless.

There’s elements here of 1640s dress, the Van Dyck era, Charles I, in the shape of her bodice and with the way that she’s got the fichu draped around her neck. It’s not quite 1740s fashion as you would see her, like Antonia says, walking down the High Street. She probably wouldn’t have worn that walking down the Canongate.

[ALA]
And I’m always curious about her jewels as well. She’s actually holding up her bracelet as though she’s indicating that it’s incredibly important. I assumed, and again this is an assumption, that it’s a gift from her husband; it’s a wedding gift and a nod to the contemporary fashion.

What I enjoy looking at is that blend of the historical costume to make you timeless and the contemporary moment to make you feel like a real person who’s in life, so that you fit in that portraiture tradition but you also are an active member of society.

[ST]
And the fact that it’s placed opposite the one of her husband. They’re speaking to each other, with varying degrees of success, I think.

[JB]
Yes, well, because we’re going to take a break, we’re going to end this half on a bit of a bombshell because when I was reading your notes, [ALA: oh no!] I get to the bit that says: Ramsay didn’t paint the clothes; he had something called a drapery painter. Cheating. Cheating scandal?

[ALA]
He wasn’t cheating!

[JB]
Go on, tell me about drapery painters.

[ALA]
It was the tradition at the time. I think what’s really fascinating when you study history is you have to try not to put our contemporary perceptions of what is good and bad, right and wrong onto the past. It was really, really normal for a drapery painter and a portrait painter to work together. And in this case, one of the most famous drapery painters was based in London. He was Flemish, and he and his brothers came over in the 1720s and he died in 1749. He died fairly early on in Ramsay’s career, but from the very beginning we have several paintings in the exhibition, including the full portrait of Agnes in her pink dress. We know that he used Joseph Van Aken, who was this Flemish drapery painter.

[JB]
OK, so how did this work? I would come along to have my portrait painted. Would I know in advance the sort of pretend clothes that I would like? I would like to be a shepherdess. Or was that discussed later? How did it work?

[ALA]
I don’t precisely know when it was discussed, but it was certainly discussed – and it could have been actually after the face was painted and after the hands were painted.

[JB]
So, Ramsay basically did the head – and I still think it’s a bit of a cheat!

[ALA]
It feels that way – but it wasn’t perceived that way. I think what’s interesting though is that there aren’t two signatures on the portrait, right? There’s just Allan Ramsay. So, you’re buying a portrait from Allan Ramsay and you’re getting two artists for your money, so to speak.

[JB]
Because the drapery painters were much in demand.

[ALA]
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, the artists were fighting over Van Aken. They were trying to get him to work exclusively for them because his skills were absolutely beyond reproach. It was because he was mimicking the Van Dyck tradition, which was so popular because he painted all the monarchs. If you could be painted into that tradition, then you had made it in society, which is partly why the dress mimics that as well. It’s that stitching you into the tradition of portraiture. But yes, they were fighting over him. They would send the canvas down by carriage down to London, probably with sketches and details of what the sitter wanted. As you said, shepherdess dress or a Van Dyck collar or something, and then he would do the rest and then send it back. Now, there are some notes of some women saying no, I’ve decided I’ve changed my mind. I would like to be painted in something different.

[JB]
I’d like to be a high woman!

[ALA]
I think what’s remarkable about it is that actually the sitter did have – it sounds like it shouldn’t be remarkable – but actually the sitter had quite a lot of say in how they were portrayed.

[JB]
Alright, well, I’m still stunned. While we all recover from that extraordinary admission, let’s take a quick break and we’ll be back soon.

[MV2]
Impressive. For a moment I thought she was talking about me. I meant Falkland Palace, she said with a smile. Of course she did. The art, the architecture; Scotland’s history can really turn your head, so we signed up to take care of it. Keep it looking dapper.

[MV]
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk

[JB]
Welcome back to the Georgian House in Edinburgh where we’re discussing the career of the painter Allan Ramsay. Now, Antonia, Allan Ramsay, as we’ve discussed, learning how to charm a network from mainly watching his father. This was the Enlightenment. Lots of men of great thinking and power around here, but also lots of women who are under-represented perhaps in history, but who were influential in their way … and Ramsay knew this. He caught on to this.

[ALA]
Yes, absolutely. And a lot of the paintings that he does of women actually portray this element of power that they had and self-authority. That interestingly came from when Ramsay was a child. His father was writing about women of the city and writing poems about women of the city. One of the things his father did was write about the ladies who organised polite society in Edinburgh. They were the ones who organised the dances in the Assembly Rooms, and their drawing rooms were places of conversation. That’s where people went in the evening to play cards, to play chess, to talk, to debate philosophy and history.

And so, one of the things that I think infused the boy at the time was that for women, part of their charm and part of their power (if you want to use that) was in their fashion, but also in their independent minds. If you look at his work, the clothing is as important as the eye that looks at you out from the face that he’s painting. The women have a presence in the portraits.

Back in 1723, his father wrote a poem about the women who organised the assembly balls, which were actually decried by the church leaders at the time as immoral. But the poem waxes lyrical …

[JB]
Because there was a power struggle going on there, from this more secularised society and the Church fearing that it was losing some of its dominance.

[ALA]
That’s right. And drink and women being out and dancing of all things was just appalling. I think Ramsay and Allan Ramsay senior, and then his son and their friends and the cohort they were with, they believe that women actually through entertainment, through good intellectual conversation, could raise the society to be very progressive, and through a politeness – which is quite a lovely concept really. But I think through this, there was a concept that women were at the heart of the project to make Edinburgh the best city in the world.

[JB]
Which is something that, as I said in my question, you never really get a flavour of whenever we talk of the Enlightenment and when we talk of what was happening in Edinburgh. Sally, I’m very much aware that we’re talking about those and such as those. What would we have been wearing in those days?

[ST]
I’d like to say anything that you like, but it might have been a bit more tricky than that. There would have been many layers to Edinburgh society in the 18th century, and the people Ramsay were painting were at the top. You’ve got the landed gentry, but you’ve also got the merchants, the successful lawyers, medics, professional classes are starting to make their impact on society. When you get down to the bottom, you’re going to have essentially the same type of garments, so everybody’s wearing a gown or a petticoat. Men would be wearing breeches and jackets, but the difference is going to be in quality and quantity.

I mentioned having lots of linen to change earlier. Somebody, for example, in the Orphans’ Hospital, which was opened in the 1730s, they were only given two shirts to have in their wardrobe. Somebody that Allan Ramsay was painting was more likely to have anything from 20 to 60 shirts that you can just change constantly and wash and rotate. There’s expectations: everybody’s expected to dress in a certain way according to your status. And so, fashion is really helpful for that, but equally it can be subverted.

There’s lots of concern about people dressing above their station. You see lots of comments, particularly in London society but it creeps into Edinburgh as well, about servants dressing too finely, wearing outfits that may have been cast down by their mistresses and then looking too fashionable. And then people can’t tell what status you are if you’re dressing above your station. In some cases, you get a lot of concern to try and control that, and you start to see the rise of institutionalised clothing. The orphan hospital is one example: they were given certain amounts of linen and woollen cloth. The woollen cloth was described as cinnamon-coloured. And the idea was that the trustees said that this was so that the orphans all look the same, so there was no distinction. On one level, that’s nice; it’s like school uniforms today. Everybody should wear the same thing, so nobody stands out. On the other hand, whenever the orphans left the orphanage, they would have stood out like sore thumbs when they went into the rest of society.

This was made even worse by the fact they had to wear a little red O stitched to their lapel to mark them out even further as orphans. And obviously, what I think is really interesting about clothing is that you get the resistance and the rebellion through it. In the minutes of the orphan hospital, these young boys were ripping the O off because they wanted to try and blend in a bit more and disappear.

The beauty of Edinburgh is that they are all so jam-packed together, everybody would have seen everybody else. There would have been lots of emulation in some level, like you mentioned aspiration before – it would have been some sense of, oh that looks nice, I want a bit of that, I want some lace, I want some ribbon. And the lower down you get, the more important accessories become. You may not be able to go and buy a whole gown, but you can go and buy ribbons. So, you can attach a ribbon to your lapel, or you can add a little neckerchief that’s brightly coloured and adds a bit of sparkle. Accessories become really important to make it a more fashionable garment.

[JB]
Where were people getting their clothes here?

[ST]
All along the High Street, up and down, you have down the closes all the ranges of shops. Antonia can speak to this much better than I can. The luckenbooths outside St Giles’ Cathedral.

[JB]
The luckenbooths?

[ST]
Luckenbooths – small little shops. Booths.

[ALA]
Yeah, the north side of St Giles’, along the High Street.

[JB]
That’s on the Royal Mile, for people who don’t know Edinburgh – the crammed, crammed Old Town. The New Town was in the planning; it hadn’t yet been executed.

[ALA]
In fact, we’ve got the portrait of a young girl painted in 1739 who marries Gilbert Elliot of Minto, and he’s the one who pushes the plans for the New Town. So, that’s where we’re at. We haven’t even broken ground on the New Town yet.

[ST]
Still the Norloch.

[JB]
So, if I wanted a fabulous new frock, where would I go and how would I do it?

[ST]
It’s not like today; ready-made isn’t really a thing. For people of this status, it’s about bespoke and getting things made for you. But you would have had to do a little bit of effort, because the cloth and the dress wouldn’t necessarily be from the same shop or the same place. You’d have to go and choose your fabric, collect the fabric, take it to your mantua maker if you’re a lady or your tailor if you’re a gentleman. They would make it up. When you look at the accounts, what I think is always quite striking is that it’s the cloth that’s the most expensive thing.

Labour is very cheap. When you look at some of these beautiful gowns, they’re beautifully made, but there’s also lots of cheats in them. When you look at them underneath, the seams are often very loosely done, and that’s because the textile is the most expensive thing, so if you stitch things too carefully you can’t unpick it and reuse it.

[ALA]
I was just going to ask you, so for me, the most fascinating thing I’ve learned is about how a dress is used for a long period of time, and unstitched if you put on a bit of weight or you get pregnant or if you hand it down to a daughter or put it in a will. I realise there must be some areas of a dress that are stitched a lot tighter than other areas. The back, for instance – the back stitch is literally called a back stitch. I’m learning this as I go along. It’s pretty tight, but other areas are designed to be unpicked so that you can change the dress.

[ST]
And that’s the beauty of something like the sack back, which is the dress you’ve got in the exhibition, because there’s so much fabric at the back. As you move through the 18th century, what you start to see is that fabric gets pinned down to the back, so that you see more of the shape of the back. And that’s called a robe à l’anglaise as opposed to the robe à la française, which is the sack back as well, because there’s lots of toing and froing about who is the most fashionable, whether it’s England or France – lots and lots of debate.

Rather than cutting it to make the dress more fitted at the back, they would literally – if you had a nice sack back that you wanted to repurpose – you would just pin it down very carefully. So that should sack backs ever come back, you can just unpin it again and you’d have all the fabric, and you haven’t lost anything.

[JB]
How clever. You mentioned there was a sort of rivalry between France and England post the Union of the Parliaments. Where did Edinburgh sit in that league table of being fashionable? Did the ladies have to go to London for the very, very best, or was there enough in the High Street as you’ve described? Or were they looking to London for the trends?

[ST]
It’s a bit of all of it, I think. London is seen as where the most up-to-date things are. London is where court is. Court is often considered the place where you’re going to see the most fashionable people. They might not be court-dressed because that often became quite archaic and fossilised, but London being the big centre for silk weaving in particular, so Spitalfield silk, all that lovely expensive cloth.

London was seen as somewhere to look to, but not necessarily the only place to look to. And what you find is that mantua makers in Edinburgh, even further north … ‘mantua’ was a term they used for the gown. Mantua was a style of gown from the late 17th century that became very popular. It started off, as most fashions do, as informal wear – basically a length of cloth that went from your feet, chucked over the shoulder and stitched down the middle. Ladies would wear it to relax in. But it became more formalised and became court wear. And then mantua makers became the first real area where women could make clothes for women. Before that, all the clothes were made by men.

[ALA]
That’s right. You see adverts in Edinburgh at this period, and you have tailors and you have mantua makers. The men went to the tailors and the women went to the mantua makers.

[JB]
Let’s get back to Ramsay. Let’s not forget that he was in Edinburgh during a huge moment in history: the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745–1746. He painted Bonnie Prince Charlie.

[ALA]
Yeah, so there’s a bit of a story. It again goes back to his father …

[JB]
You are obsessed!

[ALA]
I’m obsessed with his father! But the reason it does is because his father bought a piece of land in the 1730s just under the Castle Hill or just on Castle Hill, below Edinburgh Castle. And they built a house there which became known affectionately as Goose Pie, because it looked like literally an octagonal pie that people would buy at the time. But the reason it’s important is because that’s where Ramsay painted when he was in Edinburgh. He had a studio there, and lots of beauties would come to his studio.

In 1745, when the Jacobites were trying to take Edinburgh back, the Hanoverian garrison was in Edinburgh, firing cannons over the top of his house while he was in the house, firing them at marauding crowds who were trying to break into the castle. At that same point, Bonnie Prince Charlie is down at Holyroodhouse at the bottom of the High Street. He wants to get his portrait painted and out in an engraving as fast as possible to promote the idea that he is the rightful heir to the throne – to the British throne as well as the Scottish.

And so, Ramsay goes down to paint him, and then immediately an engraving is ordered in order to create propaganda, to fly out across the land. And that happens, but obviously James doesn’t get the throne in the end. Bonnie Prince Charlie doesn’t end up getting the throne for his dad. And so that all doesn’t happen. But Ramsay’s right there in the middle of it, as the cannons are bashing into the tenements beyond him. And actually, his house is ransacked by the troops as well, but he doesn’t get hurt or anything. I think that family is very typical of families at the time who sort of hedged their bets.

[JB]
Yes, I was going to ask, was it a measure of his charisma and networking ability to be all things to all men that Ramsay then went on to paint the Georgian royal family?

[ALA]
Exactly. So, they were staunch supporters of the Hanoverian king, but they also supported the Stuarts. And so, when he was in Rome, famously he went to the Masonic Lodge, which was supportive of the Jacobites and actually didn’t pick a side, which was very wise, I think. And also, he’s a very acute businessman.

[JB]
Didn’t that all come back to his father? I said it before you did!

[ALA]
Actually, yeah, it did.

[JB]
Well, let’s talk about another influential man, because from your notes, I loved the line ‘the most handsomest leg in Britain’. Tell us about that!

[ALA]
That wasn’t Allan Ramsay’s father actually who had the handsomest leg; that’s Lord Bute, who was connected to a few people in the exhibition, actually. Katherine Muir, who’s our poster woman – she’s on the marketing materials for the exhibition – she’s a painting next door that Ramsay painted in 1769. Her husband worked for Lord Bute; he was a manager of his estates. Lord Bute became the Prime Minister for George III and introduced Ramsay to the king, and the king actually ordered Ramsay to do a painting of Lord Bute. So, there was this reversal. Lord Bute, who had ‘the handsomest leg in Britain’ – you can see that’s …

[JB]
His own byline, wasn’t it? He was very proud of that.

[ALA]
He was very proud. And actually, if you look at the painting, it’s very interesting. You could talk about what he’s wearing, but there’s an engraving at the Georgian House that you can see. He’s got this … is it a frock coat that comes down to your knees? And his leg is just very tantalisingly poking out in a very daring way with his stocking. It’s like he’s showing off!

[ST]
Gracefully arched. Some people used to put padding in their stockings to get a nice shapely calf in the 18th century, so I think that’s why he’s possibly so proud of this.

[JB]
I’ve heard of padding in clothes, but never in your calf.

[ST]
Maybe that’s why he was so proud, because he had all natural calf muscle!

[ALA]
OK, I didn’t realise that. That’s interesting.

[ST]
To do with the virility of man, isn’t it? The muscles, the hunter gatherer …

[ALA]
I’m not sure Lord Bute was a hunter gatherer, but yeah.

[JB]
But the thing is, Ramsay went on to become the painter for the Georgian royal family.

[ALA]
Yeah, yeah, he did. And he ended up setting up a studio down in London which almost exclusively for years just painted the royal family.

[JB]
So did he abandon Edinburgh then?

[ALA]
No, no, no, he would come back. He leased out Castle Hill, the Goose Pie house, for a number of years, but he used it again and he painted. I remember there’s a memory, the son of Katherine Muir, who’s one of the portrait paintings here, he remembered David Hume coming to the house wearing a French …

[JB]
This is the philosopher David Hume, who was a mate.

[ALA
That’s it – Ramsay and he were friends. David Hume hung out at Katherine Muir’s house in Abbeyhill, near Holyroodhouse. And when Katherine Muir’s son was five or six, he remembered David Hume coming from France and coming to the house to play cards or whatever, wearing a bright yellow coat with black spots. And I’m just thinking, I’m trying to picture that in my head – but that really rich, brightly coloured fabric was certainly not domestic. It certainly came … well, was it actually? This is something for you. Was it dyed in Britain? If the raw silk came here from …

[ST]
Yeah, then probably it would have been dyed. It would have been dyed here, close to home. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t imported. It wasn’t all imported as a woven fabric as well. There are so many steps in textile production; it could be at any point.

[JB]
Well, I’ll say at this junction that we’ve purposely not begun to even talk about male fashion. Perhaps that’s for another podcast? But I think they get enough time, so let’s go back to Ramsay’s career. He is painter to the king, a fantastic career. However, he stops painting, perhaps earlier than he was intending to.

[ALA]
Yeah, it’s quite sad. It was in 1773 and he had an accident.

[JB]
What age would he have been?

[ALA]
He would have been 60. What happened was there was a fire nearby in the neighbourhood where they were living in London, and they went up into the roof, onto the top of the roof – pushed a ladder into the loft to go and see the fire. They stood up there looking at the fire, and he turned to come down and he missed the step and he fell. He broke his arm, and from that point on didn’t really paint. And so, what he focused on, because he was a writer as well, he wrote quite good – what would you call them? – treaties, pamphlets on taste. He wrote quite a lot.

[JB]
‘A dialogue on taste’. Do we know how the abrupt end of his painting career affected him? Is there anything written?

[ALA]
I don’t know. Personally, I haven’t read anything, but I do know that he transitioned fairly well into writing and travelled again into Europe. He’s travelling, he’s going to Italy, he’s writing, he’s spending time with friends and his daughters were living abroad. I think in 1784 he discovered that they were going back to England, and he wanted to see them. He hadn’t seen them for a while. He wasn’t very well and he was in Italy and he travelled, if you can imagine, by carriage through Italy, through France, getting to Calais. He’s with his son and he’s not very well at all; he’s pretty much dying by the time he gets to Calais. He gets over the water, arrives at Dover and he dies in his son’s arms in Dover.

But he’s had an incredibly illustrious career, and I think the end of his life – I imagine, and this is just an imagination – that after having literally a factory producing portraits for the royal family, he’d be ready to maybe do something different. I think that he got into a formulaic way of painting that might have become a little bit boring, but that’s just a subjective opinion based on no evidential fact.

[JB]
But he had the writing to fall back on. Sally, we seem to be fascinated by the Georgian period – so many television programmes, so many movies. Is the fact that it looks so good aesthetically part of the attraction?

[ST]
Oh, I think so, wouldn’t you? There’s something about the appeal of it. I think there’s something about the 18th century that is about the quest for knowledge, the quest for understanding; and you see that seeping through society.

If we’re bringing the women back into the conversation, the tea table – having tea was that perfect way of starting those conversations in a female environment rather than a male one. But you’re using tea which is obviously coming from China or from India. You’re getting sugar from the West Indies. So, it speaks to colony, it speaks to empire. There’s a lovely frivolous side, but then there’s also a darker undercurrent.

I think as humans, society in general, we can always relate to that, can’t we? That there’s a lovely bright thing going on and a lovely ball, and all that kind of stuff. But then there is also this darker side, where all this stuff is coming from and how we’re getting it and how we’re using it; how much Scots are benefitting from empire, from colonialism. That is literally being worn in the drawing rooms and being eaten and drinking at the tea tables and everything as well. I think that’s just a fascination with what you see on the surface isn’t quite always what is going on underneath.

[JB]
It looks like just a portrait, but it has many, many layers and many, many stories to tell. And the subjects in this exhibition certainly do that. They look great. And if you’d like to come to the Georgian House before the exhibition ends in late November 24, you can see them for yourselves and enjoy the house and its contents as well.

Antonia and Sally, thank you so much for transporting us to that golden age … well, for those who could afford it. And that’s all from this edition of Love Scotland. I’ll be back with another very soon. Until then, goodbye.

And if you’d like to hear about the life of another great Scottish artist, search out our Love Scotland podcast on Sir Henry Raeburn.

[VC]
What I think happens with Raeburn is that he corners the Scottish market, because if you live up in the Highlands you have to perhaps come to Edinburgh on your way somewhere else. And that happens quite a lot, that people sit to Raeburn from the Highlands when they’re in Edinburgh on their way south.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.