January-February 2023

History Scotland

The world's premier Scottish history magazine

History Scotland2 min read
Patrons
David Breeze Christopher Smout Historiographer Royal Elizabeth Ewan University of Guelph Richard Oram University of Stirling Murray Pittock University of Glasgow EDITORIAL BOARD FIND OUT MORE AT: HTTP://SCOT.SH/HIS-BOARD Mr Derek Alexander Archaeol
History Scotland1 min read
From The Editor
Welcome to the first History Scotland of 2023, as we enter our 22nd year as a magazine. What a year 2022 has been, full of ups and downs for most of us. But it’s gratifying to know that no matter what might be going on in the world, people’s passion
History Scotland1 min read
Meet The Contributors
Stana Nenadic is professor of social and cultural history at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of 'Craftworkers in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: Making and Adapting in an Industrial Age'. Her current project is titled ‘The Business of Art
History Scotland1 min read
Bird’s Eye Map Captures A City ‘On The Cusp Of Greatness’
T homasSulman’s 1864 bird’s eye view map of Glasgow forms the basis of the project, allowing website visitors to explore the city at the height of the industrial revolution. A bespoke animation has been created by SUUM design studio that tells the st
History Scotland8 min read
‘A Berwickshire Policeman, Frozen To Death’
In September 2014, the author visited the Scottish Borders Archive at Hawick. Whilst engrossed in reading a dusty ledger, he was approached by a couple and learnt that they were related to a police officer who had died on duty. They had travelled fro
History Scotland1 min read
Launch Of Campaign To Save Glasgow ’s Egyptian Halls
The Egyptian Halls is an A-listed building in the heart of Glasgow, designed by the prominent Victorian architect Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson.Yet, despite its importance, it has lain largely empty for over 40 years. The Egyptian Halls was built for iro
History Scotland1 min readCrime & Violence
Dundee’s Historic Links With Slavery Acknowledged
Dundee’s historic links to slavery are being acknowledged with the publication of Breaking the Chains, a city centre walking trail and map exploring the various ways in which Dundee is connected to the history of slavery and anti-slavery, much of whi
History Scotland16 min read
Craftworkers In 19th-century Scotland: A ‘Golden Age’
As recent Crafts Council reports have shown, there is a massive UK market for craft, particularly amongst the under 35s, with jewellery the type of artefact most likely to be purchased. Knowing a ‘thing’ has been made by hand gives it greater intrins
History Scotland8 min read
‘Frightful Catastrophe In Dundee’: The Tragedy Of Springthorpe’s Music Hall
In the 19th century, the music hall was the preeminent form of popular entertainment in Britain. At its peak, it employed over 80,000 and entertained 25 million people a year. Springing from the back rooms of pubs in the 1830s and 1840s, by the 1870s
History Scotland3 min read
Spotlight On… Did Fish Diet Of Iron Age ‘Elder’ Mark Her As Special?
Being someone who lived in Orkney around 1,800 years ago, the above fact might not sound particularly strange. But it flies in the face of what we know about Iron Age Britain, where there is very little evidence for the exploitation of marine resourc
History Scotland13 min read
The Highl And War, Part 1
On 5 November 1688, a Dutch fleet lay anchored off the coast of the small Devonshire town of Torbay in England. The inhabitants would be the first witnesses to a sizeable army, at least 14,000-strong, landing on the shores of Britain. This army was l
History Scotland2 min read
Songs Of The Hebrides
Marjory Kennedy-Fraser was a music teacher, suffragette and significant player of the Celtic revival movement, promoting a resurgence of interest in so-called Celtic culture and arts in the early 1900s. Born in Perth on 1 October 1857 to David Kenned
History Scotland3 min read
Cl An Forbes Family History Project
The Clan Forbes family history project was run by the author Philip Stead, a postgraduate researcher on his final year of the genealogical studies programme within the Centre for Lifelong Learning at the University of Strathclyde, and partly funded b
History Scotland6 min read
Switching Sides
Amidst the complexities of dynastic opposition and civil war during the later Jacobite era, the loyalties and material commitment of individuals were often in flux and have not always been so simple for historians to cleanly define. Allegations of si
History Scotland13 min read
The Duke Of Lennox, 1574-1624
Why did a nine-year-old French boy who had never travelled arrive on Scotland’s shores in November 1583 and never return to live in France for the next 40 years? I have been haunted by this question for some time, and I have searched for an answer. T
History Scotland4 min read
Where Are The Women Of Scotl And’s Heritage Sites?
It is no secret that our streets and statues often celebrate history’s well known, white men – something of which I only realised the extent when I read Sara Sheridan’s Where are theWomen? When I started my postgraduate research, I was inspired to as
History Scotland6 min read
Catching Edinburgh’s stories at Museums & Galleries Edinburgh
Iam lucky enough to work with a fantastic and complex museum collection. My job is to make sense of the jumble resulting from centuries of collecting and incomplete historical records, and then attempt to collect the records with the objects. Through
History Scotland13 min read
St Ninian: Scotland’s Forgotten Patron Saint
On display in the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen is an elaborate altarpiece depicting the Scottish saint, Ninian of Whithorn. Before the Protestant Reformation, it had adorned the altar of St Ninian in St Olaf ’s Church, Helsingør. Elsinore
History Scotland3 min readCrime & Violence
The Porteous Riots
On the evening of 7 September 1736, a crowd began to gather in the western suburbs of Edinburgh. As the force progressed towards the city centre, it swelled in size, eventually reaching some 4,000-strong. Overpowering all the city guards, the mob qui
History Scotland10 min readCrime & Violence
Tr Ansported On The Seas, To ‘Be Yond Seas’
The author acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises their continuing connection to land, waters and communities. This writer also pays her respect to Aboriginals and Torres Strait cultures and Elders past
History Scotland11 min read
Book Reviews
No Language! No Nation!: The life and times of The Honourable Ruaraidh Erskine of Marr Gerard Cairns Rymour Books (July 2021) pp. 189 Paperback: £13.99 ISBN: 9781919628608 Considering the advance of Scottish nationalism over the last 20 years, it is
History Scotland2 min readForeign Language Studies
Did Your Ancestor Speak Or Write Gaelic?
In 2022, the Scottish census included a question that asked individuals to state whether they could understand, speak, read or write Scottish Gaelic or Scots, inviting people to tick all that applied – and thus giving future generations a picture of
History Scotland1 min read
History Scotland
Volume 23, Number 1 January/February 2023 www.historyscotland.com EDITORIAL Editor: Rachel Bellerby rachelb@warnersgroup.co.uk Tel: 0113 200 2922 Consultant Editor: Dr Allan Kennedy School of Humanities, University of Dundee, DD1 4HN editorial@histo
History Scotland3 min read
The Challenges Of Union
Ludovic Stuart, 2nd duke of Lennox, whose story is told on page 30 of this issue, was one of a generation of Scottish aristocrats whose lives were transformed by their king, James VI’s, accession to the English throne in 1603. James’s inheritance of
History Scotland3 min read
Final Word
Please could you introduce the Digital Archive of Scottish Gaelic? The Digital Archive of Scottish Gaelic (DASG), a British Academy recognised project, is an online storehouse of Gaelic texts, lexical resources and audio recordings for Scottish Gael

History Scotland

More Issues From History Scotland