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Darker Reflections II – Castlehill, Castlegate and Mounthooly

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Featured, Information No Responses »

Feb 042011

By Alex Mitchell.

In 2007 Aberdeen City Council decided to relocate the International Market to Union Terrace during its visit of 10-12th August. Prior to this, the Market has generally been placed in the Castlegate on Fridays and in the mid-section of Union Street on Saturdays and Sundays.

The relocation to Union Terrace was prompted by Police concerns about serious traffic management problems arising from the blocking-off of Union Street.
We had consistently argued that the Market should occupy the Castlegate throughout its 3-day visits. The Castlegate is Aberdeen’s historic market place; it had adjacent parking in the Timmer Market and East North Street car parks; it needed the visitors and their custom and it involved no disruption to traffic and bus-routes at all. Beyond all this, the Market had, at least on Fridays, given us a reason and incentive to visit the historic Castlegate, which affords the most spectacular views of Aberdeen’s best buildings and the mile-length of Union Street – views which can be seen from the Castlegate and nowhere else.

However: in the Press & Journal of 31 July ’07, Mr Tom Moore, ACC’s City Centre Manager, was quoted as follows: “None of the events at the Castlegate has been an absolute success … we’ve tried everything to encourage people to come, but they just won’t … some of the stalls do quite well, but others are just dead”.

This correspondent would have to admit, from personal observation, that neither the International Market on Fridays nor the German Market held in the Castlegate during the weeks preceding Christmas ’06 ever seemed to be doing much business; there was little of the buzz and vibrancy of the Market when located on Union Street, on Saturdays and Sundays. Part of the reason is that the Castlegate is perishing cold much of the year, because of the wind-chill factor blowing up Marischal Street from the Harbour. Even the stallholders, who were used to standing about in the cold, could not take it.

All this has serious implications as regards plans to regenerate the Castlegate.

The International Market is a genuinely popular event. If not even the Market can attract people into the Castlegate, then it is difficult to see what can or will.

To the extent that ‘regeneration’ is about planting the seeds of enterprise, investment and employment, the Castlegate seems almost like blighted or toxic land in which nothing thrives or succeeds, as it should.

The main problems are (a) that the Castlegate is a backwater, some way removed from the main centre of activity and not an obvious route way of choice to anywhere much; and (b) that for all its historic significance, people do not find the Castlegate an attractive or congenial place. Visitors are repelled by, from recent observation, blatant and overt drug-dealing; by deathly-pale junkies collapsing in the street in front of one; and by Aberdeen’s ever-shifting population of out-of-control drunks, winos and aggressive and obstructive beggars.

In point of fact, the Castlegate has been a concentration of social ills for a long time back, certainly from the mid-19th Century. The real centre of activity in Aberdeen was always at the junction of Broadgate and Castlegate and around the Mercat Cross (of 1686, but not the first), which was originally located in front of the Tolbooth. The Mercat Cross was relocated to its present position in 1842 and for a time served as the city’s Post Office. The gentry used to have their town houses in the Castlegate, mainly on the south (harbour) side, but the advent of Union Street from 1805 encouraged the better off to move westwards of Union Bridge.

A huge military Barracks was built on the Castle Hill in 1794 and was occupied by the Gordon Highlanders until the 1930s, after which it became a form of slum housing. The Castlegate’s proximity to both the Barracks and the seaport made it a concentration of drunkenness and prostitution.
It was for this reason that the Salvation Army located their Citadel there in 1896.

The Citadel has done much good work in its time, but it has in certain obvious respects served to reinforce the Castlegate’s magnetic attraction for down-and-outs of various kinds. The drugs rehab & treatment centre under construction in the Timmer Market car park may well have similar effects and will quite possibly kill the Castlegate stone dead.

A neighbourhood or locality, or indeed a town or city, has to be much more than just a cluster or agglomeration of buildings and streets. There has to be a base of economic activity, of business, trade and employment, otherwise it becomes merely a ghost town or, at best a heritage museum like Venice or, prospectively New Orleans. One might think also of the great medieval Flemish seaport of Bruges, through which all Scotland’s exports to Europe were channelled, until its river Zwin silted up around 1500, and the trade shifted over to Antwerp. Bruges remained trapped in a 15th Century time warp for the next 500 years, nicknamed Bruges-la-Morte.

few of us ever go there now; it has become another of Aberdeen’s shunned places

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, President Bush promised to rebuild New Orleans, presumably in the belief that city equals buildings, but the economic base of New Orleans faded away long ago, not least because of corrupt and incompetent civic administration, poor public services and rampant criminality.

Once legitimate business activity withdraws, everything else goes too, including the economically active part of the population – most of us have to live where we can earn a living. There are obvious lessons here as regards Aberdeen’s city centre. Policy needs to be more consciously directed towards economic regeneration, to creating a more favourable and attractive environment for business enterprise and investment, job-creation, the local resident population, visitors and shoppers, before it is all too late. Unfortunately our local power elite seems to have completely the wrong idea as to what this involves and requires.

On Tartan Day, your correspondent decided to go for a wander around Castlehill, mainly with a view to taking some photographs of the remnant of the wall that surrounded the Georgian military Barracks, which were demolished in the 1960s and replaced by the present tower blocks of council flats, Marischal Court and Virginia Court.

Castlehill is an immensely historic part of Aberdeen and affords spectacular views across the harbour and beach area, but few of us ever go there now; it has become another of Aberdeen’s shunned places. Castlehill is dominated by the giant tower blocks to the extent that non-residents feel we have no business being there, and are effectively excluded.

A great many people must live in the tower blocks, but on a bright, sunny Saturday afternoon, and with Tartan-related activities going on nearby in the Castlegate, there was hardly another soul to be seen anywhere on Castlehill. The effect is isolating and intimidating. A vicious circle is engendered, whereby mainstream citizens stay away, the locality is increasingly monopolised by anti-social elements and becomes even more of a no-go area, and so on.

It has been a real achievement, in a negative kind of way, to transform so many hitherto vibrant parts of Aberdeen into dead zones, apparently devoid of population or legitimate business activity and employment. Photographs of the Mounthooly area, taken as recently as the 1960s, show streets, granite-built tenements, shops, businesses and large numbers of people walking the streets and pavements.

thousands of Aberdonians must have worked there, but somehow it already seems to have been airbrushed from the collective memory

As with Castlehill, there are still lots of people living in the Mounthooly area, in huge tower blocks such as Seamount Court and Porthill Court, but there are hardly any local shops and businesses such as might provide local people with employment or a reason to go out and about.

In consequence, even on a bright, sunny weekday afternoon, there is hardly anyone to be seen anywhere.

The name ‘Porthill Court’ is the one official acknowledgement that the Port Hill, opposite Aberdeen College on the Gallowgate, was and remains the highest of the seven hills on or around which Aberdeen stands, so-named after the Gallowgate Port, which guarded the northern entrance to the Burgh. The huge Porthill Factory (linen, textiles) stood on this site for about 200 years, from about 1750 until its demolition in 1960, and thousands of Aberdonians must have worked there, but somehow it already seems to have been airbrushed from the collective memory.

Similarly Ogston & Tennant’s soap and candle factory; the former front office remains at No. 111 Gallowgate. These were local firms, employing local people, most of whom would have walked to work, going in past their local shops for their morning paper, fags and rowies on the way.

There is no point in romanticising what must have been fairly bleak and grim workplaces; but it must have been easier then for a young person to find their way into paid employment when the workplaces were just up the road, when you already knew people – friends, relations and neighbours – who worked there, equally when you and yours were weel-kent locally, than can be the case nowadays if you live halfway up a tower block in Castlehill or Mounthooly and the only jobs available are with firms nobody has ever heard of, located on industrial estates miles away in Altens or Westhill.

Contributed by Alex Mitchell.

The Proposed Triple Kirks Development

Aberdeen City, Articles, Featured, Information, Opinion No Responses »

Dec 102010

By Mike Shepherd.

It may not be well known to the people of Aberdeen, but a major city-centre development is in the pre-application public consultation phase. This is the proposed office block development for the largely-derelict Triple Kirks site opposite the art gallery. The plan put forward by Stewart Milne Developments shows a 7 storey series of glass boxes set in a steel plinth and is partly granite cladded.

The plan also envisages two storeys of car parking with entry from the Denburn dual carriageway. The spire of the original Triple Kirks is to be kept and is shown sandwiched between two of the glass blocks.

The public consultation consisted of two sessions which were held on the 3rd and 4th of December. There is also a website, where comments can be made by the public as part of the consultation.

http://commercialdevelopments.stewartmilne.com/PageProducer.aspx?Page=3362

There has been very little in the local press about the development. The Evening Express showed a copy of the plans, but surprisingly given the importance of the site, no details were given in the Press and Journal.

Alex Mitchell has provided me with a brief history of the building, which I quote here. “The Triple Kirks were built in 1843 following the Great Disruption in the Church of Scotland on the disputed issue of patronage – the right of the landed gentry to select ministers over the heads of congregations. About half the ministers and congregations in Aberdeen walked out and joined the Free Church of Scotland. New ‘Free’ churches’ were built, often next door or across the road from those of the Church of Scotland, for example the churches of Queens Cross and Holburn West. There was considerable rivalry on such issues as the height of steeples. The majority of Free Church congregations had rejoined the Church of Scotland by 1929, but a rump remains – the ‘Wee Frees’.

The Triple Kirks – three separate churches built around a common spire – might be regarded as a kind of cathedral of the Free Church in Aberdeen, and was certainly about the size of a (small) cathedral. Designed by Archibald Simpson, it shows some similarity to the Elisabethkirche in Marburg, brick-built churches being common in northern Europe.

Cost was a major consideration; and the bricks used are believed to have been recycled from the former Dee Village in Ferryhill on the site later occupied by the coal-fuelled electricity works, later the Hydro Board. Consequently these bricks were probably a couple of hundred years old even in 1843! The Triple Kirks tower and spire is of granite sheathed in brick.

John Betjeman wrote approvingly of the Triple Kirks, noting that the spire glows red in the setting sun. It is visible from a great many places in central Aberdeen and is a key component of the parade of turrets, towers & spires along Belmont Street and eastward, presenting the aspect of a medieval German or Mitteleuropan cathedral city.”

The churches had fallen into disuse by the mid 1980’s, and about that time the site was bought by Barratt the builders. Plans for an office block on the site were submitted to Aberdeen Council. I visited the Planning Department at the time to inspect them and was unimpressed. They showed a simple steel and glass office block typical of the time, a bit like a smaller version of St Nicholas House albeit with mirror glass. I was one of the few to object to the plans and the objections were upheld by the planning committee.

Barratts made a successful appeal on the decision to Sir George Younger, the Secretary of State for Scotland in Maggie Thatcher’s government. Sir George, did however, decree that the spire had to be kept. No time was wasted in demolishing the churches on the site (one or part of one remains as the Triple Kirks pub). However, no office block was ever built and the site has remained derelict for 25 years.

There is no doubt that something needs to be done with a part of the city that many see as a major eyesore. Nevertheless, not everybody is happy with the current proposal. It doesn’t look right; the scale of the office blocks is too large compared with the steeple and the building has a bloated rather bizarre appearance as a result. The blocks are too high compared to the skyline of the surrounding buildings. A five storey building would be more in keeping here. Additionally, the style of the building is unimaginative.

The nearby buildings, as Alex points out, have turrets and spires creating a gothic motif. It wouldn’t have taken too much flair to have designed a building with some concession to the prevailing style, but sadly this hasn’t happened. It is to be hoped that the planning committee will ask for some changes to be made to these plans to produce a building more sympathetic to its surroundings but I wouldn’t hold out too much hope of this.

Darker Reflections – Emptying Out The Inner City

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Featured, Information, Opinion No Responses »

Dec 032010

By Alex Mitchell.

Causewayend School was one of the many handsome and impressive Victorian granite Board schools created in Aberdeen for the fast-expanding city population of the later 19th Century. In fact, Causewayend was more handsome and impressive than most such schools, being designed by William Smith in 1875 and with a later Baronial-style keep by William Kelly.

But the school has now closed because of the declining number of children resident in its catchment area of Mounthooly-Gallowgate-West North Street. Not for the first time, we are struck by the sheer folly of the systematic removal of population and community from this (and other once-thriving and central neighbourhoods) through demolition of older tenement housing and its replacement – if at all – by tower-block flats, soon found to be unsuited to the needs of families.

The thing is that Mounthooly-Gallowgate ought to be what estate agents would describe as ‘a sought-after urban-village locality’; central, historic, characterful, surrounded by vistas of steeples, towers and spires and within walking distance of M&S. But its almost entirely public-sector housing provision – and that largely in the form of tower-block flats – effectively excludes would-be owner-occupiers, the ‘mortgage paying classes’, as well as those with families to raise.

The consequence is that the area contains relatively few middle-class families, but disproportionate numbers of poor and/or elderly people. Those blocks which are hard-to-let will also typically feature high concentrations of benefits claimants, the unemployed, single guys just out of the services or prison, alcoholics, drug addicts and the mentally ill.

A functioning community needs a more representative social mix than this; the better-off as well as the poor, high-achievers as well as under-achievers, people with scarce and marketable skills, professional expertise and entrepreneurial talent. The local schools, like the canaries in coal mines, give the early warnings that a community is in distress, being especially vulnerable to a downward spiral of local disadvantage, poor test and exam results, pupil withdrawal, declining enrolment and so on.

The current pre-occupation as regards housing provision is with the supply and availability of ‘affordable’, i.e., low-cost, housing. It may seem perverse to say so, but what Mounthooly-Gallowgate really needs is more high-cost housing, such as would attract the mortgage paying classes back to this locality. Housing costs in any neighbourhood tend to reflect the earning-power of local residents. In the U.S. context, you have to pay a high rent, or house price, to live in, say, Manhattan, because you are surrounded by high-earning people. (The characters in Friends couldn’t possibly afford to live there!) You would pay a lower rent or price to live in Brooklyn or Queens, because there you would be surrounded by lower-earning people.

Low-cost housing reflects the low earning power of local residents, their lack of marketable skills and expertise and/or entrepreneurial flair, possibly compounded by, or attributable to, low educational attainment, poor physical and mental health, drug and alcohol abuse and criminality. A failed or collapsed local economy, such that decently-paid jobs are simply unavailable, might also come into it; but that has not been the context here in Aberdeen for some decades past.

The World Bank investigated the underlying causes of the relative wealth or poverty of different countries in 2005. They concluded that: “Rich countries are rich largely because of the skills of their populations and the quality of the institutions supporting economic activity”.

Much of this is attributable to intangible factors – the extent of trust amongst and between people, an efficient judicial system, clear property rights and efficient government. On average, the ‘rule of law’ accounts for 57% of a country’s ‘intangible capital’, whilst education accounts for 36%. But whereas Switzerland scores 99.5% on a rule-of-law index, and the USA 91.8%, Nigeria’s score is a pitiful 5.8% and Burundi is worse still at 4.3%. Some countries are so badly run that their intangible capital is actually shrinking. The keys to prosperity are the rule of law and good schools; but through rampant corruption and failing schools, countries like Nigeria and Congo are destroying the little intangible capital they possess, and are thereby ensuring that their people will be even poorer in the future.

There are too many parts of Britain where no-one in their right mind would think of starting a (legitimate) business enterprise

What is true of countries in the global context is also true of regions, cities and towns within a country and even of neighbourhoods within a city or town. The rule of law, i.e., crime-prevention, and a functioning education system are basic pre-conditions for industry, investment and employment; not least because decision-takers are picky about where they live and the schools their children attend.

There are too many parts of Britain where no-one in their right mind would think of starting a (legitimate) business enterprise, and where almost no one does.

Even in the relatively prosperous context of Aberdeen, there are neighbourhoods where the trend is all-too observably one of business closures and withdrawal rather than start-ups and expansion, and for all-too obvious reasons; a collapse of law & order, rampant criminality, and a lack of relevant skills and, consequently, of spending-power amongst the local population and labour force. As the World Bank concludes, the solutions are (a) the rule of law, and (b) efficient education systems.

In the local context of Aberdeen neighbourhoods like Mounthooly-Gallowgate, the immediate or quick-fix solution is probably that of improving the social mix by making available a wider range of housing types – private-rented, owner-occupied, detached/semi-detached or at least maisonettes/terraced, rather than having only high-rise blocks of Council-owned flats. However, closing schools like Causewayend and nearby Kittybrewster seems like a seriously bad move.

king-st-the-north-church-by-john-smith-1829

The theme of the emptying inner city came to mind on a recent visit to Aberdeen Arts Centre, which has long occupied the former North Church, No. 33 King Street.

This splendid 1830 Greek-Revival building by John Smith was positioned so as to be visible and conspicuous from almost all angles, central to the whole area. Yet it is surrounded by streets, once vibrant with people, shops and businesses, which now contain little or no resident population; the south (town) end of King Street, Queen Street, East/West North Street and Broad Street.

It is as if the planners had set out to ethnically cleanse the whole area of humanity. That has certainly been the effect of past planning decisions, even if not the intention.Even on a sunny Saturday afternoon, there is not a soul to be seen in any direction. We are reminded of the bleak post-war Vienna depicted in the film The Third Man, its population dead or dispersed to the four winds.

Betjeman In Aberdeen

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Nov 182010

By Alex Mitchell.

The poet and architectural conservationist John Betjeman (1906-84) visited Aberdeen in May 1947, staying at the Douglas Hotel. This experience resulted in a talk – ‘Aberdeen Granite’ – given by Betjeman on the BBC Third Programme on 28th July the same year, from which the following is adapted.

From Waverley Station north, and north for hours, I had not realised there was so much of Scotland. The train ran on, over wide brown moors with blue distant inland mountains and then along the edges of cliffs whose grass was a deep Pre-Raphaelite green. And down steep crevices I saw rocks and fishermen’s cottages above them, but still no Aberdeen.

Could there be such a thing as a great city with tramcars, electric lights, hotels and cathedrals so far away among empty fields, so near the North Pole as we were going? And then the line curved, and objects familiar to me from the illustrations in my guide-book came into view.

Away down the tramlines to the north, on a rise above the beech-bordered meadowland of a river, stands Old Aberdeen, which has a Cathedral, a University and some Georgian houses, built of huge blocks of granite, a strange-textured place with an atmosphere of medieval and Jacobite grandeur about it, a place which really makes you think you are in the Northernmost seat of learning, so remote, so windswept and of such a solid grey strangeness.

Here is the old King’s College of Aberdeen University, and here its Chapel with a low tower from which spring ribs that support a renaissance style crown. Inside, the Chapel is remarkable for its canopied stalls in dark oak, the only medieval church woodwork surviving complete in Scotland after the ravages of Knox. And to the solid architecture, designed for resisting storms and simply designed because of the hardness of the granite from which it is made, the elaboration of this woodwork is a perfect contrast. Finally there are windows, like the rest of the Chapel which are early sixteenth century, of a style so curious and original as to be unlike any Gothic outside Scotland. The buttresses run up through the middle of the tracery and the arches of all the windows are round.

Not far from King’s Chapel is St. Machar’s strange Cathedral. The west end is the thing to see; seven tall lancets of equal height flanked by square towers with no openings, and on top of each tower a dumpy spire in a style half Gothic, half Renaissance. The interior has been stripped of its plaster and ancient furnishings, except for a wooden roof of some richness, too high and dark to be visible, so that the effect of the building inside is merely one of size.

Let the stone speak for itself and then emphasise its scale and texture by a few strong mouldings and broad pilasters projecting only an inch or so from the face of the building.

You cannot walk back and down through the main streets of New Aberdeen without being aware of the noble planning of late Georgian times; wide streets, such as Union Street; stately groups of grey granite buildings in a Grecian style, crescents on hill-tops and squares behind them.

These are largely the work of two architects, friendly rivals, John Smith and Archibald Simpson.

John Smith built in correct Classical and fifteenth-century style and with granite, close-picked and single-axed so that it was tamed to carry almost as much carving of capitals and mouldings as a softer building stone. The lovely Screen of 1829 fronting St. Nicholas Kirkyard in Union Street is his, and many a handsome Classical and English Perpendicular style church or public building.

But the original genius was Archibald Simpson. My attention was seized by a huge wall of granite, so bold, so simple in design, so colossal in its proportions that I stood puzzled. I have seen nothing like it, before or since.

This was the New Market, by Archibald Simpson in 1842. The magnificence of the entrance is designed to show the strength and quality of granite: the architect realised there was no point in carving this unyielding material into delicate detail. Let the stone speak for itself and then emphasise its scale and texture by a few strong mouldings and broad pilasters projecting only an inch or so from the face of the building.

The inside of this covered market is worthy of its outside – colossal, simple, constructional. I seemed to be stepping into one of those many-vista’d engravings by Piranesi. It was a great oblong hall with curved ends and all around a row of plain circular-headed arches rising to the glass and timber roof. Half-way down the wall-height ran a gallery of shops. Shafts of sunlight slanted through the arches on to the wooden shops and stalls of the central space and the surrounding gallery.

Archibald Simpson: here was an architect of genius, a Soane, a Hawksmoor, someone head and shoulders above the men of his time. Simpson’s work depends on proportion for its ornament, e.g., his two-storey houses in Bon-Accord Square & Crescent and Marine Terrace. But his greatest work is the brick tower and spire of the Triple Kirks of 1844, opposite the Art Gallery. The fact that it is in red brick makes it stand out, but not glaringly, amongst the grey granite of the rest of the city. How can I explain why this tall plain spire is so marvellous? I think it is because of the way it grows out of the high, thin-buttressed tower below it, because of the pinnacles and tall gables at its base and because its very plainness is so carefully considered.

Wedged behind the huge Town House, in an expensive and attractive mid-Victorian baronial style, I saw a cluster of silver-white pinnacles. As I turned down a lane towards them, the frontage broadened out. Bigger than any cathedral, tower on tower, forests of pinnacles, a group of palatial buildings rivalled only by the Houses of Parliament at Westminster – the famous Marischal College. This gigantic building rises on top of a simple Gothic one designed by Simpson in 1840. But its spires and towers and pinnacles are the work of A. Marshall Mackenzie, completed in Kemnay granite in 1906.

Finally, I think of the spire of the Presbyterian kirk at Queen’s Cross – the Free Church of 1881 by J.B. Pirie. I never saw such a thing. I cannot describe its style or changing shapes as it descends in lengthening stages of silver-grey granite from the pale blue sky to the solid prosperity of its leafy suburban setting. I only know that when I tried to draw this late Victorian steeple, I gave it up at the seventh attempt!

Archibald Simpson’s New Market of 1842 was destroyed by fire in 1882 and was rebuilt in 1892 with a wrought-iron roof and no clerestory; this is what Betjeman describes. The arcaded interior of the bow-ended Market Hall was 320 feet long, with shops in the arcades at first floor level overlooking the vast interior space. The granite frontage on to Market St. was particularly impressive, in a style resembling that of early Egyptian temples. Simpson’s New Market was demolished in 1971 and was replaced by the present seriously inferior building. Why? Some buildings have a kind of negative energy, which has a magnetic attraction for rubbish and tat, and the present 1971 Market is all too evidently one of them.

Contributed by Alex Mitchell.

A Scandalous Dissipation – Back To The Future?

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Nov 132010

Voice’s Alex Mitchell tells of the scandalous dissipation of the bequest by Dr Patrick Dun in 1631. Dr Dun bequeathed the Lands of Ferryhill in favour of The Aberdeen Grammar School, the tenants of Ferryhill, and the pupils of poor homes which, if handled appropriately, would today be of immense value.

This is an account of how a bequest of great value was first diverted to wrongful uses, and then almost wholly dissipated, not by an outside body of meddlers, but by the very trustees themselves, in whose hands it ought to have been sacred.

Dr Patrick Dun was the son of Andrew Dun, a burgess of Aberdeen. He was probably educated at the Grammar School, and thereafter proceeded to Marischal College.

In 1607, he took his Doctorate in Medicine in Basle, Switzerland. In 1610, shortly after his return to Aberdeen, Dr Dun was appointed Professor of Logic and a Regent at Marischal College. He was appointed Rector of the College in 1619, then Principal in 1621. He held this office, through very troublesome times, until his resignation in 1649, and died two or three years later.

Dr Dun had an outstanding reputation as a practising doctor. He was a man of substance, and when Marischal College was burnt down in 1639 he contributed handsomely towards the cost of the new buildings. His portrait, by George Jameson, dated 1631, is still to be seen in the Hall of Aberdeen Grammar School.

The Lands of Ferryhill consisted in those days of bogs and whins, fit only for rough grazing, and were described by Francis Douglas even as late as 1728 as amounting to ‘little conical hills over-run with heath and furze … the flat bottoms between them drenched with stagnant water’. The Lands of Ferryhill had belonged to the Trinity Friars, who feued them out to the powerful Menzies dynasty. After the Reformation of 1560, the Lands of Ferryhill became the property of the Crown.

Dr Dun purchased the Lands of Ferryhill in 1629 for, it would seem, no other purpose than to bequest them, and all property thereon, by his Will, dated 3rd August 1631, to the ‘Toune of Aberdeine’ for the maintenance of four masters at the Grammar School. Dr Dun bequeathed the whole of this extensive property to the Provost, Baillies and Council of Aberdeen for this specific purpose. He directed that the rents obtained from these lands should be invested until enough money accumulated to buy another piece of land sufficient to yield, along with the original gift, a yearly revenue of 1,200 merks, this sum being sufficient to pay the basic salaries of the stipulated staff of four masters, including the Rector.

Pupils from poor homes, all those who borne the name of Dun and all children of tenants on the Ferryhill estate were to be taught free of charge. Dr Dun’s Will concludes with a solemn injunction that the mortification, or charitable bequest, shall “stand unalterable, inviolable and unchangeable in all tyme hereafter for ever”.

instead of letting the lands out to rent, the Council proceeded to feu them off by public roup or auction

Dr Dun’s Bequest put the Grammar School on a sound and permanent economic footing, and provided the blessing of free education for boys whose parents could not afford to pay fees. So what happened?

In 1653, when the Town Council assumed control of Dr Dun’s Bequest, the stock or capital in the Trust amounted to just over £74. Rents were added until 1666, by which time the capital amounted to just over £583. The Council considered that this was sufficient to allow them to invest in land, as per the terms of the Will.

However: instead of buying land, as the Will stipulated, the Council lent the money out, without adequate security, to various people, including some of their own number; two Provosts, one Baillie and at least two Councillors, all of whom became insolvent, so that the Trust sustained a heavy loss. Others abstracted interest-free loans.

In 1677 the Council purchased the lands of Gilcolmston, on behalf of the town, for just over £1,444; and charged one-third of this sum to the Dun Trust. This was wholly illegal, given that the capital of the Trust belonged to the masters at the Grammar School. By 1681 the capital had declined to just over £469, of which £287 was earning no interest; of this latter sum, £131 was wholly lost. The Town itself was borrowing freely from the Trust.

schoolmasters were deprived of salaries, and the benefit of free education was denied to those actual or potential pupils specified by Dr Dun

In 1752, William Moir, the tacksman of the Lands of Ferryhill, was bought out by the Council, which now entered into full possession of the property. The income from rents had risen to £102 yearly. However, instead of letting the lands out to rent, the Council proceeded to feu them off by public roup or auction, to the great loss of the Trust.

In 1753, the masters at the Grammar School petitioned the Council for an increase in salaries. A settlement was arrived at, or enforced, which cancelled the Town’s debt to the Trust of £427 and ordained that the balance should be applied to building a new school – the predecessor, on Schoolhill, of the present Aberdeen Grammar School, which dates from 1867 – and establishing an endowment fund for its maintenance. All this was utterly illegal, and contributed to the further dissipation of the Trust, the capital of which had fallen to just £100 by 1770.

The effect of this was that the schoolmasters were deprived of salaries, and the benefit of free education was denied to those actual or potential pupils specified by Dr Dun in his bequest of 1631. Walter Thom, in his History of Aberdeen, published in1811, drew attention to the Town Council’s misappropriation of the Dun Bequest. He wrote: “The injury sustained by the citizens of Aberdeen by the mismanagement of Dr Dun’s bequest is sufficiently apparent, and the turpitude of the crime cannot be palliated by any plea of ignorance … the disgrace attachable to those who abused this valuable institution … (etc)”.

The Education (Scotland) Act of 1872 transferred the control of the Grammar School and the other schools in Aberdeen from the Town Council to a new body, the School Board, which had to look into the whole tangled question of Dr Dun’s Bequest. The capital at this time amounted to just over £3,623. There followed difficult negotiations between the School Board and the Town Council, the upshot of which was that the Council agreed to pay the School Board the sum of £164 annually, being the amount agreed on as the income from Dr Dun’s Bequest, i.e., the feu duties of Ferryhill.

In 1929, the Grammar School, as with the other schools in Aberdeen, was brought once again under the control of the Town Council as a result of the Local Government (Scotland) Act of that year. In 1934, provision was made for a payment of not less than £150 per year to be applied so as to benefit boys attending Aberdeen Grammar School. This was all that remained of Dr Dun’s Bequest.

In 1634, when Dr Dun reported to the Town Council his intention to hand over the lands of Ferryhill on behalf of the Grammar School, the total population of the Royal Burgh of Aberdeen was only about 5,000. The town consisted of sixteen streets, centred on the Broadgate and the Castlegate. The lands of Ferryhill – so-named after the ferry across the Dee at Craiglug – were hillocky and marshy, of use for little else but rough grazing by animals. Land of this kind was abundant and of little value.

By the first census in 1801, the population of Aberdeen was about 27,000; it increased almost six-fold over the 19th century to about 150,000 by 1901, and to about 213,000 by 2001. The Lands of Ferryhill, which were wholly built over by 1901, would even then – never mind today – have been an immensely valuable property.

The Trust would have required adjustment following the advent of State-provided and State-financed education but, had it been retained intact and honestly administered by the Town Council, it is easy to imagine what a favourable position the Grammar School – or indeed the whole Burgh – could have enjoyed through the 20th century and today. That this fair prospect has receded into the limbo of frustrated things, of “what might have been”, is due solely to the dishonesty and carelessness of successive Aberdeen Town Councils through the 17th and 18th centuries.

N.B. This article is adapted from an original titled The Tercentenary of Dr Patrick Dun’s Bequest to the School, by W. Douglas Simpson, published in the Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine of 1934.

Union Street – What Happened?

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Nov 052010

By Alex Mitchell.

There is widespread concern about the dingy and run-down state of Aberdeen’s principal thoroughfare of Union Street which runs all the way from Holburn Junction to the Castlegate and the town end of King Street. This is manifest in the number of empty shops and in the distinctly low-rent character of many of such shops as there are.

It seems the more odd that this situation has developed during some thirty years of oil-boom prosperity, low unemployment and substantially-increased population.

If one thinks back to the Union Street of the nineteen fifties and sixties, the following comes to mind: Union Street was jam-packed with shoppers along its entire length every Saturday, as was also St Nicholas Street/George Street. People dressed up to go ‘doon the toon’, and you met everyone you knew in Union Street. In that sense, Aberdeen really was a village. The open-air markets in the Green and Castlegate were very much going concerns. Buses went all the way from Hazlehead to the Sea Beach and back again, via Queen’s Cross, Union Street and the Castlegate, which served as the city’s main bus interchange, where you nipped off one bus and on to another.

As a result, far more people had reason to go to the Castlegate than nowadays. Union Street and St Nicholas Street/George Street were full of interesting, up-market shops: grocer Andrew Collie & Co. Ltd. at the corner of Union Street and Bon Accord Street; Watt & Grant’s department store; McMillan’s toy shop, under the Trinity Hall; Woolworth’s, backing on to the Green; Falconer’s, Isaac Benzie’s, the Equitable, the handsome and elegant old Northern Co-op building in Loch Street; the Rubber Shop.

So what happened? Much of the population moved out of down-town tenements and into the new housing estates and suburban residential developments, ever-further from the city centre. Car ownership became the norm, and car-borne customers prefer shops they can park next to. Supermarkets became superstores and greatly extended their range of merchandise, destroying one specialist retailer after another. Butchers, bakers, fishmongers, hardware and electrical stores, shoe-shops and, most recently, pharmacists, bookshops and record shops have all been subsumed into superstores.

The obvious way for the city-centre to fight back was to build down-town malls like the St Nicholas and Bon Accord shopping centres

Superstores and their car-parks require huge expanses of land and prefer edge-of-town locations where large sites are available and cheap and accessible for both customers and delivery lorries. DIY sheds like B&Q, furniture and carpet stores and ‘big box’ retailers like Curry’s similarly prefer edge-of-town retail parks.

Edge-of-town retail complexes, such as that at Garthdee, may be banal, unhistorical and characterless, but they are also convenient as to access, offer easy and free parking, and are generally clean, safe and relatively easy to secure against break-ins and vandalism. The obvious way for the city-centre to fight back was to build down-town malls like the St Nicholas and Bon Accord shopping centres. These offer the kind of accommodation retailers want, and are relatively secure overnight, but they may tend to abstract business and custom from the High Street. The case is unproven. Without the down-town malls, the major retailers might have moved out of the city centre altogether. Or they might not.

If, however, the supply of retail premises outruns the demand, it follows that the less attractive premises and locations will become hard-to-let, the rent obtainable falls, lower-status tenants have to be accepted; ultimately, premises may become unlettable on any terms. This is what seems to have happened in the west end of Union Street, and not only there.

We are assured that Aberdeen is not oversupplied with shops, but there have been significant increases in the down-town stock of retail premises in recent years, e.g., the Academy in Belmont Street and the Galleria in Bon Accord Street, neither of which were quick to fill up with tenants. The proposed Bon Accord Quarter will substantially increase the capacity of the present St Nicholas and Bon Accord malls and the Union Square development at Guild Street comprises some sixty new retail premises.

What else happened? Down-town, the general decline in church attendance after the First World War, combined with the exodus of population from the city centre, rendered many churches redundant. Similarly, whatever else we may say about the banks, they did put up some very handsome and impressive buildings. But, by the 1990s, the Bank of Scotland had abandoned its splendid and purpose-built 1801 premises at the corner of Castle Street and Marischal Street, as did the Clydesdale Bank its 1842 Archibald Simpson premises at the corner of Castle Street and King Street.

What was once the centre of business activity in Aberdeen was so no longer. Aberdeen Journals moved from Broad Street out to Lang Stracht. Aberdeen University withdrew from Marischal College and the Student Union (and Bisset’s Academic Bookshop) closed down. The Robert Gordon University moved out to Garthdee.

There never was a time when things stood still. Old trades and occupations become obsolete, redundant or move elsewhere, often when displaced by newer, more profitable activities in the Darwinian contest for the use of economic resources, land, labour, capital etc. There are no fishing boats in Aberdeen harbour now because they have been replaced by oil-industry vessels. Planning applications for change-of-use are the normal and desirable state of affairs. But neighbourhoods and communities go into a decline when long-established firms and industries fade out and fail to be replaced by new enterprises and activities, or are replaced by activities which are in some way damaging or undesirable.

bars, nightclubs, etc., are a youth-orientated business, and the relevant age-group is shrinking as families move out of the city

The increased number of vacant retail premises in Union Street results from the fact that fewer tenants are moving in than are moving out; there is a net exodus of retailers. The sad truth is that Union Street is not nowadays that good an environment in which to try to run a shop.

Old buildings and ground-floor premises are difficult to make secure against break-ins and vandalism. Delivery access for lorries is difficult. Shop staff and customers are harassed by drunks, beggars and drug abusers. Shop doorways, windows and their surroundings are often in a filthy state at the start of each day’s business. It is difficult to find and retain staff who will put up with this. It is not surprising if retailers follow their customers and withdraw to the relatively clean, safe and secure environment of the down-town malls and edge-of-town retail parks.

Aberdeen has generally been a better-run city than most. But the situation described arises from the non-delivery, or inadequate performance, of very specific council and governmental responsibilities, e.g., to maintain law and order, to enforce the law, e.g., against drinking in public places, to deal with anti-social and criminal behaviour, to collect the rubbish and clean the streets and pavements. Putting down the odd tub of begonias is not enough.

As banks, churches and big stores have withdrawn from Union St, so mega-pubs and bars, nightclubs and fast-food providers have moved in. To an extent, the new arrivals have been welcome, occupying old buildings which would otherwise have remained empty and neglected. In addition, some of this may be regarded as legitimate change-of-use, in response to changing tastes and lifestyles.

Similarly, there is a place for pubs, bars and nightclubs; but perhaps for fewer of them, and of a different character. The bars, nightclubs, etc., are a youth-orientated business, and the relevant age-group is shrinking as families move out of the city in search of better-value housing and more stable and higher-achieving schools.

In the meantime, the issue is one of whether the alcohol industry can peacefully co-exist with other economic sectors, retailers etc., and with the resident population of the city centre. All the evidence is that a neighbourhood which loses its settled, long-term resident population is doomed, finished, over. So if the interests of the local resident population and the alcohol industry are in conflict, then the former must take precedence. It may be that the drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc. sectors will be cut down to size only as and when people get bored with and/or turn against this kind of activity, much as they mostly have in relation to tobacco.

Similarly, a locality and micro-economy which has long been in decline, such as the Castlegate, can be revived only by rebuilding its resident population and base of custom and trade from the ground up. The buildings at the west end of Union Street (originally Union Place), used to be private houses; people did their shopping in the street markets or in Archibald Simpson’s New Market of 1842, Aberdeen’s first enclosed shopping mall.

One of the more positive developments in recent years is the conversion of the upper floors of these old buildings, often long out-of-use, into modern residential accommodation.

It is a pity that the long-proposed Bon Accord Quarter was put on hold, possibly whilst the proprietors of the two down-town malls assessed the impact of the Union Square development, south of Guild Street.

This writer was broadly in support of the outline scheme for the Bon-Accord Quarter, because it would have secured the desirable objectives of removing St Nicholas House and bringing Marischal College back into an appropriate usage; also because it confirmed and consolidated the traditional retail heart of Aberdeen as the premier shopping destination in the North-East, the natural and obvious location for up-market and quality retailers like Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, Debenham’s, Next etc., which serve to pull shoppers and visitors into the city centre to the benefit of all the other retailers and service-providers.

Contributed by Alex Mitchell.

Aberdeen – An Urban Ideopolis?

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Oct 222010

By Alex Mitchell.

Q: How do we get to be smart?

A: By hanging out with smart people!

The Centre For Cities recently reported that Aberdeen is the third-top city in Britain in terms of the proportion of its labour force – 40% – in possession of degree-level qualifications. Only Cambridge and Edinburgh, both at 44%, come higher.

The physical proximity of significant numbers of talented, highly-educated people has a powerful effect on innovation and economic growth. It has in fact been argued that this clustering of talent is the main determinant or ‘driver’ of economic growth, especially in a post-industrial economy dependent on creativity, intellectual property and high-tech innovation.

Those places that succeed in bringing together a diversity of talents accelerate the local rate of economic evolution and progress. When large numbers of entrepreneurs, financiers, engineers, designers and other smart, creative people are constantly bumping into each other, inside and outside their places of work, business-related and other ideas and concepts are more quickly formed, sharpened up, executed and, if successful, expanded. The more smart people there are around and the denser the connections between them, the faster it all progresses.

As individuals, we become smart mainly by associating, consorting and interacting with other smart people, ideally from a very early age. This is why progress has historically been associated with cities, not villages, with university towns in particular, and with seaports – communities open to and interacting with the wider world, not little places buried in the back of beyond. Nowadays, road connections and access to hub airports may be as or more important. And the Internet certainly has the potential to make us smarter, by linking us up to and facilitating our interaction with other smart people.

The advent of globalisation, of a single world market for goods and services, has created new opportunities for certain key cities such as can perform the role of a local ‘ideopolis’ or ‘knowledge capital’. The concept of the ideopolis goes back to the city-states of Renaissance Europe and not least to the Royal Burghs of Scotland, themselves semi-autonomous city-states, of which Aberdeen itself was an outstanding example, having closer trade and other links with the North European and Baltic seaports of the Hanseatic League, Danzig in particular, than did either Edinburgh or Glasgow .

A place full of chain stores, chain restaurants, chain pubs and nightclubs has little appeal; people can experience the self-same thing almost anywhere.

The modern ‘urban ideopolis’ is characterised by clusters of high-tech manufacturing, knowledge services or soft technology, operating in close association with local universities. The ideopolis is a regional centre for economic, technological and knowledge-based expertise and development. Such cities become catalysts for improved productivity in their surrounding hinterland and in the country as a whole.

Key characteristics of the urban ideopolis are:

– A critical mass of higher education resources, particularly of universities and specialist institutions of research and training, e.g., research hospitals, with strong links to business and commercial partners, supported by a high-quality infrastructure of schools and colleges. Universities attract talented individuals who will often stay around after they graduate; are themselves a major source of income and employment, and help create a progressive, open and tolerant environment and local culture.

– A major international hub airport and a good supporting transport infrastructure – road, rail and light rail, e.g., urban tramways.

– A flourishing tertiary or service sector. Strong economic clusters in new and emerging activities such as high-tech manufacturing and knowledge services such as health and biosciences, financial services, cultural and sports-based sectors, the media and retailing.

– A good track record of technological innovation and transfer into new areas of activity.

– An entrepreneurial culture; a local tradition of successful entrepreneurship, a vibrant small-firms sector, successful local entrepreneurs and business personalities, a high birth-rate of new businesses and an informed and sympathetic local banking and financial sector.

It would be a better use of resources to invest in those lifestyle amenities which people really want and actually use

– A large and diverse workforce, possessed of a diversity of skills. A large proportion of educated professionals and high-skill front-line service staff. But such people are sought-after, and are highly mobile from one place to another. If they don’t like it where they are, they will move somewhere else.

– An impressive architectural heritage, comprising historic buildings and well-established neighbourhoods coupled with iconic new physical development; a willingness to invest in high-quality urban design and architecture and in vibrant and attractive public spaces. Conversely, an avoidance of the more characterless forms of modern urban development, e.g., the monotonous sameness of down-town shopping malls, deserted pedestrian precincts and identikit edge-of-town retail complexes. A place full of chain stores, chain restaurants, chain pubs and nightclubs has little appeal; people can experience the self-same thing almost anywhere.

– That elusive concept, quality of life. Big-city buzz. A distinctive but internationalised city culture. Cultural and recreational amenities, often small-scale, grass-roots and at street-level, that talented people really want and will use often, rather than the grandiose and invariably loss-making civic facilities so often provided at huge cost to taxpayers, such as exhibition centres, concert halls and football stadiums.

– Thriving artistic, intellectual, creative and bohemian communities of international repute, open and accessible to the wider population and enjoying a high level of local participation – not just there for the tourists. A diverse population, a diversity of lifestyles, an ethos of tolerance and inclusiveness, reflected in a correspondingly diverse pattern of economic activity, e.g., shops and restaurants.

– Bold city leadership possessed of a high degree of policy autonomy and a reputation for successful regeneration initiatives, as in New York and London.

In the USA, cities like Seattle, Boston, Austin, Atlanta, Denver and Minneapolis are identified as having ideopolis characteristics. European cities like Helsinki and Barcelona can also be so described. Such cities are energised by knowledge, by world-class universities and by industries and business sectors which take their lead from them.

These are ‘connected’ cities, with good inter-city and intra-city communications, which people can travel to, from and within with relative ease. Such cities are keyed into and energised by the forces of globalisation, picking up knowledge-related opportunities and access to specialist venture capital via their hub airports and excellent telecommunications infrastructures.

The rules of economic development have changed. The local quality of human capital is crucial. It used to be assumed that people migrated to where the industries and jobs were. It is now apparent that the new industries and jobs tend to emerge in those places where there are concentrations of people with the relevant talents, aptitudes and expertise. The most important ingredients for future economic development are the ideas and creativity of clusters or communities of talented individuals, who are thereby enabled to strike sparks off each other, to energise and inspire each other – the benefits of propinquity and contiguity, as David Hume might put it.

It follows that the cities, regions and nations which will thrive in the 21st century are those most able to attract, motivate and retain such talented, creative and enterprising individuals. Such places benefit from a virtuous circle, or upward spiral, whereby their existing concentrations of talented individuals render them attractive to many more such talented individuals. Conversely, those places which fail to attract, motivate and retain such people will go into an inexorable decline.

Many cities continue to pour taxpayers’ money into subsidising call centres, big-box retailers, down-town shopping malls and sports stadiums. It would be a better use of resources to invest in those lifestyle amenities which people really want and actually use, such as urban parks, bike lanes and off-road trails for walking, cycling and running. Similarly, our cities are inevitably undermined by building on out-of-town green-field sites, which leads to an outflow of population. We should be developing in-town brown-field sites.

Policy for attracting talented and enterprising people, and retaining those already here, needs to focus on who we need to attract, how they can be attracted and what it will take to keep them here.

Research suggests that the most attractive and successful places tend to be characterised by diversity of population and lifestyles, tolerance and inclusivity. This is not obviously good news for much of Scotland which, relative to the UK as a whole, is characterised by a striking absence of private-sector activity, low rates of economic growth, low business start-up rates, a high level of business failures and, critically, a declining and ageing population. Scotland tends to lose more people through emigration than it gains from immigration, and, as always, those who leave tend to be the best qualified, the most talented, the most enterprising and the most dynamic.

Joblessness and urban deprivation remain major problems in Scotland’s towns and cities. Poor health, education, housing and transport go hand-in-hand with unemployment, crime and dereliction and the associated sub-culture of educational under-achievement, alcohol & drug-dependency and a kind of learned or inherited helplessness. Large swathes of Aberdeen can certainly be so described.

But it can be argued that Aberdeen has the potential to become the Seattle of the UK. We have the two established universities, other educational and research institutions including the major hospital complex of Foresterhill, the nascent University of the Highlands & Islands, a growing regional population, modern high-speed telecommunications, cheaper and more regular air transport than formerly and a uniquely appealing landscape and natural environment. These are significant points favouring Aberdeen’s prospects as an urban ideopolis.

Contributed by Alex Mitchell.

Emily’s Room

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Oct 082010

By Alex Mitchell.

The following was written some years ago around the theme of a ghost story in which the ghost does not appear. “Forsythe House” is modeled on two grand houses in the North-East, one well-known, the other less so. Those of a literary bent may also be able to identify the real-life model for “Emily”.

For some unknown reason, my sister and I used as children to spend a fortnight each summer with our decayed-gentry relations at Forsythe House, out in the back of beyond. Like children everywhere, we took our surroundings for granted and thought nothing of the peculiar mixture of grandeur and squalor at Forsythe House.

Much the same was no doubt true for the various generations of Forsythes still living there.

The house itself was of a flamboyant baroque design, more appropriate to the sunny, smiling climate of Italy. It was certainly not robust enough to stand up to the unrelenting wind and rain and alternating frost and thaw of the Buchan coast. The surrounding estate and farmland had never been sufficiently productive to support such a grand household, certainly not after the advent of Death Duties and the agricultural depression of the 1920s and ’30s. Domestic staff had to be ‘let go’, or were simply unobtainable. In consequence, basic household repairs and maintenance had been neglected for years, even decades, on end.

Certain parts of the house were only in use during the summer months because of the deteriorating condition of the roof and the consequent spread of various kinds of rot and decay down through the structure and fabric, not least on the great central staircase and first-floor landings. Door and window-frames had become warped and distorted, some now past being opened, but nonetheless allowing freezing draughts to penetrate. The once-elegant reception rooms on the first floor, with their high, ornately-decorated ceilings and their tall sash windows rattling in the wind, were unbearably cold for much of the year; their matching pairs of fireplaces made little impact on the enveloping chill and damp, even back in the old days when servants were on call to drag logs, peat and coal up the back stairs and to attend to the warming flames.

During the severe winters and fuel shortages of the post-war years the Forsythes had tended to retreat to the gloomy basement kitchens, where huge cast-iron stoves and ranges consumed sawn-up branches from decayed or fallen trees scavenged from the surrounding forest and were kept burning night and day and all year round. This was the only reliably warm area of the great house.

This was also where the cook and the few remaining servants had their television set – the only one in the house, naturally – with the result that the Forsythe ladies fell into the habit of slipping down the back stairs after dinner to sit with the domestic staff and watch Coronation Street and Opportunity Knocks, these odd little gatherings being illuminated only by the cosy orange-red glow from the stoves and range, reflected here and there in the greasy, smoke-blackened patina of the kitchen walls and ceilings.

we were both extremely conscious, even the first time we went there, of an oppressive sense of literally unbearable sadness

By the early 1960s, when my sister and I were making our regular summer visits, the Forsythes had virtually stopped using the first-floor accommodation and upstairs bedrooms altogether.

This was not simply because of the decayed and dangerous condition of the staircases, landings and upstairs corridors.

The sanitary arrangements for the bedrooms on the upper floor and attics had depended on commodes and chamber-pots, emptied each morning by the maids and domestics. It was no longer possible to find young women from the village willing to do this kind of work, while the older family servants were not physically up to the fetching and carrying, upstairs and downstairs. In consequence, the upstairs receptacles went unemptied for days, sometimes weeks, on end.

There was a similar problem with the various old gun-dogs which flopped and slobbered around the ground floor of the house, and which were either unable or unwilling to go outside in the cold of winter. Carpets were fouled, and the mess was often left unattended to – and largely unnoticed – for weeks, even months. In the old days, of course, the dogs would never have been allowed into the house in the first place. As young children, we found all this hilariously funny, but, as we entered our teens, we became more prim and suburban in our attitudes towards personal and domestic hygiene, and came to resent the absence of proper bathrooms with showers and other modern conveniences.

We were left to roam about the house unchecked, risking our necks on the rotten staircases and landings. My sister was a natural athlete and explorer; where she led, I followed. But we preferred to avoid one of the bedrooms, always referred to by the Forsythe family as ‘Emily’s Room’, on the top floor of the west wing. In itself, it was a pleasant enough room, of a sunny aspect, its attractive feminine décor still more-or-less intact.

the Forsythes were becoming so obviously weird and peculiar, their style of living so decayed and regressive, that our parents no longer felt able to entrust us to their care

The fact of the matter was that we were both extremely conscious, even the first time we went there, of an oppressive sense of literally unbearable sadness, of the deepest, most overwhelming sorrow and despair, which pervaded not only the room itself but also that end of the long back corridor, and the effect was that we tended thereafter to avoid the west wing altogether.

But we did find, inside a rickety old writing-table, a school exercise book, the property of one Emily Jane Forsythe, which contained various poems, draft versions of letters to a young man and assorted brief reflections, one of which has lodged in my mind ever since: “Perhaps it would be lonelier without the loneliness”.

We asked our Great-Aunt about Emily, as children would. We were shown a faded, yellowed photograph of a radiant young girl – a distant cousin of ours – aged about eighteen. We were led to believe that she had died not long afterwards, that Emily had suddenly been taken from us, like so many young people in those days, by one of the various killer diseases then extant; scarlet fever, consumption, diphtheria, whatever.

We did not find out the truth about Emily for some years, until what turned out to be our last summer at Forsythe House, the fact of the matter being that the Forsythes were becoming so obviously weird and peculiar, their style of living so decayed and regressive, that our parents no longer felt able to entrust us to their care. Whilst wandering aimlessly in the mixed woods which year by year steadily encroached on the house and its grounds, we came across the old Forsythe family burial ground, apparently unused since the 1880s but for one quite recent interment, that of Emily Jane Forsythe, 1897-1959. She had evidently died not long before we started our summer visits to Forsythe House.

Only then did our Great-Aunt tell us what had really happened to Emily. She had been engaged to be married to a young man from one of the best local families, people of real standing and substance; the marriage would have transformed the declining fortunes of the Forsythes. But it was the time of the Great War. The young man had to go off to fight with his regiment in France, and, a few weeks later, was one of the sixty thousand killed on 1^st July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

The day the official telegram arrived at Forsythe House, Emily went up to her room in the west wing and shut herself away from the rest of the household. And she never came out again, other than to roam the top corridor at night-times, howling at the moon like some kind of deranged animal. As she had written in her exercise book, “Perhaps it would be lonelier without the loneliness”. And now, at last, we knew what our cousin Emily had meant.

The Old Burghs Of Aberdeen – Part 6

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Oct 012010

Alex Mitchell brings us the final part of his fascinating and informative series of articles on the development of Aberdeen City from its origin as two separate burghs.

Aberdeen was perhaps at its most important, relative to the rest of the world, and as a centre of trade and learning, in the early decades of the 17th century. The population of the two burghs approached 10,000 in the 1630s; about 8,500 in New Aberdeen and 1,000 in Old Aberdeen.

The Burgh maintained close links with the seaports of the Hanseatic League, of which Aberdeen was an early member, and their hinterlands of the Low Countries, Poland, Russia, the Baltic states and Scandinavia. Aberdeen was more open to European influences, to new ideas from the Continent, and was more diverse in its political and religious thinking, than were either Edinburgh or Glasgow.

Aberdeen (Old & New) now had its two small universities and there was hardly a European university of note that did not have an Aberdonian professor. George Keith, the 5th Earl Marischal, had set up a new college in 1593, being Marischal College, on the site of the old Franciscan Priory, to teach a Reformed (Protestant) curriculum in rivalry to King’s College, (originally St. Mary’s College), which had been established by Pope Alexander VI (Borgia) in 1495 at the request of Bishop William Elphinstone (1431-1514).

This reflected the post-Reformation decline in the standing of the Catholic Gordons of Huntly, the de facto protectors of the two Burghs and the real power behind the Menzies dynasty, and, correspondingly, the growing power and influence of the Protestant Keiths, the Earls Marischal, with their power-base at Dunnottar Castle; George Keith had been promoted to Lieutenant of the North by King James VI in 1593. But it was not until 1860 that the two universities of King’s College and Marischal College were united into the single University of Aberdeen. Through King’s College, Aberdeen can claim to have the fifth-oldest university in all of Great Britain.

The Reformation had not been welcomed in the North-East, where, as late as the 1620s, the majority of gentry families led by the Gordons of Huntly and their close allies the Hays of Erroll, remained Catholics “in their hearts”. In Aberdeen itself, this was reflected in the succession of Menzies provosts.

Scotland was effectively put under military occupation during the nine years of Oliver Cromwell’s British Commonwealth

Even as their Gordon overlords slowly weakened, so, perversely, the Menzies family tightened its grip, although their policy on religious matters might best be described as pragmatic; Aberdeen was regarded as a centre of Episcopalianism rather than of either unrepentant Catholicism or radical Presbyterianism.

By May 1638, Aberdeen was the only royal burgh still refusing, on the basis of loyalty to the King, to subscribe to the National Covenant, drawn up in Edinburgh earlier that year; but opinion amongst the townsfolk reflected the wider divisions within Scotland, between the largely Covenanting Lowlands and the Catholic and Royalist Highlands. Aberdeen was on the fringe of both territories and was too big a prize to be overlooked.

The outbreak of civil war between Covenanters and Royalists in 1639 was followed by a succession of invasions, occupations and lootings of the two Burghs by the rival armies, climaxing in 1644 in the three-days-long massacre of the unarmed and defenceless citizens of Aberdeen known as the Battle of Justice Mills, perpetrated by the Irish (Royalist) forces of the Marquis of Montrose. On a number of occasions the town became the battleground for the Royalists and Covenanters. About one-tenth of the population of Aberdeen died in these conflicts; another quarter died in the last but worst-ever outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1647, despite the desperate measures taken to exclude and contain it.

The city was badly affected by the widespread famines of 1695 and 1699; the population fell from about 7,100 in 1695 to 5,600 in 1700

The Marquis of Montrose was executed in Edinburgh in May 1650. One of his hands was sent to Aberdeen and was nailed to the front door of the Tolbooth. It remained there until July, when King Charles II, on his way to his Scottish Coronation at Scone and briefly in residence at Pitfodel’s Lodging, just across the Castlegate, observed the blackened and decaying object and ordered its Christian burial.

Scotland was effectively put under military occupation during the nine years of Oliver Cromwell’s British Commonwealth. General Monck’s troops arrived in Aberdeen in Sept. 1651, built their new fort on the Castle Hill, and did not leave until 1659. The destruction during the Covenanting Wars contributed to a decline in Aberdeen’s commercial importance. Aberdeen had accounted for 8% of all burghal tax revenues in 1635, but for only 4.5% by 1697. The city was badly affected by the widespread famines of 1695 and 1699; the population fell from about 7,100 in 1695 to 5,600 in 1700. It more than recovered by the mid-18th century, being estimated as 15,433 in 1755 and rising to 26,992 by the first census in 1801.

As elsewhere in Scotland, it was the rural hinterland that was worst affected by the ‘Lean Years’ of the 1690s, mainly because of the lack of overland transport and functioning markets via which food could be imported, compounded by the lack of any saleable product that could be traded for food. In Aberdeenshire, population in 1755 had still not regained its 1695 level. These grim circumstances at the close of the 17th century prompted the belief that Scotland could never be economically self-sufficient and had to obtain access to English markets. Thus the Union of Crowns in 1603 was followed by the Union of Parliaments in 1707.

Aberdeen’s relative decline in economic importance continued through the 18th and 19th centuries, mainly because Britain’s expanding trade with the Americas favoured west-coast ports like Glasgow rather than east-coast ports like Aberdeen, Dundee and Leith; also because of the Burgh’s geographical remoteness from the basic resources of the Industrial Revolution, being coal and iron ore.

The ‘Wallace Tower’ in Netherkirkgate which set me off on these researches, as it turns out, had nothing to do with the Scottish patriot William Wallace (1272-1305) since it was not built until 1588. It was properly known as Benholm’s Lodging, being originally the residence of Sir Robert Keith of Benholm, the younger brother of the 5th Earl Marischal, and stood just outside the old Netherkirkgate Port – demolished about 1770 – at the corner of Netherkirkgate and Carnegie’s Brae; about where the M&S Food Hall is now.

Carnegie’s Brae led down to the Green via Putachieside, so-named because the proprietor of Castle Forbes, then known as Putachie, had his town house there; it was latterly a particularly miserable street of slum tenements and was obliterated by the construction of Union St., and then of Market St. and Archibald Simpson’s New Market in 1840.

Benholm’s Lodging was a unique example of a Z-plan tower-house within a Scots town, and was one of only four 16th century buildings remaining in Aberdeen. It was demolished in 1964, along with part of the Netherkirkgate to make way for the extended M&S store, and it is unlikely that I ever actually saw it. A replica building, incorporating some of the original stonework and features was erected in far-off Tillydrone in the same year. This building is now empty, redundant, neglected and vandalised.

The useful suggestion has been made that it should now be moved back to its original location in the heart of Aberdeen, or at least on to our projected ‘Civic Square’ where it would complement Provost Skene’s House, also of the time of Mary Queen of Scots and King James VI.

Footnote. Aberdeen Voice is grateful to Stanley Wright for all photos associated with the above article.

The Old Burghs Of Aberdeen – Part 5

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Sep 172010

By Alex Mitchell.

Much of the old toun was swept away in the major slum clearance programmes of the 1890s and 1930s. The Gallowgate, surmounted by the 15th century ‘Mar’s Castle’ – the town house of the Earl of Mar, demolished 1897 – was once compared with the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.

Surely something better could have been achieved than the charmless ‘Brutalist’ Gallowgate we see today? Of the reputedly haunted Guestrow (from Ghaist-Raw), the main remnant is the beautifully restored 16th century George Skene’s House, long known as Cumberland’s Lodging following its requisition by the infamous Duke of Cumberland on his way to Culloden Moor in 1746.

His troops were billeted in what is now Robert Gordon’s College, built 1739 to the design of William Adam, father of the Adam brothers, Robert and James, who are commemorated by the Adelphi Court, the name of which refers to dolphins – a classical symbol of brotherhood.

The Green is thought to be the oldest part of Aberdeen, perhaps properly ‘Green-gate’, meaning the road to the bleaching-greens the banks of the Den-burn; Aberdeen itself was perhaps originally ‘Aber-den’, given that seagoing vessels could come up the Den-burn as far as Patagonian Court.

King William The Lion (1165-1214) was said to have had a Palace on the Green, which he later presented to the Trinity Friars, hence the Trinity Monastery and Chapel, and now, presumably, the Trinity Centre. There was a Carmelite monastery on the south side of the Green, hence Carmelite St. and Lane. Recent archaeological research suggests that the west end of the Green, close to the confluence of the Denburn and the River Dee, must have been marshy and waterlogged.

It is easy to forget that a full half-mile of Union Street, from the Adelphi to Diamond Street, is an artificial creation

The early or Dark Ages settlement must have been on the drier land at the east end of the Green, pressing up against the steep slope of St. Katherine’s Hill, looking eastwards to Shiprow and northwards up Putachieside to St. Nicholas Kirk. In such a confined space, any significant growth of population would soon have prompted a shift of activity and settlement to the higher and drier land of the Castlegate and Broadgate.

Even now, the streets and wynds around the Green are characterised by very high, narrow buildings, reflecting the tiny medieval plots into which the land was divided. The Castlegate was certainly the main street and market-place by 1290, being referred to, then, as a forum.

Nonetheless, for six centuries, the Green formed part of the only route into Aberdeen from the south. Visitors, both welcome and unwelcome, had to come over the Brig o’ Dee, up the Hardgate, down Windmill Brae, across the Den-burn and through the Green into the old toun. Then as now, the entry to the Green was narrow, but the street then widened out into a triangular shape. It branched off on the left hand into the wynd known as Putachieside and thence to the Netherkirkgate; whilst on the right hand, it led by way of Shiprow round the southern side of St. Katherine’s Hill to the Castlegate – the heart of the medieval Burgh.

Once Union Street and Holburn Street were laid down, the Green, Hardgate etc. et al ceased to be the main or only route to and from the south, and went into a decline.

It is easy to forget that a full half-mile of Union Street, from the Adelphi to Diamond Street, is an artificial creation – a kind of flyover – superimposed on a series of arches vaulting the streets and wynds of the old toun, and at a height of between 20-50 ft. above the natural ground level, which slopes from St. Nicholas Kirkyard down to the Green and the harbour, as did many of the old streets.

Thus Correction Wynd and Carnegie’s Brae run under Union Street whilst other old streets like St. Katherine’s Wynd or Back Wynd were truncated by it. At the Castlegate end, Narrow Wynd and Rotten Row were obliterated altogether.

Narrow Wynd was more important than it sounds, and ran across the Castlegate to Shiprow. The famous Aberdeen Philosophical Society, the fons et origo of what became known as the Aberdeen branch of the Scottish ‘Common-Sense’ Philosophy and a major contributor to the ‘Aberdeen Enlightenment’, was founded by Dr. Thomas Reid and Dr. John Gregory, both of King’s College, and held its fortnightly meetings in a tavern in Narrow Wynd from 1758 to1773. The remnant of Narrow Wynd was demolished in 1867 to make way for the new Municipal Buildings or Town House.

The Upper- and Nether-Kirkgate were the roads ‘above’ and ‘below’ the Mither Kirk of St. Nicholas. The narrow street nowadays known as Back Wynd used to be called Westerkirkgate.

The Upperkirkgate Port was the last of the six medieval town gateways to be demolished, sometime after 1794. It stood near the foot of the Upperkirkgate, just beyond No. 42, the gable-ended 17th century house which is still to be seen there now.

The original six ports – solid walls pierced by gateways – had become an obstruction to the flow of traffic, having been in existence from the first half of the15th century.

The other five ports were: the Netherkirkgate Port, controlling movement around the north side of St. Katherine’s Hill; the Shiprow or Trinity Port, checking entry from the south side of St. Katherine’s Hill and the harbour; the Justice or Thieves’ Port to the north-east of the Castlegate, demolished 1787; the Futty Port on Futty Wynd, to the south-east of the Castlegate, and the Gallowgate Port on Port Hill, controlling movement from Old Aberdeen and the north.

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