My wife and I
own a holiday cottage in Colonel Street, Portpatrick. In another article, I have considered the history of our cottage and those who have owned
and lived in it over the course of two hundred years. In this article I will
discuss the origins of Colonel Street as a whole and its development during the
19th Century. In so doing, I hope to provide a snapshot of a typical
street in a Scottish village during those years.
Portpatrick in the early 19th
Century: A Time of Change
“James
Hunter Blair of Dunskey Esquire…having formed a resolution of enlarging and
improving the Burgh of Barony of Portpatrick did upon the twenty-seventh day of
August Eighteen hundred and eleven execute certain articles and conditions of
Feu to be granted by him in the said Burgh whereby it was inter-alia stipulated
That each house should be built of stone and lime and roofed with slate…”
Thus begins the
earliest title deed in our possession for the cottage that is now no. 3 Colonel
Street. It indicates that the cottage was built at the same time as others in
the road and neatly summarises the context of Colonel Street’s early development.
Portpatrick is described as a “Burgh of Barony”, a designation awarded in the
17th Century that permitted the establishment of a market. This does
not appear to have happened however and Portpatrick remained a small hamlet;
its population in the middle of the 18th Century was estimated at
around 100. But the later 18th and early 19th Centuries saw
rapid growth in Portpatrick that mirrored social and economic changes happening
at that time throughout Scotland.
That development
was initiated from the top, by the leading local landowner, James Hunter Blair,
of Dunskey House. He was a younger son of John Hunter (1741-1787) a banker and
landowner, who had married Jean Blair, heiress of Dunskey, changing his name to
Sir James Hunter Blair (senior). He was Lord Provost of Edinburgh from 1784 to 1786 and
was instrumental in building the South Bridge that opened up the old town to
expansion. The younger James inherited Dunskey and served as MP for
Wigtownshire.
The deed states
that Hunter Blair (junior) wished to “enlarge and improve” Portpatrick. This links the
development of Colonel Street with the ‘Improvement’ drive that was spreading
throughout Scotland at that time. That drive was an expression of the
Enlightenment philosophy that humankind can and should better itself, using new
scientific and technical knowledge to facilitate that aim. It led to an
agricultural revolution that changed the face of Scotland and in turn (along
with the burgeoning industrial revolution) led to the establishment of new
towns and villages and the expansion of existing villages such as Portpatrick.
The expansion
of Portpatrick was due to a number of factors. The population of the United
Kingdom as a whole expanded markedly during the 19th century, due to
increased birth rates and (later) reduced death rates. In Scotland, the changes
in agriculture led to the movement of people not directly involved in farming
out of the countryside and into towns and villages. Immigration was another
factor, especially of people fleeing the hardships of Ireland. Finally,
Portpatrick’s growth was further aided by its attempted development as a port,
with a new harbour built in 1776 and plans for an expanded harbour underway. By
1791 its population had risen to 512 and by 1838 it had reached 1010. Much new
building and rebuilding was needed to house the burgeoning population.
The title deed
uses the term, “conditions of feu”. A feu
disposition was a standard means of selling land or property in Scotland at
this time. It was a kind of permanent leasehold arrangement. A local compiler
of a Statistical Account in the 1790s commented on the increasing popularity of
such arrangements, which enabled landowners to profit from housing
developments, while local people of quite modest means could become property
owners. The seller, usually the local landowner, retained considerable rights
to direct how “feuars” used the land they purchased and the appearance of
houses they built on it. In the case of Colonel Street, the title deed
specifies that the new houses should be built of “stone and lime and roofed in
slate” and goes on to make a number of other specifications. The requirement
for a slate roof was a key sign of “improvement”. Previously, the large
majority of vernacular houses in Scotland had been roofed with thatch or turf.
The Origins of Colonel Street
Colonel Street
and Barrack Street derive their names from the military barracks that once
occupied their site. There had been a barracks in Portpatrick since the early
1600s, to accommodate troops on their way to and from Ireland. Originally the
barracks were in former monastic buildings near the old church, but in 1800 new
accommodation was built nearer to the sea-front – the pink-washed building at
the far end of Barrack Street may be part of these buildings. There was good
reason at the time for improving military access to Ireland. The Napoleonic wars
were at their height, and the French had attempted invasions of Ireland in 1796
and 1798. Moreover, the loyalty of Ireland to the British cause was by no means
assured.
Some colourful
local stories have grown up about the links between Colonel Street and the
Barracks. It has been said that the houses in Colonel Street were built by
soldiers; that the (now two storey) house next door to our Cottage was the
residence of a Colonel Craddock, and that a house across the road from the
Cottage was the soldiers’ brothel. Sadly, all such stories are mistaken, for
the Barracks had a short working life and was probably largely closed down by
the time Colonel Street was built. Road building elsewhere provided better
military links with Ireland, in particular Thomas Telford’s road across North
Wales to Anglesey. It is perhaps no coincidence that the year after that road
opened in 1810, the land around Portpatrick Barracks was earmarked for housing.
Colonel Street is therefore an early example of a “brownfield” residential
development.
There is some
confusion about the actual origins of our Cottage and the other terraced houses
on the west side of Colonel Street. The earliest title deed related to the
Cottage is dated 1823, and retrospectively acknowledges the sale in 1811 by
James Hunter Blair to a local mason (builder), John Thomson, of land:
“Lying
in Colonel Street in Portpatrick on which he [John Thomson] has built a one
storey house with attics measuring eighty seven feet in front along the west
side of the said street, bounded on the east by the said street, on the south
and west by Leech’s feu and on the west and north by John Gillespie’s feu”.
We don’t know
why this deed was drawn up so long after the land was originally sold. Possibly,
as these were early days of development, land sales were still being done on an
informal basis (not many years earlier, it was common for agricultural workers in
Scotland to build their own houses on spare pieces of land) and Thomson didn’t
need a formal deed until he came to sell his property. The nature of the house
that John Thomson built is also a little uncertain, however modern day Colonel
Street offers clues. Look down Colonel Street from outside our Cottage towards
the south. You will notice that the single storey cottages (nos. 7 and 9)
beyond the large house next door to our Cottage (no. 5) are the same height as our
Cottage. Pace the street from the gable end of our Cottage down to the end of no.
9 and the distance works out to 87
feet. Old photographs clearly show that in the
nineteenth century no. 5 was also single storey (and therefore not Colonel
Craddock’s residence), so the terraced block running along Colonel Street
echoes John Thomson’s 1811 house. It is not however known whether John
Thomson’s house was a single dwelling, or if it was divided up in some way,
though the latter is most likely. It was probably a tenement, rented out to a
number of families, though we have no idea who actually lived in it.
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“Leech’s feu”
is identifiable as the last building on the north side of Barrack Street, whose
garden extends the length of John Thomson’s original house. Andrew Leech (or
Leitch) was a “stone hewer” and after his early death his wife Jane lived on in
their house until her own death in 1891, at the age of 87. “John Gillespie’s
tenement” is a bit more mysterious, but is likely to be a building marked on
early maps as set back from the road (see map below). It is not known why this
building was positioned thus, but perhaps it was part of the original barrack
buildings. It was demolished by the late 19th century.
In 1824 John
Thomson’s land was divided and sold and his eighty-seven foot house was
rebuilt, resulting in the present arrangement of four houses in a terrace (see
my companion article about our cottage). Three (current nos. 3, 7 and 9) are
single fronted and comprised two (or three) rooms, while the current no. 5 was
double fronted and had four rooms. The deed states that this house was bought
by Thomas McCracken, who was a local farmer. This house was converted to two
stories in the early 20th century.
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The west side of Portpatrick in the
1850s. Colonel Street is the road that angles north-east from Barrack Street.
Our cottage is at the top of the terrace on the west side of the street, which
originally formed John Thomson’s one storey house”. “Leech’s feu” is the house
and garden at the north-east end of Barrack Street, running behind the terrace.
“John Gillespie’s tenement” is presumably the building above Leech’s garden,
set back from Colonel Street. This building had disappeared by the 1890s. The
map is not quite accurate, as there were four houses in the terrace by this
time.
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I have no
access to the title deeds of the terrace of four two-storey houses on the east
side of Colonel Street, but they are likely to have been built at the same time
as those on the other side of the road. The opinion has been expressed that
these houses were also originally single-storey. This is unlikely, but the
dormer windows that each house now possesses were later additions.
Colonel Street in the 19th
Century
In 1838, the
Reverend Andrew Urquhart, Minister of the Kirk, wrote the New Statistical
Account of Portpatrick. He felt obliged to comment on the character and morals
of its population:
“The
poorer class, constituting the majority of the population, are very far from
being cleanly or tidy in their habits, but it is quite the reverse for those in
better circumstances…Many, especially of the labourers resident in the town or
country…are miserably clothed, miserably fed, miserably lodged, and miserably
provided with furniture in their dwellings. But these evils have undoubtedly,
in most instances, a moral cause. For others, with precisely the same
advantages, contrive to make themselves tolerably comfortable”.
Such sentiments
might be heard today at a Conservative Party conference and it is impossible to
know to what extent they were actually true of the people of Portpatrick in
general, or Colonel Street in particular. It is clear, however, that
Portpatrick was not a rich village. The large majority of the male population
were agricultural labourers or tradesmen, along with some who earned their
living from the sea. Many wives supplemented the family income with dressmaking
or sewing and single women were often laundresses. Few in the village employed
servants and many lived in overcrowded circumstances. Many houses were divided
into apartments and many families lived in just one or two rooms, in common with many others in Scotland at the time. An extreme
case in Colonel Street was recorded in the 1861 census. The two storey house
that is now no. 6 Colonel Street was at that time divided into four two-room
apartments. In one of these apartments lived Jane Smith (who later bought our
cottage) and her widowed mother. They lived in one room and sub-let the other
room to two families of Irish
labourers, in Portpatrick to work on the construction of the railway from
Stranraer; six people in all.
At the same
time, as the Reverend Urquhart put it, some made themselves “tolerably
comfortable”. While the majority rented their dwellings, there were those who
were owner-occupiers or small landlords. There was a complex network of home
ownership, with some individuals owning and renting out a number of properties
and some houses that were divided into apartments having multiple owners.
People
frequently moved house. The pattern in Portpatrick matched that elsewhere in
Britain in Victorian times, with the majority of people spending their lives
close to their places of birth, but often living in several different dwellings
within a fairly small radius. Moves were presumably triggered by changes in employment,
family or financial circumstances, or the vagaries of the private rental
market. As an example, Jane Smith (mentioned above) lived all of her 79 years
in Portpatrick, but dwelt in at least six different houses before settling in
our cottage in her late 60s.
Determining who
actually lived where in Colonel Street is difficult, as most census returns and
valuation rolls do not include house numbers and where they do, those numbers
are different to today. However, a close examination of successive returns
allows us to make an educated guess at dwelling patterns. Here is my attempt to
identify who owned and lived in the houses of Colonel Street in 1885, presented
as an example of dwelling patterns in a Scottish village at that time.
Colonel Street in 1885
In 1885, the
only residential buildings in Colonel Street were the two four-house terraces
at the south end of the street. At the north end, “John Gillespie’s tenement”
had apparently been demolished, as had a couple of small cottages at the far
end of the street. The only other building was Trinity Hall, now a block of
three small apartments but at that time the Church Hall of the Free Church (and previously a school). As
previously discussed, the four houses on the east side of the road were all
two-storey, while those on the west side (including our cottage) were “single
storey with attics”.
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| This photo shows all the houses that were occupied in Colonel Street in 1885. The detached cottage at the end of the road, now 10 Colonel Street, was then in Barrack Street |
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| The north end of Colonel Street today. The only one of these buildings that was in situ in 1885 was Trinity Hall (the nearer building with its gable end facing the road), then the Free Church Hall. The Gospel Hall on the left was built in the early 20th century as Portpatrick Men’s Club reading and recreation room; the other houses are modern. |
We will begin
at our own cottage at the north-west end of the terrace (now no. 3). The long-term
owner Agnes Shearer (see my companion article) had died the previous year but
her niece Margaret Cosh and her daughter still lived there and continued to
work as dressmakers. Margaret owned the cottage, along with her sisters in
Donaghadee.
The house next
door (now no.5) was then also “single storey with attics” and was divided into
two apartments. One was owned by Margaret Cosh and was rented out to Elizabeth
McIntyre, an Irish-born widow and her daughter. The other was owned and lived
in by Grace Shearer, widow of Agnes Shearer’s brother John and her youngest
daughter, also named Grace (see my companion article). Grace senior was living
on an annuity and her daughter worked as a dressmaker.
The two-room
cottage next door (now no. 7) was owned by Andrew McDowell, a railway telegraph
clerk, then living in Coatbridge. Andrew had however been brought up in that
cottage, when it had previously been owned and lived in by his joiner father,
John McDowell and his family. The McDowells, father and sons, became small
landlords and as related in my companion article, three members of the family (including
Andrew) later owned our cottage. Andrew’s tenant in 1885 was John McDowell's father-in-law Andrew Carnochan,
a retired gardener.
Finally on the
west side of the street, the present no. 9, another two-room cottage, was owned
by John Milmine, described as a “supervisor of Inland Revenue”, who lived in
Kings Lynn, Norfolk. This cottage had also previously been his family home; his
father had been a seaman and in 1881 it was still occupied by John’s widowed
mother. By 1891 it was rented out to yet another widow, Agnes Stewart and her
daughters.
Moving to the
east side of the street, we will begin at the house opposite our cottage (now no.
2). It was occupied for some years by a fisherman, William Smith. He hosted a
shifting population of his near relatives, including his widowed sister
Elizabeth Boyd and her daughters, who worked as laundresses. The house had
previously been owned by a Joseph Hudson, who lived in America, but following
his death William Smith appears to have taken ownership of it himself – perhaps
it was left to him in Mr Hudson’s will.
Next door, the
present no. 4 may be said to have been the grandest house in the street, being
owner-occupied by John Wallace, a retired draper; a bachelor who was well-off
enough to employ a live-in domestic servant – one of the few in Portpatrick.
Moving on, the
present no. 6 was divided into four two-room apartments, each of which had a
different owner. One flat was owned by Grace Shearer, who also owned and lived
in half of no. 5. Other owners were Margaret Wallace and Jane Maltman. Each
flat seems to have had a single tenant in 1885, but as mentioned above, some
had previously been much more crowded.
Finally, the
present no.8 was also divided into two apartments, owned by Hugh Alexander, a
boatbuilder and a trustee of the Free Church. He lived in one apartment with
his wife and the other was described as empty in 1885. Following Mr and Mrs
Alexander’s deaths, the house passed to his nephew, William Nibloe, carpenter,
who lived there for a while. By the early 1900’s, however, the house was
described as unoccupied and “ruinous” and it must have been rebuilt some time
afterwards, as it is now of different dimensions to the rest of the terrace.
What can we
learn from this snapshot of Colonel Street in 1885? Well, there is a perhaps
surprising amount of owner-occupation, given that only 10% of Scottish
dwellings were owner-occupied at the time. Most people’s dwellings were small,
often having no more than two rooms and apartments were common, as they were
(and are) in much of Scotland. The
population of Colonel Street reflected that of Portpatrick as a whole:
tradesmen, shopkeepers and a preponderance of women, particularly widows, often
with young families whom they had to support through dressmaking or laundering.
Finally, we can identify complex patterns of ownership; landlords were not (at
that time) local landed gentry, but frequently local tradesmen, often families
involved in the building trade such as the Shearers and the McDowalls.
Colonel Street Today: Continuity and
Change
Colonel Street
today has a timeless appearance, helped by it being a conservation area, with
restrictions on the appearance of buildings. It has not, however, been static
since its original development in 1811. As we have seen, many people have come
and gone over the years and few if any of the houses are in their original
state. Some houses have been demolished and some rebuilt, while others, although
looking as though they could date from the 19th century, are less
than thirty years old.
The biggest
change has of course been in the use to which the eight houses discussed above
are now put. All but one are holiday homes and out of season, Colonel Street is
often nearly deserted. It is difficult to imagine the bustle and noise that
there must have once been, as the ghosts of all those who have lived in the
street over the past two hundred years are now long gone. Colonel Street itself
remains, however and may well clock up another hundred years or more.
Sources & Further Reading
Census returns
and Valuation Rolls available at Scotland’s People
The New Statistical Account of Portpatrick, by the Rev. Andrew Urquhart
Cunningham R
(1993) Portpatrick through the Ages. Wigtown
Free Press.
Griffiths T
& Morton G (eds) (2010) A History of
Everyday Life in Scotland, 1800 – 1900. Edinburgh University Press.
McKenzie J
& Cunningham R (1997) Old Portpatrick.
Stenlake Publishing.
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