The History of a Portpatrick Holiday Cottage

On 18^th April 1867, the Reverend Andrew Urquhart signed a legal document, witnessing the gift by Miss Agnes Shearer of a cottage in Colonel Street, Portpatrick to her three nieces, Agnes, Janet and Margaret Cosh. The Reverend Urquhart was a prominent figure in the village of Portpatrick. A learned and industrious man, interested in natural history as well as the doings of his parishioners, he had been appointed Minister of the Kirk in 1832, but being on the evangelical wing of the church, had resigned in 1843 to join the Free Church, remaining its Minister until his death in 1890. Witnessing the document was a routine task for the Reverend Urquhart, but he would have known Miss Shearer well, as she had been a live-in domestic servant and nurse to his sister-in-law, Miss Jane Minot. He was surely happy to oblige his sister-in-law’s employee by helping her with this transaction.

126 years later, in 1993, Agnes Shearer’s former cottage, now no. 3 Colonel Street (always known in our family as “the Cottage”) was again the subject of a gift, this time by my aunt Barbara Nicholls to myself and my family. We had been visiting the Cottage since 1984 as a guest of Aunt Barbara’s, and since taking ownership we have gained great pleasure from using our cottage as a holiday and weekend home. Our stays there have allowed us to indulge our interest in exploring the history of Portpatrick and the surrounding villages and countryside. In this article, I will consider the history of our cottage and the individuals and families who owned and lived in it.

Origins of the Cottage

In a companion article about the development of Colonel Street, I discuss the creation of that street in 1811. I consider the earliest title deed in our possession, that set out the feuing of land in Colonel Street to John Thomson, mason to enable him to build an 87 foot long dwelling house along the west side of the road. The next title deed in our possession dates from 1824 and records the sale by John Thomson to another local mason, Robert Shearer, of:

“That piece of ground in Colonel Street Portpatrick consisting of twenty three feet nine inches in front including one half of the east gable and on which piece of ground he has built a dwelling house with the angle piece of garden behind the same running back to and marching with Andrew Leech’s feu, bounded on the east by the said street, on the south by the house and garden disponed [sold] by John Thomson, Mason in Portpatrick to Thomas McCracken and on the north by John Gillespie’s tenement”.

This is recognisably our Cottage, angled garden included. John Thomson has clearly divided up his land and sold the components to different individuals. What is not clear is whether his original house was demolished, or whether the phrase “on which piece of ground he [Robert Shearer] has built a dwelling house” refers to the conversion by Robert Shearer of part of Thomson’s original eighty seven foot house into a separate dwelling, preserving the exterior fabric of the former building. It seems unlikely that a house built only thirteen years previously would be demolished, especially considering that the current block along Colonel Street exactly matches the dimensions of John Thomson’s original. The most likely scenario is that Thomson converted his house into four smaller cottages and sold them separately. Perhaps he engaged Robert Shearer to carry out the work, and Shearer created one of the cottages to his own specification, as a dwelling for himself and his family. We can therefore conclude that the Cottage as an entity dates from 1824, but the external fabric (and perhaps some internal features) most likely goes back to 1811.

The opening section of the “feu disposition” by which John Thomson sold the Cottage to Robert Shearer in 1824.

Our Cottage Outside and Inside

The Cottage has a living room and a small kitchen/scullery downstairs and a single, quite large bedroom and a shower room/toilet upstairs. The house and garden walls are built from local Greywacke stone, taken from the quarry at the south of the village (now a car park and picnic area). Greywacke, sometimes called whinstone, is a hard rock, difficult to shape, and the walls are constructed from large rough boulders with smaller pieces of stone, called pinnings, filling the gaps between them. The structure is held together by lime mortar which would have come from limekilns similar to the one still visible on the promenade, next to Campbell’s restaurant. The Cottage’s construction is best seen on the north-facing garden wall, which appears to have never been whitewashed. As directed by the original feu disposition, the roof is of slate tiles.

Detail of the north-facing garden wall, showing the rubble construction. Large greywacke boulders are interspersed with smaller “pinnings”, the whole wall being cemented with lime mortar.

It is unclear how much the interior of the Cottage has been altered over the years. There is evidence from the title deeds that it has had at least two major refurbishments, having been bought by builders in 1895 and 1954 and sold on (for a profit) a year or so later. We do not know, however, what those renovations involved. The internal walls are of wood and we cannot even be sure that the present (pre-shower room) arrangement of rooms is as Robert Shearer devised it. There is, however, no clear evidence of major internal alterations, and mid-nineteenth century census returns state that the cottage had three rooms with windows, as it does today.

Assuming that the rooms were as they are now, and based on other accounts of Scottish village life, we can tentatively reconstruct domestic life in the Cottage in the nineteenth century. The living room fire would have been the focus of the house. It would have had hobs on either side for heating pans and perhaps a spit for roasting meat. It would originally have burnt locally cut peat, which was cheaper than coal. The scullery would have been used for food storage and preparation, and for laundry. There would have been no running water or electricity; water would have come from the ancient St Patrick’s well, situated off nearby Cock Street (now Hill Street), or collected in a rain butt – water shortages would have been unlikely in Portpatrick’s damp climate! Whale oil lamps or tallow candles would have been used for lighting. Washing and bathing would have been done in a tin tub similar to those still hanging on the wall of the “glory hole” (and in use until the mid-nineteen eighties). It is unclear what the toilet arrangements were, but later nineteenth century maps indicate that there may have been a privy in a hut at the bottom of the garden (which at that time sloped down to ground level). It is also unclear what other uses the garden may have been put to, but perhaps it was a “kail yard” for growing vegetables.

We know that at various times several people of differing ages and both sexes lived together in the cottage and the single bedroom may have had box beds, common in Scotland in the period. These were fitted to the wall, with curtains to offer a degree of privacy. The bedroom could at least be kept warm with another open fire.

As time went on improvements were made, though only the most recent can be dated accurately. Old photographs suggest that the dormer window in the bedroom was added between the 1890s and the 1920s. The current living room fireplace appears to date from the 1940s or 1950s. At different times running water and electricity were installed. The soil level of the garden was raised up and a concrete patio constructed, with an outside toilet built on top of it (now demolished). The road-facing wall was rendered with cement, with lines drawn on it to look like stone blocks.

The most important recent improvement was made in 1986 when my Aunt Barbara Nicholls installed the shower room and inside toilet, to the great relief of all visitors. She also installed new windows and double glazing in 1991.

The rather unprepossessing road-facing wall of the Cottage today

The Shearer Family – Tradesmen and Property Owners

When Robert Shearer, Mason, took possession of his newly converted cottage in 1824 he was 60 years old. We know nothing of his life up to that point, other than that he had been born in the neighbouring parish of Stoneykirk in 1764, married his wife Janet in 1795 and had fathered five children. His parents, James and Agnes, are buried in Portpatrick churchyard, where their memorial can still be seen. Robert’s eldest son, James (b 1797) does not feature in our story (perhaps he died young – there was no statutory requirement at the time to record deaths), but the remaining children, Agnes (b 1794), John (b 1805), Matthew (b 1806) and Margaret (b1811) are all involved in the history of the Colonel Street in general and our Cottage in particular.

In 1832, the Reverend Urquhart had just arrived in Portpatrick as Minister of the Kirk, and was keen to get to know his new parishioners and their characteristics. He accordingly carried out an informal census of his parish. The return for our Cottage reads as follows:

Robert Shearer 68 Mason, can read, write and count

Janet Shearer 71 Wife, can read and write

Agnes Shearer 38 Unmarried, Domestic servant, can read and write

Matthew Shearer 36 Unmarried, Weaver, can read, write and count

Note the Reverend Urquhart’s interest in the educational achievements of his parishioners, and the assumption that women did not need to count (I bet they could though!) The occupations of Robert’s two unmarried children are noteworthy. Agnes (whom we have already met) pursued one of the few forms of employment open to Portpatrick women. The main alternatives to service were to be a needlewoman, dressmaker or seamstress, or a laundress. Matthew was a hand loom weaver. The Reverend Urquhart’s 1838 Statistical Account mentions that there were a number of “customer weavers” in Portpatrick at that time, employed by local needlewomen to weave cloth for them to sew. We do not know where Matthew kept his loom; there was surely no room for it in the cottage and it is likely that he and other weavers rented space elsewhere in the village to form a small “factory”, an arrangement that was made elsewhere in Scotland. The advent of mechanised weaving meant that hand loom weaving was a dying trade, and by the end of his life Matthew appears to have earned his living as a labourer.

The Cottage appears crowded, with four adults living in it, but crowding was a fact of life for the less well off in Victorian times. The first official census, in 1841, lists no fewer than 96 people living in Colonel Street, in no more than a dozen separate houses, several of which were divided into flats. By these standards the Cottage, with its large bedroom and separate scullery, would surely have felt pleasantly spacious. (I am writing these words in the Cottage living room in winter, and Colonel Street is virtually deserted, for the large majority of its houses are now holiday homes, and it is out of season. It is difficult to imagine the noise and bustle there must have once been, and in particular the number of children).

In 1835 Robert, then 71, passed ownership of the Cottage to his eldest daughter, Agnes. Presumably he felt his days were numbered, but in the event he lived on in the Cottage for another 18 years. By 1841 Robert’s wife Janet had died, but there were still four people living in the Cottage, for Robert’s elder sister Margaret, then 87, had moved in with Robert, Agnes and Matthew. It seems likely that in practice Agnes’s main occupation at that time was looking after her elderly father and aunt. Margaret died in 1842, and is commemorated on the family tombstone in the Kirkyard.

Robert’s other children were both married. His second son John was a shoemaker. In 1841 John, then 37, was living and working in the little hamlet of Larbrax, a few miles north of Portpatrick, with his wife Grace, five young children and a 15 year old apprentice. Shoemakers (souters) were respected and invaluable members of village society, and John would have had a workshop attached to his dwelling. For a hint of the way that John Shearer may have lived and worked, visit SouterJohnnie’s Cottage in Kirkoswald, South Ayrshire, owned by the National Trust for Scotland .

Robert’s other daughter Margaret was married to John Cosh. In 1841 she was also living in Colonel Street with four young children: James, Janet, Margaret and Agnes. Her husband was listed as “absent”, but he had not gone far, for not long afterwards another son was born. By the end of the decade, the Cosh family had moved to Ireland, to Portpatrick’s sister port of Donaghadee. We do not know the reason for this move, but we can speculate. Perhaps John Cosh was a seaman, working on the packet boats that operated a ferry service for the Post Office between Portpatrick and Donaghadee. This could explain his absence from home at the time of the 1841 census. The packet service was removed in 1849, and the seamen who worked on the boats had to find new employment. Perhaps John Cosh found work in Donaghadee, and moved his young family across the North Channel.

By 1851, the living arrangements of the Shearer family had changed again. By this time John Shearer and his family had moved back to Portpatrick, where he continued to work as a shoemaker. They settled in Colonel Street and lived next door to John’s father, having apparently bought the current no. 5 from Thomas McCracken, jointly with his sister Margaret Cosh (who was now widowed). Although comprising just four rooms, the house (still “single storey with attics”) was divided into flats. As well as John and his family, Matthew Shearer was now living in one of the flats and the house was also occupied by another family. John’s wife Grace and their eldest daughter were seamstresses, so presumably were among Matthew’s employers. John continued to work as a shoemaker, but with no room for a workshop, he probably (as became common) carried out his trade in his customers’ houses. Just two people now lived in the Cottage: Robert, now 85 and Agnes.

Robert Shearer died in February 1853 aged 89, the event being noted by a small announcement in the Wigtownshire Free Press. His name was not added to the family memorial and there is evidence that he had left the Established church some years previously, presumably to join the Rev Urquhart in the Free Church. Six months later his shoemaker son John also died, aged 48. In the days before modern life insurance, pensions and state benefits, such early death of the family breadwinner could be devastating and his widow, who still had two school age children, Janet and Grace junior, living with her, must have had to double her dressmaking efforts. She did however retain joint ownership of her house and some years later she also apparently took on shared ownership of another house in Colonel Street.

For a time after these events, no member of the Shearer family lived in our Cottage, though it was still owned by Agnes. Following the death of her father, she appears to have become a live-in domestic servant to others, and in 1861, as mentioned previously, she was working in this role for the Reverend Urqhuart’s sister-in-law Miss Jane Minot, who was living in Main Street, in one of the large houses near the seafront. Jane Minot was a prominent figure in Portpatrick village life. She had been born in Jamaica, as had her sister, the Reverend Urquhart’s second wife Mary, and had recently moved to Portpatrick, where she lived on an inheritance and occupied herself with good works, being particularly active in the local YWCA. She achieved the rare distinction for those days of living to 100, an event noted in the Wigtownshire Free Press in September 1914. The Cottage was presumably rented out while Agnes lived with Miss Minot, though we do not know who was living there at this time.

In 1861 John’s widow Grace and her youngest daughter, Grace junior, were still living in the current no. 5 Colonel Street which was home to a total of 11 people (still in just four rooms), including her brother-in-law Matthew, described as a “boarder”. Grace’s other children had by now all left home and most had apparently left Portpatrick, though one would later return.

In the mid-1860s there was another change in Agnes Shearer’s domestic circumstances, for she returned to live in the Cottage, and her niece, John and Margaret Cosh’s 30 year old daughter Margaret junior, came from Donaghadee to live with her. Margaret was unmarried, but she was accompanied by her young daughter, another Margaret. We can only guess at the family discussions that led to this move: had Margaret and her illegitimate daughter been sent away from home in shame to live with her elderly aunt? Whatever, the discussions must have included the question of ownership of the Cottage, for in 1867 Agnes, now 73, passed on ownership to her niece Margaret Cosh, along with Margaret’s sisters Agnes and Janet, who were still living in Donaghadee (this was the transaction witnessed by the Reverend Urquhart).

Agnes, by now retired, her niece Margaret and Margaret’s daughter settled down to life in the Cottage. Margaret took up the local trade of dressmaking, and when her daughter left school she did so as well. The threesome lived together for nearly twenty years, for neither Margaret married in Portpatrick and Agnes proved as long-lived as her father. She finally died in 1884 aged 89, and some time following her death Margaret and daughter returned to Donaghadee, where Maggie junior married a grocer and had her mother live with her and her new family. Margaret Cosh's sisters Agnes and Janet were still living together in Donaghadee and the three sisters continued to own the cottage until 1895.

What became of the other members of Robert Shearer’s family? His son Matthew continued to live in the current no. 5 Colonel Street. He died there in 1873, aged 67. He consistently described himself in census returns as a weaver, though the record of his death has him as a labourer. Grace and her daughter lived on in Colonel Street; Grace senior dying in 1884, aged 81. Despite inheriting the family property, Grace junior may have fallen on hard times, for she died in 1905, aged 56, in Wigtownshire Poorhouse. Later in the 19^th century, John and Grace’s share of no.5 Colonel Street was acquired by their son William, now living and working as a carpenter in Glasgow.

As mentioned above, one of John and Grace’s children who had moved away later came back. Their second youngest daughter, Janet, married a local mason, John Leitch, and they emigrated to New York and raised a family. However, John Leitch died young and his widow and family moved back to Portpatrick. In 1891 Janet was a seamstress, living with three children in St Patrick Street, while in 1901 she was a boarding house keeper in Main Street, near the sea front. In J.D. Mackenzie and R.R.Cunningham’s book Old Portpatrick (p41), there is an early twentieth century picture of the two cottages situated on their own in front of the Downshire Arms hotel. The caption states, “In the [seaward] cottage, Mrs Leich [sic] made plum duff and sold it for 1d per slice”. This may well have been Janet, making ends meet the best she could.

One of Janet Leitch’s daughters, another Grace, followed her aunt Agnes Shearer as a live-in servant to Jane Minot, who by 1891 was living in a large detached house called Braefield, near the current Fernhill Hotel. Miss Minot encouraged Grace Leitch to join the YWCA, and she became a leading light in the local branch of that organisation. In 1924 the Wigtownshire Free Press reported a commemorative meeting and presentation to Grace to mark her leaving the YWCA and Portpatrick to return to America – this time to get married. She left behind her 79 year old mother, who lived on until 1929, dying aged 84 in a house called Gorsebank, on Heugh Road. Thus ended the Shearer family’s connection with Portpatrick – 105 years after Janet’s grandfather Robert had built his dwelling house in Colonel Street.

Later Owners and Occupiers of our Cottage

As mentioned above, some time following Agnes Shearer’s death in 1884, Margaret Cosh and her daughter returned to Ireland, but retained ownership of the cottage. The cottage was rented out and for some years was occupied by Jane Laing, a single mother who worked as a laundress. Jane Laing’s interesting story will be told in another article. The three Cosh sisters eventually sold the Cottage in 1895 – the first time money had changed hands for its title deeds in 71 years. Remarkably, the amount they received was £45, exactly the same as their grandfather Robert had paid John Thomson all those years previously (a sale today, 126 years later, would raise more than 1,000 times that amount!)

The purchaser was a local joiner, John McDowall, who features in my article about Colonel Street, having previously lived with his family in the present no. 7. He was currently living with his family in Dinvin Street. After 71 years, the Cottage was evidently in need of refurbishment, though we do not know precisely what work was carried out. Next year John McDowall sold it to his 24 year old son James, a marine engineer. Although the Cottage’s value must have improved as a result of John’s efforts the price was the same as John paid, a gesture of generosity to his son. James continued to rent out the cottage to Jane Laing and she was still living there when James sold it to his brother Andrew, a railway telegraph clerk living in Carstairs, who also owned the previous family home at 7 Colonel Street. James made a tidy profit on the sale, the Cottage changing hands for £70.

By 1905, Jane Laing had moved to a flat in South Crescent and the cottage was occupied by Jane Smith, who, as mentioned in my article about Colonel Street, had lived in Portpatrick all her life (including a prior spell in an apartment in Colonel Street). In 1909, aged 70, she bought the cottage from Andrew McDowell for £100 and lived there until her death in 1918. The story of Jane Smith and her sea-faring family will also be told in another article.

In her will, Jane Smith left the cottage to her niece’s husband Samuel Balfour, an engine driver who lived in Stranraer. He rented it out mainly, it seems, to widows, including a Mrs Elizabeth Anderson. In 1930, he sold it for £135 to Margaret Laing, wife of William Laing, a railway telegraph supervisor of Perth and son of Jane Laing – the cottage’s former tenant. Margaret Laing owned the cottage for 24 years until 1954, renting it to Jane Laing's eldest daughter, Annie McMurray. Thus did the small world of Portpatrick revolve.

 In 1954, following Annie McMurray's death, Margaret Laing sold the cottage to a joiner, Allan Auld Rankin, who was at the time living elsewhere in Colonel Street. Mrs Laing made a loss on the sale, receiving just £100. Evidently Rankin bought the Cottage with the aim of renovating it and selling it on, though as mentioned earlier we don’t know exactly what improvements he made. I suspect, however that the patio and brick-built outside toilet (now demolished) date from this time. Rankin made a tidy profit for his efforts, selling the Cottage less than a year later to Mrs Margaret Fraser of Port Logan for £200. Mrs Fraser in turn owned the Cottage for just a year, before selling it to the first member of my family to own it, my Great-Aunt Elsie Dicks.

Auntie Elsie, widow of my Mother’s uncle, Valentine Frank Dicks, owned the cottage until her death in 1966. The tale of Frank and Elsie Dicks and their son Peter, taking in two world wars, will also be told in another article.

Inside, the Cottage retains many old features. Elsie Dicks, who lived there between 1956 and 1966, would recognise the kitchen sink – but not the water heater, which was not installed until 1970!

Following Elsie Dicks’ death, the cottage was bought by her niece and my Aunt, the late Barbara Nicholls MBE, for the princely sum of £250. Thus began the Cottage’s long period of use as a holiday home. Aunt Barbara herself visited regularly from London, and at other times let family and friends stay for a nominal rent. The first time my wife and I stayed at the Cottage was for our honeymoon in 1984. At that time, the Cottage was much as it had been in Elsie Dicks’ day, and we married at the end of October. The combination of Portpatrick’s bracing November weather combined with the delights of an outside loo and a tin bath in front of the fire were doubtless a good test of our relationship!

Barbara Nicholls MBE, owner of the Cottage 1966 – 1993 (photo taken Christmas 2008).

Happily our marriage survived the rigours of our Cottage honeymoon, and when we moved from London to Lancashire we became my aunt’s most regular customers, so much so that in 1993 Barbara Nicholls gifted the Cottage to me and my family. Aunt Barbara continued to visit the Cottage herself, driving there on her own from her retirement home in Chester when well into her eighties. Following her death at the age of 89, my family paid for a commemorative bench on the sea front, at the end of Barrack Street.

If the Cottage was indeed originally part of John Thomson’s first house in Colonel Street, it celebrated its 200^th birthday in 2011. It is showing its age, but for us that is a large part of its charm and character. It is now only one of many holiday homes in and around Portpatrick. Some would say that the spread of holiday cottages is a cancer that is slowly killing the village, but tourism has been Portpatrick’s raison d’etre since the early 1900s. Hopefully visitors like ourselves can continue to co-exist with a thriving local population.

Who will own the Cottage next? Already our older children have begun to stay at the Cottage not with us, but with their friends and partners. At the time of writing the Cottage has been in my family for 60 years – how much longer will this spell of ownership last? Time will tell. We can assume that its future is likely to be as a holiday cottage whoever owns it in years to come. Perhaps, however, this little account will remind us that over the past 200 years our Cottage has been home to many people who have lived, worked and died in this far corner of Scotland.

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.