A FITTING addition to this volume has been found in the sketch of the Trongate and the Cross taken in 1774 by James Brown, merchant in Glasgow. (1) This sketch portrays the true centre of Glasgow and the headquarters of those old merchants who owned so many of these hundred old houses.
We must attempt some description of it. But the pen has dropped from the hand that could have done justice to it. To John Buchanan this was familiar, almost holy ground. He knew every land and doss and wynd : he knew who had built, and who owned them : he knew who rented the shops, and who lived in the flats above : and he would have wakened them with a loving hand, and set all the busy life of 1774 once more astir.
Had St. Mungo had any thought of founding a great city, he would not have settled in the out-of-the-way rocky glen of the Molendinar. The little Cathedral town that grew up round the missionary's grave could hardly have outgrown Dunblane or at most St. Andrew's : and to this day the stranger who from the opposite bank looks down on the church of St. Mungo, standing alone in its quiet graveyard, with rough vacant ground right and left, would not guess that he was looking on the Ile de la cité of a greater city than the Paris of Mirabeau and Danton. The natural centre of the district was here, at the crossing of its two main roads, the road across Clyde and the road along Clyde, with the river close by, and the level strath around. To this point the Cross naturally slipped down from its old site on the Bell of the Brae : round this the population gathered : here our old merchants pitched their headquarters : and it would have seemed in 1774 less likely that they should ever shift to the swamps and cabbage gardens of the Cow Lone than it seems now that Peden's prophecy should come true, and the Cross of Glasgow be one day set up on Drumo'er Hill. (2)
The view will be readily recognized by the two steeples, the Tontine, and our old friend King William. But it looks more like a market place than a street : there is so little wheeled traffic or arrangement for it. There are no foot pavements : the people straggle or stand in groups all over : a sergeant is drilling his men : old women sit on creepies beside their cramis or their creels : and the street is encumbered by Bailie Auchincloss the cooper's wares, and by a huge well, one of M'Ure's "16 public wells which serves the city day and night as need requires." Meantime an unlucky cavalier is performing a pas seul near King William : one little cart is discharging sacks : the one huge caravan of an extinct species may be James Yates' "Newcastle wagon" starting on his three weeks' journey with Glasgow lawns and checks for the London market : in the one post chaise, it may be, are two Western lairds who have just left the "Saracen's Head" for home, or two Virginia Dons hurrying to meet their ship, just reported at Port-Glasgow or the Tail of the Bank, with tobacco from the James or the Potomac and the latest news of the Rebels.
Besides the steeples the Tontine and King William, five of James Brown's buildings are still standing: the tall block with the club skews west of the Tontine, and four on the opposite side of the street, viz., the one on the right hand corner of the sketch, and the three beyond King Street. The westmost of these three, the one at the corner of King Street, was MacNair's land (the property of the famous Robert MacNair of Jeanfield, and in which was the office of the Glasgow Mercury). The eastmost of the three, shown as three stories high, has since grown two stories higher. Beyond these three, two low buildings clinging to the Tron Steeple choke the Trongate, as the Edinburgh Luckenbooths used to choke the Lawnmarket. There had been many such strictures on our main artery, which had been removed by the patient pressure of the Magistrates : these two were only finally cut away in our own day. In them were Alston's silk shop and Shearer's cloth shop : the projecting sign may be meant for a fleecy sheep over Shearer's door. Behind them was the General Session House, in which Dr. Chalmers spent many an hour, organizing his campaign of Christian philanthrophy, reasoning, exhorting, breathing into plump elders something of his own fire.
On the left of the sketch, at the south-west corner of Candleriggs, the building with the porch projecting into the street is the Guard House or Main Guard. There were no Barracks, it must be remembered, in those days, and the soldiers were billeted : there was no Police Act, and the citizens did the watching : and so a Guard House was necessary as the military and civic headquarters. Its site was several times changed. It had been moved in 1756 to Trongate from the Weel Close in Saltmarket : in 1787 it was removed to the west side of Candleriggs, above the Herb Market : and the tall tenement now standing was built on its site by Bailie Maclehose, grandfather of the late James Hozier of Mauldslie.
The first tall tenement east of Candleriggs is Donald's land, in which Sir John Moore was born, in a small back room on the first floor. This land was rebuilt in 1855, and now forms the drapery shop of Donald & Sellar, no connections, we believe, of the original Donald.
Beyond this will be seen the "Tontine Piazza." There was no Tontine about this well known building when James Brown sketched it, and there is neither Tontine nor Piazza now. It was built in 1736 by the town on ground which was bought from John Graham of Dugaldston, and which seems to have been the site of the dwelling house and office of George Huchesone, founder of the Hospital. On the first floor it contained the Town Hall at the east end, and the Assembly Room at the west end, each occupying five windows to the Trongate - small rooms to our eyes, but a great improvement on the old Town Hall in the Tolbooth and the old dancing quarters in the Bridgegate : on the street floor, behind a Piazza more spacious than usual, were various apartments. In 1781 the Glasgow Tontine Society was formed, and built behind this Town Hall or Piazza Building, a Hotel, and a Coffee Room or News Room with a new Assembly Room above it. The Society acquired at the same time the Piazza property, excepting the Town Hall : they carved their Hotel's best front parlours out of the old Assembly Room : they gutted the street floor, gouffed out the heavy mid-gable, and supported it by coupled columns (which are still standing, though they now support nothing), and extended the original Piazza, right to the back wall of the original structure. The new buildings and the old were cleverly dovetailed together, and the whole block formed for many a day both the commercial and the social headquarters of Glasgow. In 1861 the Tontine fell in to Mrs. Douglas of Orbiston. She died in 1862, and in 1864 her trustees sold the property for £7,000 to Sir James Watson and seven other good citizens, who had formed themselves into a self-denying syndicate. Their object was to do for the city something of the work since taken up by the city itself. They were to buy up and reconstruct property in and round the dreadful old Tontine doss : they were to share the risk and trouble; but they foreswore all profit. The syndicate afterwards transferred to the Improvement Trust the whole of their purchases, at prime cost, far less than their then value. How these good citizens were treated, what pains were taken to frighten others from doing the town a like service, will not soon be forgotten. The city, who thus re-entered on their old Piazza property, have converted the whole into a great drapery warehouse - Town Hall and Coffee Room, old and new Assembly Rooms, Hotel and all. The old arches of the Piazza are now shopwindows, and the space behind, the shelter of our old merchants in rough weather, the happy hunting field of recruiting sergeants, the salle da pas perdus of many a poor soul out of place and out of luck, is filled up with counters and show cases. (3)
Beyond the Piazza building, at the very heart of Glasgow, is dimly seen the Tolbooth. This famous building has disappeared, all but the steeple. (4) It was but 66 feet by 25, but it may interest us (on whom public offices and prisons measure their claims by the acre and the £100,000) to know that in those simple days of our commonwealth, the Tolbooth accommodated both the Government and the Opposition : for below were the offices of the Town Clerk, Collector, and other officials, the Council Room, (5) and the Justiciary Court, and above was the prison. The Tolbooth Steeple played an important part in the jurisprudence of the period. Its High Street face was cheerfully garnished with spikes for the heads of traitors and other first-class misdemeanants. Commoner criminals were hung against its Trongate face. A scaffold was raised for them to the height of the first floor, facing appropriately down the Gallowgate, and the prisoner was brought out from the Tolbooth by a little window door, which, in these good old times, was as constantly open as the Temple of Janus. Below this, on the level of the street, a low half door (6) led direct to the prison, by a turnpike stair in the steeple. It was by this stair that Francis Osbaldiston and his mysterious guide made their way to the unfortunate Owen. A sentry used afterwards to be posted just to the west of the entrance door, no doubt as a check on the successors of the faithless Dougal Cratur.
West of this sentry's box a great outside stair led to the first floor of the Tolbooth. It was known as the "broad stair," and its breadth, after Drumclog, saved some of Clavers' men from the Covenanters' bullets. This stair - an addition to the original plan - was first built with a single flight landing at the west end of the Tolbooth. Afterwards, when double stairs had set in, it was rebuilt with two flights, landing in the middle of the building. Above the landing was the inscription:-
HAEC DOMUS ODIT AMAT PUNIT CONSERVAT HONORAT
NEQUITIAM PACEM CRIMINA JURA PROBOS.
On the landing lewd fellows and females of the baser sort did penance, with their iniquities placarded on their breast. And here, on each 4th of June, for fifty years and more, the Provost and Magistrates stood in state for King George's birth-day, drank his majesty's health, and threw the empty glasses to the loyal crowd below. Some old folk must still remember these grand doings. But for our sakes who have never known any jour de l'an but the Derby day, it would have been well if James Brown had sketched the antiquated scene at the "broad stairs."
The same spot was long the daily witness of a scene still stranger to our eyes. It was at its best in 1774. We wish James Brown had given it to us.
In front of the Piazza and the Tolbooth, a part of the street was marked off by a row of low stone pillars, exactly in line with the outer or south side of King William, and was paved with flat slabs or "plane stanes." The space so marked off and paved was "the Exchange." To this point daily, as the Tolbooth chimes rang out the hour of 'Change, (7) the traders of the place might have been seen gathering from the Trongate or Gallowgate, High Street or Saltmarket. Conspicuous among them are some who wear scarlet cloaks. (8) The others respectfully make way for these, who pass between the low pillars of the Exchange, and pace the plane stanes with their heads as high as Haman. These are the Virginia Dons, the Tobacco Lords, the Glassfords and Cunninghames and the rest of them, who divide among them the great Virginia tobacco trade that is more to Glasgow than any single trade has ever since been. The others, the manufacturers and smaller traders of the place, do not venture inside the sacred enclosure. What business they have amongst themselves they transact as best they may amidst the jostling of passers-by, on the rough causeway of the street. If they wish to have dealings with one of the scarlet cloaks, they take their stand humbly outside the pillars, and wait to catch the great man's eye.
We smile at all this, and wonder how such things could have been. Yet these old Dons were worthy of more consideration than either they or those who stood at their beck imagined. They found Glasgow what it had long been, a place of trade, but a place of trade on the scale of Berwick or Dunbar or Aberbrothick, and they left it fairly started in the race to outstrip every other Scotch, almost every other British port. This Virginia trade was not a thing of petty dues. The merchants of the out-of-the-way Scotch town drove the merchants of Liverpool and Bristol and London, not from the Scotch market only, but almost from the English market and the Continental. In 1774, when James Brown sketched the Trongate, more than half of all the Virginia trade was in Glasgow hands. Next year the colonies revolted, and the Virginia trade was ruined, and it seemed as if Glasgow must be ruined too. But the true resources of a people are in themselves. Glasgow had caught the mercantile spirit, she kept the start that these old tobacco lords gave her, and she owes it in some sort to them that she is at once the centre of such widespread commerce and the seat of such vast and varied industry.
Four young men have the credit of having specially helped to make the Virginia trade what it was, and so to make Glasgow what it is: John Glassford, William Cunningham, Alexander Speirs, and James Ritchie. (9) Of these four, John Glassford was the foremost. Even now, after a hundred years, he stands out from the dim crowd, a conspicuous and splendid figure. In his own Virginia business he owned and sailed a fleet of 25 ships, he traded for half a million in the year, he supplied the English market, and contracted with the French Government. But his Virginia business was only one of his undertakings. He founded the Cudbear works, well known afterwards as "M'Intosh's secret works." He was chief partner of the Glasgow Tanwork Co., perhaps the largest business of its kind then in existence. He was a partner in Provost Ingram's Pollockshaws field, the earliest of our printworks. He was a foremost and a leading partner, first of the Glasgow Arms Bank, and then of the Thistle bank. And these were not all his ventures. Truly a great merchant - probably, for his opportunities, the greatest merchant Glasgow has ever had.
As little was his style of living like the Glasgow of his day. When still a young man he feued Whitehill, and with its stately mansion, and its 30 walled-in acres of garden and park sloping south to the Carntyne Lone, he made it the finest villa that Glasgow had seen. It had one drawback. There was no Duke Street then, and the only way into Glasgow was the up and down and roundabout route by the Drygate and High Street. This would never do for John Glassford. So a strip was bought, and a private road was formed, right across the Gallowmuir from the Carntyne Lone to the Gallowgate, and then the Whitehill coach drove straight to the Glassford counting-house in the Trongate. Later on, as his fortunes rose, he had for his town house the famous Shawfield Mansion, and for his country seat, the ancient patrimony of the Grahames of Dugaldston. From the remains that can be traced and the traditions that still linger at Dugaldston, we can see the magnificence of the man. (10) He planted and he laid out, he built a great mansion, and in the grounds a smaller house for banquets, he surrounded a garden of eight acres with a massy wall, he dammed up two lakes, he walled in a deer park, he drove four horses in his carriage, he patronised the arts, he lived high, and he married high, a Baronet's daughter and then an Earl's, he bought more land, he entailed, and he died, having done his best to found a family that should keep his name alive. But it all came to nothing. The Cunninghames, the Speirs, and the Ritchies are still conspicuous among our landed gentry. But the Glassfords are gone. (11) Their heirs are seeking to found a new fortune on the other side of the globe, and Dugaldston has passed to a great merchant of our own day, enriched by trade to distant markets that John Glassford probably never heard of, but yet helped to open up.
(1) James Brown, one of the Browns of Broadstone near Beith, was born at Beith in 1749, and died in Glasgow in 1808. He married Jane Euing, daughter of William Euing, Deacon Convener in 1774 (the year of the sketch), and grandfather of the late James Smith of Jordanhill and the late William Euing, men alike upright kindly and accomplished. James Brown and Jane Euing had (besides Francis, who married Elizabeth Smith, sister of John Smith of Crutherland, LL.D., and left one child, Mary, wife of Alexander MacDuff of Bonhard) two sons, well known and worthy citizens.
I. ROBERT BROWN of Fairlie, who was noted for sharing his cousin James Smith's passion for yachting and his cousin William Euing's passion for music. He married Anne Rainy, sister of the late Professor Harry Rainy, and left one son, George, the esteemed Free Church minister of Pau, and one daughter, Anne, widow of the Rev. C. C. Mackintosh of Dunoon. He died at Fairlie in 1873, aged 84.
II. WILLIAM BROWN, late of Kilmardinny, who by his wife Jane, daughter of Charles Wilsone, M.D., had two sons, James (married first Agnes, daughter of Andrew Ranken, and second Mary, daughter of R. A. Oswald) and Charles Wilsone (married first Ellen, daughter of Walter Buchanan of Shandon, M. P., second Annie, daughter of Michael Rowand of Linthouse, third Patience, widow of Henry Swinfen of Swinfen).
Mr. Brown, who was born 5th December 1792, still, in his 86th year, preserves all his faculties, including a quick and accurate memory of old times in Glasgow. He is himself a link with these. He is the oldest of our past Deans of Guild, the last left of the old Pre-Reform self-electing Town Council, and probably the last survivor of that famous band of elders and deacons with whom Dr. Chalmers fought his great fight with pauperism.
If the Browns are a long lived race, they may trace this to the old Deacon Convener's wife, Isabella Reid, aunt to Senex. She lived herself to be 82 (nothing for a Reid) : we all remember her grandson William Euing's tall figure, unbent by 86 years : and under "Whitehill" will be found a note of the great age of her Jordanhill grandchildren and of their mother Isabella Euing, a centenarian whom even Sir George Lewis would have owned as genuine.
(2) Dramo'er Hill (said to be so called became "randie gangrel bodies" were here drummed out of the town) is at the far end of Anderston or Cranstonhill. The recent name of "Peden's Cross" is an allusion to the old prophecy.
(3) We have given the ordinary account of the origin of this Piazza building. But there is some confusion about it, which an unemployed antiquary might redd up. The actual Assembly Room seems to have been built not about 1736 by the town, but about 1760 by subscriptions from the dancing public. The subscribers afterwards joined the town in the transfer to the Tontine Society, apparently on the understanding that the Society should build a new Assembly Room; and the Society over the Tontine Coffee Room built the Tontine Assembly Room. These two Rooms, much thought of in their day, still survive intact, having been swallowed whole by the Tontine Drapery House. Assembly Room No. II. was in its turn superseded by Assembly Room No. III., now the Athenaeum in Ingram Street. This also was built by a Tontine Society. Tontines were a favourite form of speculation with our grandfathers. But they are much too slow for a race that has not patience for long whist.
In Stirling's Library is a MS. book (one of many gifts from the late James Bogle) headed "Assembly Book - Robert Bogle's Accounts from Feby. 1758 to April 1763." This gives a list of the original subscribers to Assembly Room No. I. The subscriptions run from Ten Guineas (with which Sir John Maxwell heads the list) to One. Only four give Twenty Guineas - William M'Dowall, Daniel Campbell of Shawfield, General Campbell, and James Milliken, Esq. Robert Bogle's Accounts, however, end with a balance on hand of £9, 00s. 4d.," after all payments, "for building Assembly Room, and for finishing and furnishing same." The sums paid to the different tradesmen are given - Widow Cross, undertaker for mason work; Thos. Clayton, for plaister and stocco work; Dreghorn & Bogle for wright work, &c. The whole came to only £1502, 16s. 4d. But both the day's wage and the day's darg were on a very different scale in those days from ours. As late as 1777, Gibson, a trustworthy writer, says the average Glasgow mechanic had 7s. a week, and lived comfortably on it. His menu was certainly simple - porridge with milk or small beer for breakfast and supper, herrings and potatoes for dinner. Gibson tells us apoplexy was rare in those days. Small blame to it.
Among Robert Bogle's payments is £15 to Mungo Nasmyth, carver of the famous Tontine Faces, clever copies of classical masks. During the reconstruction of the Tontine, these Faces mysteriously disappeared. But they are still to the fore, and we take the opportunity to put on record exactly where they now are. They form keystones in the arched windows in the court front of Fraser, Sons & Co.'s place in Buchanan Street. There are thirteen of these windows, four in the west and nine in the south elevation, and there were only ten windows at the Tontine. The ten heads in the four windows in the west and the six westmost windows in the south elevation are our old friends : the heads in the other three windows are modern.
(4) The steeple was very near disappearing too. Its destruction was formally considered by the Town Council, and it was only by 15 to 9 that they did finally, on 4th May, 1814, "resolve that the old steeple at the Cross be preserved, supported, and repaired." This was after the Tolbooth itself had been taken down. It had been sold in 1812 to James Cleland, LL.D., for £8,000. The town's sale of the Tolbooth to Dr. Cleland reserved the right of an entry through his new tenement to the Town Hall, which had been reserved in the town's sale of the Piazza building to the Tontine Society.
(5) This Tolbooth Council Room was adorned with those Royal Portraits from King James downwards, that still look down on us from the Corporation walls, and the Conscript Fathers sat round the "fine large Oval Table" that now does duty at lunch-time at the Circuit Court when the Lords come round. The Tolbooth was built in 1626, on the site of an older "Praetorium."
(6) This postern has been amplified into the existing through-gang to the High Street. The turnpike stair still exists in what dilapidated state. At each landing built-up doors mark the old entrance from it to the prison.
(7) A fixed hour for 'Change was only resumed in our own day after having entirely dropped out of use. The convenient arrangement was in full force a hundred years ago. with musical accompaniment.
But hark ! the music bells are ringing
At Glasgow Cross.
'Tween twa and three, wi' daily care,
The gentry to the cross repair :
The politician wi' grave air
Deliberating :
Merchants and manufact'rers there
Negotiating.
M'Ure vaunts the "curious sett of chymes and tuneable bells" at the Tolbooth. Glasgow was famous in this line:-
Glasgow for bells,
Lithgow for wells,
Falkirk for beans and pease,
Edinbro' for ______ and thieves.
(8) Some of these famous cloaks must surely exist in the hands of their wearers' representatives. If so, the owners would give some innocent pleasure by letting a specimen or two be seen in the Kelvingrove Museum. From an old picture of the Trongate in Professor Cowan's possession, they seem to have been very like the extinct pattern of our College gowns, with small capes and hanging sleeves. It is strange that there seems to be no history of the curious fashion of these cloaks, when and whence they came, by whom and by what right they were worn, nor even when and how they disappeared.
(9) Their success was due to themselves, for the four had not £10,000 among them. But none of them 'rose from the ranks.'
John Glassford was son to James Glassford, a Magistrate in Paisley.
William Cunninghame was second son to Alexander Cunninghame of Brighouse in Ayrshire, to which property he succeeded through the death of his elder brother, the Rev. John Cunninghame.
Alexander Speirs was son to John Speirs, merchant in Edinburgh, and. Isabel Tweedie, only daughter of John Tweedie, Provost of Peebles.
Of the four, James Ritchie was the only native of Glasgow. He was son to John Ritchie of Craigton, and represented a family who were well established Burgesses here at least two centuries ago.
Paisley is noted rather for the shrewdness and caution, than for the ambition of her sons. But we owe to her in our own day, a merchant as conspicuous for ability and daring as John Glassford himself.
(10) The mansion house was burnt down many years ago. It seems to have had 100 feet of front, with two tall wings at right angles. One of these is still standing, and contains the ample old wine cellar. The banqueting house bears also the ominous name of the "Gaming House." It is a very solid structure, and stands above a capacious ice house. One stretch of the massy garden wall is pierced with flues, and there are appearances as if flues had been carried under the adjoining border to heat the soil. The curious "Roundle," with its picturesque wall of pine, is said to have been the ring for exercising horses. The whole thing is very striking when we consider the general poverty of Scotland at the time. The truth is that this Virginia trade was in few hands, and during the short time that it was at its height (say from 1750 to the American War) large fortunes were made rapidly. There was nothing like it in this respect till the rapid development of the iron trade in the years following the Hot Blast.
(11) But John Glassford alone, of the four, is commemorated in our street nomenclature. Glassford Street is called after him, having been formed on the site of the Shawfield Mansion and its great garden. This was John Glassford's favourite residence, and he died here on 27th August 1783. He had bought it from William MacDowall of Castle-Semple, in 1760, for 1700 guineas. His son, Henry Glassford, sold it in 1792 to William Horn, Builder, for £9,850. There were 15,000 square yards. What would they fetch now? The house stood exactly in the middle of Glassford Street, facing Trongate, and a little back from the street with a gravelled court in front. William MacDowall added two wings built forward to the line of Trongate, and reserved these in his sale to John Glassford. The eastmost of these is still standing at the corner of Glassford Street. For a fuller account of this, the most famous of Glasgow town houses, see J. B.'s most interesting paper in "Glasgow Past and Present", p 176.
AUGUST, 1878
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