Perceptions of Water in Britain from Early Modern Times to the Present:
An Introduction
Karen V. Lykke Syse & Terje Oestigaard (eds.).
Perceptions of Water in Britain from
Early Modern Times to the Present:
An Introduction
Karen V. Lykke Syse & Terje Oestigaard (eds.).
© BRIC Press 2010
University of Bergen
Bergen
Uni Global
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Perceptions of Water in Britain from Early Modern Times to the Present:
An Introduction
2010
Karen V. Lykke Syse & Terje Oestigaard (eds.).
Individual chapters copyright © 2010 Terje Oestigaard, Karen V. Lykke
Syse, Richard Coopey, Justin Carter and Jill Payne
Layout: Terje Oestigaard
Cover photo: Rune Østigård
Printed by Xpress24, Steinkjer. www.xpress24.no
ISBN 978‐82‐7453‐081‐2
Acknowledgements
First and foremost we would like to thank Terje Tvedt for
inviting us to be part of the research group ‘Understanding the
role of water in history and development’ at the Centre for
Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and
Letters, University of Oslo, 2008/2009. Moreover, we would like
to thank the rest of the research group, which consisted of
Graham Chapman, Richard Coopey, Roar Hagen, Eva Jakobsson,
Armando J. Lamadrid and Nina Witoszek. We would also like to
express our gratitude to the staff at CAS; Willy Østreng, the
director, together with Maria M. L. Sætre, Trude Gran Peters and
Marit Finnemyhr Strøm, who created the stimulating research
environment in which it has been our great pleasure to work. We
would like to thank the contributors to this book, who
participated in a research seminar held at CAS, January 26‐27,
2009, where we had inspiring discussions. Finally, we would like
to thank Jill Payne, who worked her way painstakingly through
the text, picking up typos, grammatical errors and
inconsistencies. Your contribution has been invaluable!
Karen V. Lykke Syse & Terje Oestigaard
Oslo and Bergen, April 30, 2010
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
9
Karen V. Lykke Syse & Terje Oestigaard
The Topography of Holy Water in England
after the Reformation
15
Terje Oestigaard
Ideas of Leisure, Pleasure and the River in
Early Modern England
35
Karen V. Lykke Syse
A River Does Indeed Run Through It:
Angling and Society in Britain Since 1800
59
Richard Coopey
Searching For The Molendinar –
Unearthing Glasgow’s Hidden Past
83
Justin Carter
Constructing a ‘Wild Land’ Cultural
Heritage for Britain: ‘Water’, ‘Wilderness’ and
Development in the Highlands of Scotland
Jill Payne
117
Introduction
Karen V. Lykke Syse and Terje Oestigaard
The overall aim of the research group ‘Understanding the Role of
Water in History and Development’ was to consider why the
initial phases of the Industrial Revolution (c. 1760s‐1820s) took
place in Northwest Europe in general and in England in
particular. With the Industrial Revolution, the ‘West’ established
an economic lead that has shaped the world ever since. At the
outset, however, it was not at all inevitable that the Industrial
Revolution should have originated in the northern reaches of
Europe rather than in, for instance, China or India (Tvedt 2010a,
2010b).
The analysis of water systems in general and during the
Industrial Revolution in particular can be understood to consist
of three interconnected layers. The first layer can be understood
to address the physical form and behaviour of actual
waterscapes. This can include precipitation, evaporation, how
rivers run within the landscape and how much water they
contain at a given time of the year, the relationship between
rivers and the sea, and the development patterns to which these
physical structures may give rise. Historically, variations in
physical space have been of the utmost importance where
development is concerned. The second analytical layer addresses
human modifications and adaptations to the actual water‐
worlds. The ways in which people in different societies have
utilised water in the creation of social opportunity, and how
modifications have limited the physical constrains of scarce
water resources, have at all times structured societies and their
future development. The third and final analytical layer
addresses cultural concepts and ideas of water and water
systems. Management practices, control of water and ways in
which humans engage with their water‐worlds are intrinsic
aspects of culture and cosmology. As a result, perceptions of
9
water influence the technological use and development of water
systems (Tvedt 2010a, 2010b). The first two layers relating to
complex and multifunctional water systems are not the main
topic of this book; here, it is mainly the third level that will be
addressed: perceptions of water in Britain from early modern
times to the present, spanning the era in which the Industrial
Revolution took place.
All societies and social systems have a hydraulic dimension,
and water has been and still is an integral part of social
interactions and perceptions of worldviews and religions, but
few works have been published on the ideas and perceptions of
water. Cultural and religious ideas about water structure society,
technological developments and understandings of nature. The
world people live in, adapt to and exploit, on the one hand, and,
on the other hand, the physical restrictions and ecological
limitations they face can be understood as different water
landscapes. Scenarios in which there is too little or too much
water, when the seasonal rains arrive (or fail to), and different
climatic zones such as deserts, savannas and arctic areas, all
present different waterscapes where the water itself is in
constant flux (Tvedt & Oestigaard 2010).
Society is structured, therefore, by varying perceptions of
different waterscapes, and a range of cultural understandings
relating to the potential use, adaption and change of various
water‐worlds, given the technological know‐how available in
different time periods. Because of this, history’s development
narrative should by rights pivot around water. Water played a
fundamental role in the initial phase of the Industrial Revolution
in England and Western Europe during the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. Thus, one may put forward a new and
opposite theory of social development: ‘the more humans seek to
control water and socialise it, the more power water and
variations in the water landscape will exercise over societies’
(Tvedt & Oestigaard 2010:10).
Water is always located in time‐ and space‐specific contexts
and although from a hydrological point of view the very same
water is used for steam production, bathing and baptism, ideas of
10
water are context‐dependent. Water’s cultural manifestation and
incorporation within society and religion are outcomes of what
were seen to be its specific characteristics at given times and
places. This makes it important to analyse why certain water
categories have been assigned particular characteristics and
qualities at different times in history (Tvedt & Oestigaard 2010).
The specific water‐world within any given historical context
transcends dichotomies such as culture‐nature or society and
religion. All over the world, from everyday activities to religious
ceremonies, water has been an intrinsic factor that unites and
transcends societal and cosmological realms and spheres. Water
is a reality, or more correctly, realities; social, natural and
religious realities. A water‐world is therefore a web of
significance spun by people around water, transforming it from a
natural phenomena to a vital aspect of culture, society and
religion. It reflects diverse aspects of lives lived, where water has
been used within elaborate systems of symbolism, reflecting
conceptualisations of both people themselves, and the world in
which they have lived (Tvedt & Oestigaard 2006).
Consequently, perceptions of water in Britain between early
modern times and the present have taken context‐dependent
forms of particular significance. With the emergence of science
and modernity, social transition meant that older ideas about
water increasingly came under pressure to adapt and change. At
the same time, there was an enduring continuity in perceptions
of and practices relating to water. In this time of syncretism, the
water‐world that formed the backdrop to the Industrial
Revolution remained an important bridge spanning traditions.
This anthology is based upon papers presented at the
workshop ‘Fluid Approaches to History’ held at the Centre for
Advanced Study at the University of Oslo, January 26‐27, 2009,
where the aim was to present current research and discussions
on the relationship between the scientific and technological
developments of the period 1500‐1850, and images and ideas
about water during the same period. Obviously, this is only a
small contribution to a research field deserving of far greater
11
attention; hopefully, it will stimulate more water research in
these and other areas.
The chapters in this book have been ordered chronologically,
beginning with the Reformation and its somewhat ambiguous
influence on the decline of magic, and concluding with the extent
to which pre‐industrial approaches to river‐ and landscape
management continue to shape perceptions of contemporary
watercourses.
Terje Oestigaard focuses on the topography of holy water in
England after the Reformation. Following the Reformation, the
Church aimed to abolish all belief in the magical powers of water,
its ambition being to eradicate the traditional water cult, a cult
that it viewed as diabolic and a testimony to the power of Satan.
However, the development of science in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries brought about an enhanced understanding
of the hydrological cycle. The natural world came to be seen as a
reflection of God's master plan rather than something dangerous,
diabolic and controlled by the Devil. Where religion was
concerned, water played a dual role in the creation of a
topography of holy water that remained highly significant to lay
Christianity long after the Reformation and well into the
industrial period.
Karen V. Lykke Syse explores ideas about water prevalent
during the early modern period in England. She uses the
contested and perhaps anachronistic term ‘leisure’ to analyse the
utilisation of river landscapes. Understanding the multifarious
ways in which rivers have been used and perceived throughout
history is an important aspect of the analysis of the history of
mentality and ideas. Might established ideas about social class
and gender have been somewhat dissolved through the symbolic
liminality of the river? By following the historical development of
three sporting activities; angling, swimming and rowing, Syse
explores the river as an arena for and boundary to enjoyment
within the English riverine and riparian landscape.
Angling is a leisure activity that Richard Coopey explores
with great thoroughness. Using this particular form of recreation
in Britain as a starting point, he emphasises the significance of
12
angling to the ways in which nature has been perceived by
anglers, and the extent to which these perceptions influenced
subsequent environmental thought. Tracing the spatial,
technological and social development of angling, Coopey notes
how nature itself became controlled or engineered by the
anglers. In recent times, anglers’ desire to control nature has
proved beneficial to the many British watercourses that have as
a result been cleaned up and restocked with fish. The visual and
environmental impact of a clean river has positive repercussions
far beyond the local angling club.
The problem of polluted watercourses is considered in depth
by Justin Carter, who presents the aims and results of the
Molendinar Project in Glasgow, Scotland. Unlike rivers that have
been revitalised in the post‐industrial age, the Molendinar
continues to flow in murky darkness. The Molendinar Project set
out to investigate the disappearance of a river at the heart of
Glasgow’s early medieval history. It was an attempt to discover
how and why the burn had almost completely vanished. More
importantly, it was an attempt to assess the impact this loss
might have had on the city and its population in the context of
yet further urban development.
Finally, Jill Payne analyses the construction of Britain’s ‘wild
land’ cultural identity. She argues that the backlash to the
Industrial Revolution ushered in a highly romanticised
perception of non‐industrialised landscapes. In particular, the
accelerated harnessing of metropolitan British water systems for
energy and transport led to an enhanced appreciation of ‘natural’
waterscapes and geological features such as waterfalls. Payne
deconstructs the emergence, within the Scottish periphery, of a
British water‐and‐mountain aesthetic. She explores the extent to
which an aesthetic response based on late eighteenth‐ and early
nineteenth‐century attitudes towards the place of water within
industrialised and non‐industrialised settings may have
continued to influence ideas about hydroelectric development in
Scotland well into the twentieth century.
13
References
Tvedt, T. 2010a. Why England and not China and India? Water systems
and the history of the industrial revolution. Journal of Global
History (2010) 5: 29‐50.
Tvedt, T. 2010b. Bridging the Gap: A Water System Approach. In Willy
Østreng, W. (ed.). Transference. Interdisciplinary Communications
2008/2009. Centre for Advanced Study. Oslo.
http://www.cas.uio.no/Publications/Seminar/0809Tvedt.pdf
Tvedt, T. & Oestigaard, T. 2006. Introduction. In Tvedt, T. & Oestigaard,
T. 2006. (eds.). A History of Water Vol. 3. The World of Water: ix‐
xxii. I.B. Tauris. London.
Tvedt, T. & Oestigaard. 2010. A History of the Ideas of Water:
Deconstructing Nature and Constructing Society. In Tvedt, T. &
Oestigaard, T. (eds.). A History of Water. Series 2, Vol. 1. The Ideas of
Water from Antiquity to Modern Times: 1‐36. I.B. Tauris. London.
14
The Topography of Holy Water in
England after the Reformation
Terje Oestigaard
The Golden Age of Faith
In Europe, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been
seen as the ‘Golden Age of Faith’. In The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber (2006[1930]) argued that
Protestantism created a capitalistic spirit and that the great
historic development of religions took place when magic was
eliminated from the world. Magic was included in the concept of
the sacramental force as a means of salvation. If Weber is correct
in his thesis, then the replacement of the sacraments with
predestination should be most evident in England, since it was
here that the Industrial Revolution began.
Puritanism encouraged work rather than works, meaning
magic, and this has a particular relevance to the idea of holy
water as a sacrament. For common people, misfortunes,
calamities, catastrophes, and sudden death were caused by the
Devil and his malignant forces, and holy water was the solution
to, and protection from, these adversaries. One of the parish
clerks’ lucrative benefits consisted of holy water fees, which they
collected while carrying holy water supplies to every household.
‘Holy’, or blessed, water gave lay‐people a powerful religious
weapon that could be used to ward off the Devil, cure illness and
avoid death, as well as to protect fields, properties and
husbandry. This was not ‘magic’ as such, because ‘the
sacramentals were the basis for a genuinely lay Christianity, for
they placed in the hands of the laity sources of holy power which
were free from clerical control’ (Duffy 1993:212).
However, with the Reformation emphasising justification by
faith alone, the qualities and powers of holy water became
evidence of diabolic presence, which had to be combated by all
means. Thus, one of the main problems for the early Protestants
15
was ‘that they removed magic from Christian ritual without
countering the belief in magic’ (Caroll 1981:463).
God and the Devil
According to the medieval Church, the sacraments worked
automatically (ex opere operato), regardless of the priest,
whereas in most other ecclesiastical matters the rituals
depended upon a good and moral officiating priest and a pious
laity (ex opera operantis). The sacraments had immanent powers.
In addition, former pagan beliefs and rituals such as the worship
of wells, trees and stones had been modified and subsumed
within Christian rites and remedies rather than abolished. In the
process of this, the Church had been imbued with something of a
magical aura (Thomas 1971:47‐57). These beliefs strengthened
the Catholic Church’s claim that it had the power to manipulate
aspects of God’s supernatural power. Early Protestantism, on the
other hand, ‘denied the magic of the opus operatum, the claim
that the Church had instrumental power and had been endowed
by Christ with an active share in his work and office. For human
authority to claim the power to work miracles was blasphemy –
a challenge to God’s omnipotence’ (Thomas 1971:51). The logic,
as formulated in The Doctrine of the Masse Booke from 1554, was
simple: If humans can drive away the Devil and deal both with
the body and soul, what need do we have for Christ? (Thomas
1971:51).
The Catholic practice of exorcism has to be seen in this light.
Satan was exorcised during the rite of baptism. Water was
believed to have the power to deter Satan in both baptism and in
other situations, and this belief itself was claimed by the
Protestants to be the work of the Devil or even the Devil himself.
This has to be understood in relation to the shift in emphasis
regarding who the Devil was and what he represented.
Nathan Johnstone (2004, 2006) has argued that, in early
modern England, Protestantism favoured a particular type of
belief in the Devil. Although the Devil was also perceived in a
personal form or body, the most characteristic feature of
Protestantism’s demonology was temptation. The emphasis on
16
temptation was not a Protestant invention, rather the contrary,
since it has been a general feature of belief in the Devil
throughout the history of Christianity. Thomas Aquinas in
particular focused on temptation in his works. However, where
the Roman Catholic Church emphasised temptation as only one
aspect or variety of the Devil’s activities or character,
Protestantism focused mainly or even solely on this aspect.
Protestants believed that the true battle between them and the
Catholic Church was between faith and sacraments, and that the
ceremonies and doctrines associated with the latter had, for
more than a millennium, been diabolic. This had its rationale in
the Protestant understanding that demonism was an experiential
reality and, indeed, one inflicted by God on His elect as a sign.
Temptation was Satan’s attack on individual Christians, and,
although it could manifest itself in such concrete forms as lust,
greed or avarice, it first and foremost took the shape of a mental
and spiritual battle. Moreover, and, for the Protestants,
fundamentally, God allowed diabolic temptation as a test of the
faith of believers, but would not test His children beyond
endurance. God had even tested Jesus. Against temptation, no
holy water, bells or other remedies worked. The only remedy
was prayer, which directed the devotee to God. Importantly,
then, experiencing temptation was the sign that one was of the
elect. Only truly ungodly humans could deny the Devil’s
temptations, and this could represent one of only two
alternatives; either these individuals were already so corrupted
that they could not recognise temptation, or they were already
damned and therefore Satan was for the time being, leaving them
in peace. Thus, when Catholics did not emphasise the inner
struggle with the Devil as the most important aspect of the fight
against Satan (fig. 1), Protestants took this to mean that they
were already damned and corrupted by Satan (Johnstone 2004,
2006).
This had consequences for the sacraments and holy water.
These Catholic ‘magic’ devices were declared to be sheer sorcery.
The Edwardian Injunction of 1547 forbade the Christian from
observing such practices as
17
Fig. 1. The Devil performs a mock baptism. After Guazzo in Rodker 1929: 14.
‘casting holy water upon his bed, …bearing about him the holy
bread, or St John’s Gospel, …ringing of holy bells; or blessing with
the holy candle, to the intent thereby to be discharged of the
burden of sin, or to drive away Devils, or to put away dreams
and fantasies; or…putting trust and confidence of health and
salvation in the same ceremonies’ (Thomas 1971:53).
Scory was one of the fix preachers and he asked rhetorically in
1543, do you think ‘that the Devil will be afraid or flee away from
cross making, hurling of holy water, ringing of bells and such
other ceremonies when he was not afraid to take Christ himself
and cast him on his back and set him on a pinnacle?’ (Duffy
1993:213). For the Lollards, the sign of the cross could ‘avail to
nothing else but to scare away flies’ (Thomas 1971:72).
18
Holy Water and Sacramentals
Where the highlighting of different discourses of belief within
water culture is concerned, one group of objects of the utmost
importance is the ‘sacramentals’. These objects have been used
in benedictions and exorcism and represent a special category,
since they have been blessed and used independently from the
sacraments. From a theological perspective, the sacramentals did
not work automatically (ex opera operato) in the way of the
sacraments, which were divine par excellence. The sacramentals,
unlike the sacraments, could be taken away from the church and
the priests, and used by the commoners whenever they desired.
In particular, holy water was a sacramental used by the laity in
the household, in stables and on fields. When blessed items used
in the liturgy, such as holy water and candles, were used outside
the church by the laity, this was considered by the authorities to
be misuse. Nevertheless, during the medieval period, the blessing
of ‘holy water’ took place not only on Sundays, but also on
numerous other occasions including certain saints’ days. Even
though the church partly opposed this practice, the sacramentals
were an efficacious remedy for the laity. Moreover, with regards
to efficiency, the distinction between sacraments and
sacramentals became blurred, and among common people it was
generally believed that the sacramentals worked automatically
(Scribner 1987:5‐7, 39‐41). The focus of the ritual relationship
between the sacraments used in church and the sacramentals
used by the laity concerned the application of holy water, mainly
for apotropaic purposes or protective magic of two types;
exorcism and the expulsion of evil spirits (Scribner 1987:36, fig.
2). There was no doubt that the laity believed that the
sacramentals worked automatically and that they were effective
remedies against witchcraft (Scribner 1987:262).
Thus, what characterises the belief in both holy water and
the erstwhile pagan well cults is the idea that water works; it
cured human illness and misfortune. In practice, this was
operative religion working for the benefit of humans. It was
divine intervention in daily miseries and calamities.
19
Fig. 2. A priest and his assistant perform exorcism on a woman and the
demon emerges from her mouth. In Boaistuau, P. et al. 1598.
The effect was understood to be the same as if prayers had been
granted, but the belief in water rituals was more explicit and
direct – or material – than prayers, which were spiritual only.
Holy water and water rituals in Christianity worked mainly at
the mundane level, concerned with small, daily problems. Good
husbandry and crops, the preservation of health and family
wealth, and good fortune in daily activities were the main
concerns for common people. In this respect, both the belief in
and use of holy water as a sacramental were understood to be
more efficacious than prayers in church. As Duffy argues, ‘the
rhetoric and rationale at work in such incantations cannot
sensibly be called pagan. Instead, they represent the
appropriation and adaptation of lay needs and anxieties of a
range of sacred gestures and prayers, along lines essentially
faithful to the pattern established within the liturgy itself. This is
not paganism, but lay Christianity’ (Duffy 1992:283).
20
Water Cult and Worship
Water worship remained banned into the twelfth century, but
gradually, behind the anti‐pagan facade, the old customs and
pagan aspects of water worship began to be subsumed within
Christianity. The total number of holy wells in Great Britain and
Ireland amount to some 8000, and a conservative estimate for
England is 2000. In Scotland, there might be nearly 1000, with
another 1200 in Wales and at least 3000 in Ireland (Bord & Bord
1985:24). In the second half of the nineteenth century, the water
cult and healing beliefs remained dominant within the English
countryside (Hope 1893). In Wales, two‐third of wells had some
curative functions and, of some 1200 wells, 370 were exclusively
healing wells (Bord & Bord 1985:34).
Since water was used in Christian rites such as baptism and
hand‐washing, well water was actively incorporated into the
liturgy, and baptisteries and churches were built close to and, in
some cases, over wells (Bord & Bord 1985:20). During the
Christianisation of Britain, Christian ideology did not demand a
total rejection of the old pagan gods. Rather, in accordance with
the papal instructions to St. Augustine, pagan customs were
converted ‘into Christian solemnity, and pagan temples into
churches’. Missionary monks included wells in this approach
(Mackinlay 1893:24‐25). In the sixteenth century, European holy
wells served as the centres for annual religious rites, including
pilgrimages, well‐dressing and votive offerings. These rites and
sites were also featured in both Christian saints’ legends and folk
tales of supernatural events.
The Reformation and, in particular, Calvinism attacked
beliefs in holy water and wells as ‘popish magic and superstition’,
with the result that holy wells became gradually relegated to the
sphere of superstition (Gribben 1992:4, 16). In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, the Reformed Church went on the
offensive, and monuments connected to superstition were put to
profane use (Moreland 1973:200‐201).
In 1565, Bishop Bentham of Lichfield and Coventry
commanded the clergy to abolish all ‘monuments of idolatry and
superstition’, meaning that the items now viewed as idols had to
21
be kept in secret places in the church (Aston 1988:319). ‘We can
only guess at the impact on their sense of the sacred when they
saw the priest feed his swine from a trough which had once been
the parish holy‐water stoup…Elsewhere the holy‐water stoups
became the parish wash‐troughs, sanctus and sacring bells were
hung on sheep and cows, or used to call work‐men to their
dinner’ (Duffy 1992:586).
Even though the Reformation tried to end water worship,
the cult was so important and such an intrinsic part of culture
and religion that it continued for centuries, with nobles and
commoners alike making pilgrimages to the holy wells with the
aim of attaining long life and prosperity. St Winefride’s well at
Holywell (Flintshire) was immensely popular. It was attacked by
the Reformists, but the cult was too strong to be dismissed. In
1629, there were approximately 1500 people present on 3
November, St Winefride’s Day. On 29 August 1686, King James II
and his wife visited Holywell hoping that Winefride would bless
them with a son (and in 1688, a son was indeed born to them).
Charles I and his queen stayed for several weeks at
Wellingborough (Northamptonshire) in both 1618 and 1637, so
that the queen could take a treatment at the Red Well. Charles II
is associated with two other wells. In 1617, King James VI
ordered that St. Katherine’s Balm Well in Edinburgh should be
protected. During other periods, however, both the monarchy
and the clergy did whatever they could to curtail water cult
practices and beliefs, sometimes even resorting to outright
destruction of the wells. On two occasions, the Well of the Virgin
Mary at Seggat in Aberdeen was filled with stones, but the local
people cleared it both times and the well continued to be a site of
pilgrimage. The authorities were by no means consistent in their
views towards holy wells. Henry VIII, for example, walked
barefoot the last two miles to the Well of Our Lady at
Walsingham (Norfolk), but subsequently took action against
some holy wells (Bord & Bord 1985: 32‐33, 95). This dual
attitude testifies to the deep‐rooted nature of the water‐cult
beliefs, despite Protestant damnation of the purported magical
effects of water.
22
Thus there have been, throughout the history of Christianity
in England, opposite and conflicting views of holy wells and the
spiritual qualities of water. As the water cult was incorporated
into Christianity, Christian festivals began to take place at the
same time as many of the former pagan and Celtic festivals.
These ritual dates were already sacred to devotees, and the
Church therefore attempted to absorb the old religious practices
rather than displace them (Bord & Bord 1985:55). The pervasive
use of and belief in the waters from holy wells were integrated
parts of culture and religion. The water was used for any
protective, healing or curing purpose. In 1557, Cardinal Pole
insisted in his Injunctions for Cambridge University that, since
holy water was being stolen, the font should be locked up. During
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the baptism of animals
such as horses, sheep, cats and dogs was attempted, since it was
believed generally that animals would benefit from the rite
(Thomas 1971:35‐37). According to a story from Scotland, the
success of the holy well St Drostan’s at Newdosk was so great
that the local doctors planned to poison the well. When the local
villagers heard of the doctors’ plans, they came together to attack
and kill the doctors. Whether or not they were successful is
uncertain, but the tale testifies to the pervasiveness of belief in
the curative effects of holy water (Bord & Bord 1985:46).
In the English countryside, the water cult and healing beliefs
prevailed into the second half of the nineteenth century. This
was not simply restricted to the laity. The fellows of New College
in Oxford were reported to have worshipped at St.
Bartholomew’s Well every Holy Thursday (Hope 1893:124).
Moreover, belief in holy water and the magical powers of wells in
England have persisted into present times. When Veronica
Strang conducted anthropological fieldwork amongst the
inhabitants of Dorset and investigated their relationship with
water, she found that the water cult was still strong, and that
even non‐Christians used words like ‘aura’ or ‘mystical power’ to
describe holy water. Holy water was used on a number of
occasions, including in funeral rites and, occasionally exorcisms
(Strang 2004:93). Hence, in England, Christianity has been
23
closely connected to and defined by the water cult. Water was
Christianity in practice, and the wells had in particular an
important role.
Nature as the Work of the Devil or God?
Although the Protestant Church eliminated water beliefs as a
positive manifestation of Christian belief, it was nonetheless still
understood that they existed in the hands of the Devil; the
history of malignant waters is long. Old Church fathers such as
Origen, Jerome and Chrysostom believed that nature and all
external materialities were diabolic and in need of combating. In
the words of Chrysostom, one had to bring ‘the beast under
control’ by ‘banishing the flood of unworthy passions’. Aquinas,
too, preached the necessity of human domination over the rest of
the world (Harrison 1999:91). Tertullian, a third‐century Church
father, believed that water was highly attractive to demons and
the Devil (Jensen 1993). Traditionally, water was seen as
horrifying and dreadful; the repository of dangers and demons.
The sea was seen to be evidence of the unfinished nature of
creation; a primeval remnant engendering a strong sense of
repulsion. In particular, Thomas Burnet’s Theory of the Earth
(1681) had a special significance where this perspective was
concerned, and was referred to throughout the eighteenth
century (figs 3a & 3b). The sea was seen as the most frightful
sight that nature could offer, and the seashore was considered
nothing but the ruins of the world. The ocean was an abyss of
debris (Corbin 1994:2‐4), and the demonic nature of the sea
justified exorcism. During the sixteenth century, sailors
immersed relics in the waves (Corbin 1994:7). The sea was also
seen as a purgatory and perceived to be an abyss of fire.
Nature was, therefore, understood to be a terrifying place.
However, this view had its contradictions; on the one hand,
nature was believed to be unfinished and literally the Devil’s
place, but, on the other, the world was also seen as God’s perfect
creation, with the latter perspective represented first and
foremost by the hydrological cycle.
24
Figs. 3a & 3b. The hydrological cycle according to Thomas Burnet, Second
Book 1685‐1690[1965], p. 166 & 169. The first illustration (left) shows the
river in the air where vapours rise from the torrid zones and move to the
pole. The second illustration (right) shows the rivers running from the poles
to the torrid zones.
Natural theology was crucial to the process of erasing the earlier
understanding of nature as repulsive; as it is written in Psalm 52,
‘The Lord is admirable in waters’. Natural theology marked a
fundamental change in attitudes towards nature. Physio‐
theologians saw the external world as a spectacle gifted by God.
One of the most popular books of the period was Theology of
Water, or Essay on the Goodness, Wisdom, and Power of God
published in 1734 by the German professor Johann Albert
Fabricius (Corbin 1994:25). God had created a perfect external
earth which ever since the Flood had been stable. The physio‐
theologians rejected the idea of a world in decline, allegedly the
consequence of human corruption and sin. The main goal of
natural theology was edification, underpinned by the concept
that possession of the five senses had enabled humans to
understand God’s work. It was possible to discern the religious
meaning of the world through investigations of the workings of
nature. Linnaeus’ systematic classification was based upon such
a vision; one which revealed the plan of Creation. Hence, ‘a close
link developed between the collector’s patience, the scholar’s
curiosity, and the Christian’s piety’ (Corbin 1994:24).
25
Philosophers of the Enlightenment viewed the life‐giving
properties of water as a sign of God’s love (Krolzik 1990). During
the Enlightenment, water became the ‘fountainhead’ of spiritual
knowledge and wisdom (Strang 2005:106) and the new
understanding of the hydrological cycle in particular became the
catalyst for a shift in attitudes towards nature. From being a
dangerous and Devilish place, it came to be seen the place where
God’s master plan and perfect logic were revealed. During the
period between ca. 1700 and 1850, the concept of the
hydrological cycle was therefore a construct of natural theology
rather than natural philosophy. The relationship between
religion and science was intimate and structured around water
(see Farnsworth 2010). Yi‐Fu Tuan provides a detailed analysis
of the development of the notion and understanding of the
hydrological cycle in The Hydrological Cycle and the Wisdom of
God: a Theme in Geoteleology (Tuan 1968). Scientists believed
that by understanding nature they could obtain knowledge of the
wisdom of God. Pierre Perrault’s Treatise on the Origin of Springs,
presented in 1674, was a hallmark in the scientific consideration
of the hydrological cycle. According to Perrault, the water that
falls to earth as rain and snow is both the cause and the origin of
springs. Another key figure in this scientific progress was John
Ray, who published The Wisdom of God in 1691. The work was
highly successful. It was reprinted twelve times, most recently in
1827 (Tuan 1968:7). The hydrological cycle explained the
occurrence of all geological and topographical features. The
rivers were fed by rain, which also explained the existence of
mountains, in that these enabled the waters to flow down to the
fields and back to the sea. Floods were also necessary, in order to
return surplus water to the sea once the earth was sated with
rain (Tuan 1968:14).
Thus, following the Reformation and the emergence of
natural theology, nature came to be seen as the product of God’s
wisdom, rather than the work of the Devil. This had severe
consequences where the subsequent domination of the world by
humans was concerned, for which the religious rationale was the
need to reconstruct paradise on earth – in other words, to
26
perfect nature. The Protestant work ethic in particular
highlighted the need for the Garden of Eden to be understood as
an actual garden in which Adam had carried out agricultural
work. Thus, as pious devotees, humans had to work, and the
paradise God created was by its very nature a paradise that
needed to be worked. God had made men, according to Bishop
Lancelot Andrews (1555 –1626), ‘to labour, not to be idle’
(Harrison 1999:99‐100).
The domination of the earth was therefore conceptualised as
a recovered or restored domination, and thus closely related to
the idea of the Fall. The world inherited by Adam and his
descendents was not the earth in a natural state, but a suffering
and cursed earth. Harrison argues that ‘the infertility of the
ground, the ferocity of savage beasts, the existence of weeds,
thorns, and thistles, of ugly toads and venomous serpents, all of
these were painful remainders of the irretrievable loss of the
paradisal earth’. Consequently, human ‘dominion is held out as
the means by which the earth can be restored to its prelapsarian
order of perfection’ (Harrison 1999:99‐103). The infertile and
cursed earth was a natural world lacking life‐giving waters. God
was the provider of water and divine penalties were effected
through droughts, famines and catastrophes. Although the earth
was created by God, it was, following the Fall, a harsh place that
nevertheless revealed the wisdom of God. As faithful devotees,
humans had a moral obligation to perfect nature by working
towards returning it to its original state. The domination of
nature was not embarked upon in the interests of exploiting
resources. Rather, it was intended to erase the scars which
humans had inflicted upon the earth as a result of the Fall. Bacon
wrote that the aim was to ‘recover the light over nature which
belongs to it by divine bequest’, and John Flavell wrote in 1669
that the aim was ‘a skilful and industrious improvement of the
creatures’ leading to ‘a fuller taste of Christ and Heaven’ (op. cit.
Harrison 1999:99‐103). However, Protestants also favoured the
view that the natural world, albeit the lost Eden, was also the
means by which, through floods and other natural disasters, God
intervened and punished wrongdoers.
27
Disasters as God’s Penalisation and Baptism of the World
Although it was understood that the original Deluge annihilated
humanity, it came to be seen not only as a hostile and destructive
force, but also as the ultimate baptism that saved the world. This
view was common in the writing of the early Fathers. After the
Flood, the world emerged purified and free from sin. Cyprian
made this comparison explicit, referring to the Flood as ‘that
baptism of the world’ (fig. 4).
The equation of the Ark and the Church is also reflected in
the Anglican rite of baptism (Book of Common Prayer, p. 323).
Thus, with a basis in the Bible, major catastrophes and disasters
were commonly seen as God’s response to and penalisation of
sin, and consequently, human misfortunes were linked directly
to the environment in which they lived and the catastrophes they
faced. In the Homilies, penury, famines and death were caused by
God’s anger and wrath, and the Bible showed that God sent
plagues and misfortunes as punishment for collective sin. This
was a belief shared by commoners. In 1653, Zachary Bogan
published A View of the Threats and Punishments Recorded in the
Scriptures, comprising over six hundred pages of calculations of
appropriate punishments for every possible sin, including
adultery and blasphemy.
The underlying belief was that obedience to God’s
commandments would ensure wealth and prosperity. A female
secretary is reported to have confessed during the Interregnum
that she became depressed when she saw that her neighbours
were more prosperous than her, concluding that they had prayed
more than her (Thomas 1971:88). ‘This general assumption that
virtue and vice would gain their true deserts acted as a powerful
sanction for the morality of the day’ (Thomas 1971:92).
This is in accordance with Weber’s thesis that elect status
was reflected in success and the accumulation of wealth (Weber
2006). However, Weber did not pay much attention to the
implicit consequences at the other end of the social and religious
scale.
28
Fig. 4. The deluge. From Doré 1880.
‘The course of worldly events could thus be seen as the working‐
out of God’s judgements. This was but a refinement of the more
basic assumption that the material environment responded to
man’s moral behaviour’ (Thomas 1971:89).
29
Fig. 5. The devastating 1607 flood at Burnham‐On‐Sea and the Bristol
Channel. The commerative plaque in entrance to the All Saints Church,
Kingston Seymour, Somerset, reads: ‘An inundation of the sea water by
overflowing and breaking down the Sea banks; happened in this Parish of
Kingstone‐Seamore, and many others adjoining; by reason whereof many
Persons were drown'd and much Cattle and Goods, were lost: the water in
the Church was five feet high and the greatest part lay on the ground about
ten days. William Bower’.
Hence, while true Christianity was evident in wealth and
economic success, calamities and human suffering reflected
moral disgrace and the sinful state of communities afflicted in
this way.
The clergy identified scapegoats responsible for the
communal experience of plagues, storms, floods and fires
(Thomas 1971:83‐87). A prostitute was blamed for the plague of
1665 at Hitchin. Catholics blamed Reformers for misfortunes and
plagues. The 1666 Great Fire of London was seen by the clergy as
a punishment for sins conducted by, and harming, most citizens.
The Dutch, then at war with England, saw the fire as a divine
judgement imposed upon their enemy, and the Spanish
emphasised that a Catholic chapel in the Strand had miraculously
30
not been burnt, which clearly showed that the fire had had the
sole purpose of penalising Protestant heretics. Moreover, the fire
was also seen as a sign of the onset of Doomsday and the start of
a new millennium; the year contained the number of the Beast –
666 (Thomas 1971:105, 141). In the seventeenth century, floods
were seen as God’s chosen instruments for cleansing the corrupt
earth (fig. 5) and it was claimed locally that the area beside
Dagenham near the Thames was the site of the original Deluge.
Also implicit in the concept of holy condemnation was the idea
that the uncorrupted would not be harmed (Ackroyd 2007:355).
Conclusion
Although Weber may be correct in arguing that the Protestant
ethic created a spirit of capitalism, his premise that magic,
including the sacramental force as a means of salvation, was
thereby eliminated from the world, does not stand in the case of
England. To the contrary, even though the Church tried to erase
all belief in magic in general, and in holy water in particular, the
water cult was so strong that it persisted alongside
Protestantism and capitalism, and, furthermore, one may argue
that it defined lay Christianity. The Protestants developed a
coherent theological system whereby salvation was to be
attained by justification alone; the Devil and his forces were for
the most part inner temptations, and, consequently, rites and
rituals, including the belief in the efficacy of holy water, were the
work of the Devil. This belief system did not go far enough
towards meeting the religious demands of the laity, which faced
misfortunes, calamities and sudden deaths amongst itself and its
animals. These were seen as the works of an external Devil,
against whom holy water was understood to act as an apotropaic
device. When nature began to be viewed as the original Eden in a
deteriorated condition, it is arguable that this led to the
domestication and industrialisation of nature in the interests of
perfecting God’s creation. Regardless of whether they are God‐ or
Satan‐inspired, these worldviews are religious ones. According
to Weber’s argument, fortunate and prosperous capitalists may
have been able to perceive themselves as the elect of God, but for
31
common people the opposite was the reality – a point with which
Weber did not engage. Even when it was believed that the world
was the unfinished product of the Devil, the implication was that
the non‐elect – the victims of floods, plagues and other disasters
– were being penalised by God for their sinful behaviour. It is
arguable, therefore, that the Christian water world of pre‐
industrial England became more sacralised when the natural
world came to be seen as God’s original Paradise on earth, and
belief in the magical and healing qualities of holy water remained
fundamental to lay Christianity long after England’s
industrialisation.
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34
Ideas of Leisure, Pleasure and the River
in Early Modern England
Karen V. Lykke Syse
Introduction
From the earliest stages of human development, rivers have been
central to the way in which we perceive life. From the Ganges to
the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates, rivers have been
worshipped and venerated. Civilisation has grown up around
rivers, tied societies together and kept cultures apart. Rivers
have always been highways and frontiers. They have had, and
continue to have, multivariate uses. They are sources of water
and energy, and the basis of social power. Their importance as
networks for transport and travel is undisputable. Although the
actual materiality of the river has always been useful to humans,
rivers are also associated with a rich symbolism. Rivers have
been used as metaphors for most aspects of being human. They
symbolise birth and rebirth, life and death, the passage from life
to death. Rivers are borders, not only material borders between
properties, counties or countries, but also borders between life
and death. In western mythology, the river Styx is perhaps the
best known example of this. The river is a body of water that is
forever flowing and never the same; as such, it is the
embodiment of liminality. In many cultures, rivers are divine. In
Britain, the Druids worshipped rivers, something which has been
noted by historians like Gildas as early as the 6th century (Gildas,
1841:355‐360). In Celtic culture, the river deities were often
female. The Anglo‐Celtic goddess Latis was associated with
water. She was originally a lake goddess who fell passionately in
love with a salmon.
Most Gallic rivers are named after mother‐goddesses, and
most Celtic river names are also female (Rekdal, 2006). Other
British rivers, like the Thames, for instance, were male deities. As
such, British rivers are also liminal with regard to the gender
35
with which they are associated. The rich symbolism and
liminality of rivers can be used to explain why, historically, they
have played such interesting roles as venues for leisure. Beyond
this, the leisure activities particular to the vicinity of rivers had
many unique characteristics. For example, leisure centred
around rivers involved more fluid borders between class and
gender than that which one would otherwise expect to find in
early modern England (Walton, 1983).
During early modern times, rivers were considered
dangerous. If the role of water in everyday life is taken into
account, this is not surprising. People needed to be in direct
contact with rivers, streams and other open sources of fresh
water in order to carry out their daily activities. Buckets and tubs
of water were needed for animals to drink, and for various
household chores in and around the house or farm. Children
were warned to stay away from rivers and their treacherous
currents; the risk of drowning was great, making riverbanks
dangerous places. Coroners’ records from the sixteenth century
show that as many as 53 per cent of all accidental deaths were
caused by drowning (Towner and Towner, 2000:102‐105).
Rivers themselves gave rise to damp chills, vapours and fog, all of
which were considered unhealthy and dangerous. Flood records
show that even meandering rivers, although most of the time
fairly benign, could suddenly swallow up fields and houses and
tear away bridges (Ackroyd, 2007:183 and 221). People who
worked on rivers were also considered dangerous. Not only did
they occasionally master something that frightened other people,
but they also had the river as an arena for their everyday lives.
The ferryman, although engaged in a most practical job, was also
a symbol of the crossing from the land of the living to the land of
the dead. River people knew where the treacherous currents
were, and they had the power to extend or withdraw services on
which many people living by the river were dependent. Bargees,
watermen and river gypsies existed as a separate and exclusive
caste, which, to outsiders, had a reputation for violence and theft.
Their members married and intermarried. They were known for
their unconventional fishing practices, they knew where
36
medicinal plants grew along the riverbeds, and were often
referred to in the same way as witches. Perhaps this was because
they held knowledge about the river that most people feared as
an unknown entity.
The river was physically unstable, and it eluded social
control. An example of this lack of social control is that on the
river everyone felt free to swear, and a term for swearing was
actually ‘water‐language’, comparable to ‘gutter language’ –
another metaphor linking class and water. One of the best‐
known references to the river’s questionable effect on one’s
vocabulary is perhaps in Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat:
‘The mildest tempered people, when on land, become violent and
bloodthirsty when in a boat. I did a little boating once with a
young lady. She was naturally of the sweetest and gentlest
disposition imaginable, but on the river it was quite awful to
hear her’ (Jerome et al., 1998:151).
Although the river was perilous, it was also purifying; not
because its water was necessary for washing, but in a more
spiritual way. During witches’ trials, it was widely held to be
possible to assess whether or not the accused was guilty by
seeing whether she would float or sink when thrown in the river.
It is perhaps less well known that the river was also used to
purify bad language. A so called ducking chair (fig. 1) was
attached to a rope, and any foul mouthed ‘scold’ would be tied to
the chair and ducked in the water three times to ensure her
purification (Fletcher, 1995:273, MacFarlane, 1847:68).
Even if the river was, in this sense, considered purifying and
sometimes benign, it was mostly regarded as hazardous, and the
people who mastered it were viewed as disreputable
(Wiggelsworth and Foot, 1992:43). There was, however, one
exception; lock keepers were looked upon as jovial and amicable
characters. During the early period of industrialisation in Britain,
in cases where the river was directed, held, sluiced and thereby
tamed, it became less dangerous, and the people responsible for
harnessing it were similarly considered less threatening. This
37
might also be connected to
the period in which the river
became an important arena
for leisure in early modern
England.
Although use of the
concept ‘leisure’ in pre‐
modern historiography is
contested and often referred
to as an anachronism
(Burke, 1995, Rabinow and
Rose, 2003), the first
definition of leisure is
actually to be found in the
early fourteenth century. It
had the same meaning as
today, which is freedom
from work. Furthermore,
the term ‘weekend’ entered
the English language as
early as 1638 (Merriam‐
Webster, 2004). Even if
many people had little
freedom from work, if any at
all, Sunday had more or less
been a day of leisure since Fig. 1. Image of Ducking chair from
Curious Punishments of Bygone Days
Christianity
arrived
in (Earle, 1896).
England in the third century.
If we take a long‐term
perspective, we can in fact see the slow evolution of leisure‐
consciousness emerging amongst the privileged classes
sometime between 1300 and 1800. This development might be
related to social control and civilising processes (Elias and
Howell, 1999). Whatever the fundamental dynamics might be,
there were undoubtedly a range of specific arenas in which
leisure activities began to take place. The special lure of riverine
and riparian landscapes was clearly evident from the medieval
38
period onwards. Although Britain is an island, more people had
access to its rivers than its ocean. River swimming was well
established before the growth in resorts and spas by the sea
(Hembry, 1990). Certainly, benign rivers were necessary for
these early leisure pursuits. What happened when the river
became an increasingly popular venue for recreation, and what
kinds of recreation evolved? Below, I present three leisure
activities conducted alongside the river, on the river and in the
river.
Angling
Perhaps the most well known recreational pastime undertaken
alongside the river is angling. The first significant surviving work
we know of in relation to angling is the Treatyse of Fysshynge
Wyth an Angle, purportedly written by Dame Juliana Berners in
1496. The book contains beautiful illustrations of tackle, and a
sharp woodcut of an angler using a rod with line and float, which
is probably the first British illustration of the sport.
Contemporary sources argue that Dame Juliana did not write the
text herself. Even so, this is the first work that is a real manual
with detailed instructions on all the important aspects of making
tackle as well as using it. There are instructions on bait, hooks,
floats, and on the construction of lines and rods. She even
provides templates from which to make flies associated with the
different months of the year. Although Dame Juliana’s authorship
is questionable, her name is associated indisputably with this
first record of British angling (Radcliffe, 1921).
There are other works on fishing, such as John Dennys
Secrets of Angling (1613) and Gervase Markham’s section ‘The
Art of Angling’ in Cheape and Goode Husbandry (1614 ) but,
nevertheless, the most significant early modern book about
fishing is Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler (1653). In fact, well
outside the angling community, The Compleat Angler is
considered to be one of the most important English books ever
written; only the Bible has been published in more editions.
Through his main character, Piscatore, Izaak Walton conveys
Renaissance ideals built on the concept of the pastoral. Piscatore,
39
Izaak Walton’s angler, approaches the river as both a
philosopher and scientist. One of his many philosophical
contemplations lingers on the pleasure and importance of
leisure. ‘Twas an imployment for his idle time, which was not
idly spent’ (Walton, 1653:33) . The ideal angler is a wise man,
just as Bishop Joseph Hall describes in 1631: ‘he is both an apt
scholler and an excellent master; for both everything he sees
informes him, and his mind enriched with plentiful observation,
can give the best precepts. His free discourse runs backe to ages
past(…)’ (Joseph Hall after Røstvig, 1954:159). For Walton,
angling was not only the idle pursuit of catching fish. Rather, it
was an occasion for contemplating nature, and obtaining
supporting evidence for observations and reflections on nature
through engagement with the natural sciences. Nature, as God’s
creation, was explained to the reader through science. This
connection between the theology of nature and natural science
makes The Compleat Angler particularly interesting;
understanding nature was an acknowledgement of the
significance of God’s creation (Mostue, 1999:53). As such,
engaging with the river and explaining it through natural science
became both a pleasure and a calling. Walton also justifies
angling as a form of idleness that can be justified as
contemplation as well as food‐gathering. Following this, we
might ask who is going fishing, as the constituency for the book
in class terms is evidently Isaak Walton’s circle of literate
contemporaries rather than one of fishermen or milkmaids.
Walton’s choice of genre reflects his own and his reader’s social
placement and literary knowledge. It is perhaps fitting that he
uses the pastoral genre while explaining how a utilitarian task
such as fishing for food can become the epitome of leisure. Isaak
Walton regarded angling as the perfect compromise between the
social need for peace and civility, and the individual need for
excitement and fraternity (Franklin, 2001). This perfect
compromise is conducted beside the water but nonetheless
involves significant interaction with it (fig. 2).
40
Fig. 2. Angling by the river. From Walton’s The Complete Angler (1808).
Although the gendered term ‘fraternity’ was often used in texts,
angling was considered a suitable riverside pastime for both men
and women. Even if the early literature on angling only hints at
this, there are several other sources that emphasise female
41
participation in angling in Britain from the early seventeenth
century onwards. This is discussed thoroughly in Nicholas D.
Smith’s article ‘Reel Women: Women and Angling in Eighteenth‐
Century England’ (Smith, 2003). Smith’s historiography of female
anglers extends back to mid‐ seventeenth‐century England and
offers the basis for an understanding of the social milieu of
eighteenth‐century angling culture. Smith’s work demonstrates
the existence of an essential ambivalence regarding the social
and cultural position of female anglers. He argues that the
legitimacy of angling as a leisure pursuit for women began to be
questioned towards the end of the eighteenth century. The
questions that evolved related to the idea of humanity towards
animals and whether women in general ought to partake in cruel
amusements. Sentiments like this were, according to Keith
Thomas (1984), part of the transition to a more modern
perception of nature. Without dismissing either questions of
sensitivity towards nature or the evolving differences between
‘suitable’ leisure activities for men and women, it is possible to
argue that, through angling, the river was mastered by both
sexes in early modern England, and that female angling has been
common for a long time (Smith, 2003). As discussed, it is
accepted that the river has long been a place for food gathering
by different classes and both genders. However, early modern
sources also demonstrate how the river became an established
venue for contemplative leisure in pre‐industrial England.
Swimming
Learning how to swim was another leisure‐time way of
mastering the river. In the present, swimming is an activity
readily associated with sunny holidays and rural venues. In what
ways were rivers used for swimming in the past? Sources that
might help unveil the cultural and social history of swimming in
pre‐industrial England are difficult to locate. This is surprising,
because swimming is such a widely practiced activity. In an
attempt to remedy the situation, the historian Nicholas Orme
conducted some impressive ground research in 1983 with Early
British Swimming (Orme, 1983), but few others have been
42
inspired to augment the historiography. The next major work on
swimming was Christopher Love’s A Social History of Swimming
in England 18001918. Although Love fills in many gaps in our
understanding of swimming during this later period, the
swimming habits of the English during in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries are still relatively unexplored.
Early literary sources such as Ovid and Cicero describe
swimming as a healthy and manly activity, and a pleasurable way
of passing time (Orme, 1983:5). Anglo‐Saxon and Viking sources
show that the Roman tradition of swimming continued to be
practiced in England. However, by the medieval period there was
probably a decline in the number of people who mastered the
skill. Throughout this period, it seems as if swimming was mainly
a male activity, even if there are occasional references to female
participation. In the sixteenth century, the Renaissance
stimulated interest in swimming, and it is in the same period that
we get the first treatises on swimming (Orme, 1983:6‐40).
Swimming techniques and venues did not seem to change
during the centuries that followed the Roman period, but the
interest in swimming grew. According to Orme there are three
reasons for this new interest. One was biblical scholarship, which
allowed more people to understand and interpret biblical
references to swimming. Secondly, overseas expansion leading to
contact with cultures and nations where swimming was
practised also supported the new interest in mastering aquatic
skills. Finally, and probably most importantly, classical studies
reemphasised swimming as a skill one ought to master (Orme,
1983:51). Heroes swim, and warriors swim. In Utopia (published
1516‐17), Thomas More refers to the armour of Utopia’s soldiers,
which was so light and strong that it was possible to swim in it
(More et al., 1852:168). Only two years later, the headmasters of
Eton and Winchester published a series of sentences that were
considered easy for boys to translate to Latin; one of them was
Children do learn to swim leaning upon the rind of a tree, and
another was learn to swim without a cork (Orme, 1983:51). The
River Thames was probably the closest venue for teaching young
Etonian boys to swim. Later, during Tudor times, the tutor Sir J.
43
Elyot advised young boys to take part in various forms of
amusement including tennis, wrestling, running and swimming
(Thornbury, 1856:402).
Nevertheless, the earliest swimming manual written in
English is by Everard Digby who wrote A short Introduction for to
learne to Swimme in Latin in 1587. An English translation
followed in 1595 (Digby, 1587, Digby and Middleton, 1595). For
the purposes of this chapter, the beautiful and at times amusing
illustrations and commentaries in A short Introduction for to
learnne to Swimme are perhaps just as interesting as the actual
swimming instructions themselves. In all of the plates, the venue
for swimming and swimming instruction is a river. In fact, there
are no references to the sea at all. Digby is exhaustive in his
explanation of the ideal place in to learn to swim:
‘In the place is two things especially to be respected. First, that
the banks be not overgrown with rank thick grass where oft
times do lie and lurk many stinging serpents and poisoned toads;
not full of thorns, briars, stubs or thistles which may offend the
bare feet, but that the grass be short, thin and green, the bank
beset with shady trees which may be a shelter from the wind and
shadow from the parching head of the sun. Next, that the water
itself be clear, not troubled with any kind of slimy filth which is
very infectious to the skin; that the breadth, depth and length
thereof be sufficiently known; that it be not muddy at the
bottom, lest by much treading, the filth rising up from the
bottom thicken the water, and so make it unfit for that purpose’
(Digby and Middleton, 1595:1516).
Digby’s riparian venue is also the pastoral ideal. Indeed, the
illustrations show both men in ruffs pulling off their garments
and cattle grazing along the riverbanks.
44
Fig. 3. Swimmers from Percey’s Compleat Swimmer in 1658.
45
In the seventeenth century, judging by the number of sources
that mention swimming, it seems as if the delights of the river
were becoming increasingly popular. Digby’s A short Introduction
for to learnne to Swimme was in part plagiarised by William
Percey, who published the Compleat Swimmer in 1658, an
unacknowledged English translation of Digby’s manual that
included some of Percey’s own comments (fig. 3):
‘To proceed to declare the ends of swimming, they are many:
some delight herein, to cool themselves from the parching beams
of the Sun, to clearifie their bodies of sweat, to whiten and
purifie the skin: others use this excellent Art for the delight and
pleasure of the exercise, others practise this Art to fortifie
themselves for the danger of waters (…)’ (Percey, 1658:3)
The passage above identifies three aspects of the river (and of
swimming). Firstly, there is a recreational value associated with
delight, pleasure and exercise. Secondly, that the clearifying,
whitening and refreshing water itself has purification qualities,
and finally, that it is dangerous. However, Percy also shows how,
if one follows the rules set out in the book, it is possible to
conquer the dangerous aspects of the river. These rules include
timing; only swim during the months of May, June, July and
August (ibid:9) and only swim during daytime ‘because the Devil
lurks in deep waters, and other dangers do also occur’ such ‘as
fumes and thick poisonous vapours in the Air by reason of the
absence of the Sun’ (ibid: 11). One must not swim every day, nor
when it rains. The days and hours of the change or new moon are
also particularly bad for swimming. Like Walton before him,
Percy conveys how natural science, and acute observation of
one’s surroundings, can be used to understand and overcome the
dangers of the river.
Percy also emphasises the importance of finding the right
sort of riverbanks. He argues that they should be of gravel rather
than sand or mud, which was dangerous, and that they should
preferably be adjacent to pleasant meadows of green grass. This
is because after one’s swim, it is beneficial to run around in the
46
grass while chewing on a piece of bread to satisfy the hunger one
always gets from swimming. The texts conveys how ‘many things
may be done in the water, that cannot be performed on land’.
Fig. 4. Paring ones toes in the river. From Christofer Middleton's 1595
translation of Everard Digby's De Arte natandi (1587).
47
The author has tried to kiss his toes while standing on the land
and found it impossible, yet he claims it can be done with ease in
the water. This is depicted, along with instructions on using the
river as a place in which to cut toenails (fig. 4):
‘holding a knife in your right hand, lift up your left legg, and
with it draw your foot to your right knee: being thus ordered,
take hold of it with your left hand; and being thus held, take hold
of your Toes with your right hand; touch them and handle them
as you please, and pare them at pleasure; for you may safely do
it, and without danger’ (ibid:62).
Although Percey’s swimming was a leisure activity, the action
described above also integrated an aspect of utility. Water was
an aid to cleanliness and hygiene in a hands‐on, practical way.
Moreover, the passage above reflects how the art of swimming
provides total control of both the element and the body. Reading
the Compleat Swimmer shows how the river has been used as a
place of enjoyment by children and adults unable to swim, but
nonetheless able to bathe in it. Although we have no statistics of
swimming ability in early modern England, it was arguably not
general knowledge. Texts like the Compleat Swimmer and the Art
of Swimming contain the first written traces of an ideology aimed
at physically mastering nature. Swimming was literally a full
immersion of the river. Such immersion was also considered
beneficial to health, and so the history of swimming cannot be
isolated from the ongoing discourse regarding the benefits of
water in general.
The physician Sir John Floyer (1649‐1734) recorded the
remedial use of certain springs by the countrymen in his
neighbourhood, and explored the history of coldwater bathing. In
1702, he published Psychrolousia, Or, the History of Cold Bathing,
both Ancient and Modern. Interestingly, the book makes a
rational connection between religious ideas of healing and
evidential science, tracing the history of both medicinal and
magical, or sacramental, healing to ancient times:
48
‘Natural Religion, invented by our Rational Faculties, and
grounded on the Vertues of Cold Immersion, which might by
some accident be then discovered; the use of Water being so
frequent, and the most natural and easy Method for cleansing of
the Body, and that was thought by the Common People to
cleanse away Sin; but by the Philosopher to represent and
produce an inward Purity in the Mind; for which reason all
Mankind used to wash themselves before their Sacrifices, and
both Religious and Medicinal Immersions must be as ancient as
Sacrifices themselves’ (Floyer and Baynard, 1715:2).
Floyer’s evidential historiography became popular. Within a few
years, the book ran through six editions. Other writers continued
the tradition. Dr John Summers of Bath wrote A short account of
the success of warm bathing in paralytic disorders (Summers,
1751). Dr John Fothergill set up his Rules for the Preservation of
Health Being the Result of Many Years Practice (Fothergill, 1762).
Dr James Currie (1756‐1805) of Liverpool followed with his
Medical Reports on the Effects of Water, Cold and Warm, as a
Remedy in Fevers and Other Diseases (1797). Currie also
discussed scientifically the benefits of water. Societies to
promote the benefits of water immersion were by this point
being formed across Britain. Hydrotherapy became highly
popular, and, in the eighteenth century, a vast number of water‐
based health regimes evolved. Whole towns were erected on the
basis of the health‐giving properties of water, most of which
were located in southern England. Epson was highly popular
between 1690 and 1710, as was Tunbridge Wells. Scarborough
and Bath came into vogue in the 1720’s (Hembry, 1990:355‐
360). A series of spas were established in the early eighteenth
century, with sea‐bathing emerging as an elite practice in the
1720s (Pimlott, 1947:51‐52).
By the end of the seventeenth century, even the philosopher
John Locke could extol the health benefits of swimming in terms
of its provision of exercise and exposure to the open air (Locke,
1693). During the early eighteenth century, practical and
scientific discussions on the benefits of swimming were coupled
with a new literary interest in the ‘noble savage’ living in barely
49
explored territories across the globe (Orme, 1983). By the early
eighteenth century, the river was well established as a place for
bathing and swimming, with bathing stations and bathing
machines easing access from the riverbanks. The fashion‐
conscious had followed the river’s current out towards the
seaside resorts, and swimming in the sea became all the rage.
The health benefits of salt water lured the leisure‐seeking public
towards the coast, while rivers, if not polluted by industry,
remained a venue for bathing, dipping and swimming for a cross‐
section of social classes. Water was now controllable not only by
the human mind, as with the building of bridges, mills and canals
through engineering, but by the body. Previously, most bathing
had been passive ducking, but through swimming the element
was more actively embraced. On entering the liminal element of
the river, one showed full mastery of the natural world. English
rivers seemed perfectly suited for swimming, and perhaps this is
why swimming as a sport was first established here. In the
nineteenth century – the high period of sporting development –
formally organised swimming emerged in England ahead of any
other country. As early as 1837, the first swimming competitions
were established (Love, 2007). The first Women’s Championship
was instituted in 1901, and, in the 1912 Olympics, female
swimmers competed for the first time. Women’s swimming did
much to advance women’s rights, as many early female
swimmers set overall world records, overtaking their male
counterparts in terms of both speed and distance, something that
put extra emphasis on the question of equality of the sexes.
Rowing and Sculling
The first reference to a ‘regata’ appeared in Venetian
documentation; Venice’s dependence on water transport
provided a natural venue for the evolution of medieval and
Renaissance water festivals. By 1315, the Venetian regatta
included boat races amongst other forms of aquatic display and
entertainment (Dodd, 1992). Although a great number of rivers
intersect England, and although these rivers were imperative for
transport in mediaeval and early modern times, boating for
50
leisure was established later than either angling or swimming. In
other words, rowing for leisure differs from the two other
activities described above. Although both angling and swimming
were useful activities of sorts, they did not develop out of a
profession. As explained above, angling was a well‐established
pastime in the late fifteenth century, and swimming and bathing
were relatively common pastimes in the late sixteenth century.
Yet it was probably not until the eighteenth century that rowing
emerged as a leisure activity, certainly in terms of being
organised in any formal way (fig. 5). Rowing was an activity
connected to transport (and fishing) across the sea and on rivers.
There are several references to such transport in English history
throughout Roman, Saxon and Viking times. King Harold’s defeat
at Stanford Bridge is well known, and in later sources there are
many references to the importance of rowing.
In the sixteenth century, the inland waterway trade was
already thriving, and extra navigation channels had been cut to
ease access throughout the island. London’s river‐based
transport system was expansive in comparison to other British
cities. It was the biggest city in Europe, a Venice of the North. The
River Thames had its own estuarine peculiarities. Even so, the
technology and usage that developed here was not isolated from
the rest of the island. Samuel Pepys’ diary shows how the
Thames was used as a highway; there are more references to
Pepys ‘going by water’ than by coach on his various businesses.
On the 1st of May in 1664 he wrote:
‘(Lord's day). Lay long in bed. Went not to church, but stayed at
home to examine my last night's accounts, which I find right,
and that I am 908l creditor in the world, the same I was last
month. Dined, and after dinner down by water with my wife and
Besse with great pleasure as low as Greenwich and so back,
playing as it were leisurely upon the water to Deptford, where I
landed and sent my wife up higher to land below Halfway
house. I to the King's yard and there spoke about several
businesses with the officers, and so with Mr. Wayth consulting
about canvas, to Halfway house where my wife was, and after
51
eating there we broke and walked home before quite dark. So to
supper, prayers, and to bed’ (Pepys and Latham, 1985:382).
Fig. 5. Explaining rowing. From Walker's Manly Exercises (1856). Rowing was
first described in the third edition, from 1835.
Samuel Pepys and his contemporaries were utterly dependent on
the watermen and barges for transport. Even so, we hear of no
recreational races in the late sixteen hundreds. However, in 1715
Thomas Doggett established a race for watermen on the Tideway
in London, with a prize of a coat and a special badge (Halladay,
1990:8). The race established by Doggett was for the
professional watermen themselves to participate in, in
competition against each other. ‘Dogget’s coat and badge race’ is
still held annually. Not until 1775 do we find sources that refer to
a major water festival and regatta in England. This first formal
regatta with open participation for amateurs took place in 1775,
and the participating boats were referred to as ‘vessels of
pleasure’, which means that these were not working boats
(ibid:254). In 1793, the first recorded Procession of the Boats
52
was held at Eton College, and the custom of organizing groups of
boys from the same master’s house to obtain a boat for pleasure,
exercise or to compete with another house, was institutionalized.
Rowing races became festive occasions and rowing itself became
a spectator sport. The Henley regatta, established in 1839, is
perhaps the best known of these races. Since the amateur rowers
had no chance of beating the professional watermen at racing,
they formed their own clubs, excluding those who performed
manual labour. Although class bias excluded watermen from
participating in these particular races, they still raced against
each other, as they could not be excluded from the river itself.
‘Wager’ racing could supplement a waterman’s income, and as
they were paid about the same as household staff, they would
supplement this income by extra gratuities for fast passages
(Wiggelsworth and Foot, 1992:17).
As early as 1814, only 40 years after male amateurs started
competing formally, a regatta held in Chester included a race for
women. The following year, the first college boat club was
organized at Oxford University, and in 1829, the universities of
Oxford and Cambridge began to compete against each other. By
1839, the Henley Regatta was formalised by the newly‐
established Amateur Club. (Wigglesworth, 1986:205).
Interestingly, these amateurs ‘took on’ the suspect and
dangerous element of the watermen, and began to master the
danger of the river while at the same time pursuing what had
now become a laudable pastime. Rowing and sculling was
healthy for body and soul, and did not involve drinking or other
vices. In 1886, F.J. Furnivall founded the Hammersmith Sculling
Club for Girls and Men due to his belief that ‘the exclusion of
women from aquatic sport was pernicious’. He encouraged
working‐class women to row, and espoused the merits of
sculling over the moral perils of alternative pastimes such as
gambling (Wigglesworth, 1986:107). In 1880, Lady Grenville
believed it ‘essential that every English girl should learn to row
since now that everything is changed it is seen to be the very best
thing for her’ (Grenville, 1880). The date 1880 is significant,
because women’s intellectual and political emancipation had
53
started to emerge in the 1870’s, most notably with the Women’s
Property Act of 1870 and the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1878
(Wigglesworth, 1986:107). Even though it is easy to trace
women’s entry into the sport of rowing, it is also easy to
distinguish the prejudice and exclusion flagged up by the
standpoint taken by various amateur rowing clubs. Nevertheless,
women elbowed their way in, thereby challenging the biased
ideological status quo.
Conclusion
With respect to leisure, the river has been a site of special social
significance in many ways. However, it has been of particular
importance where ideas of gender are concerned. A point worthy
of consideration is that of the river’s symbolic liminality and its
‘otherness’, which might have served to enable its use as an
arena for leisure across established social structures. The river
was, and is, the front to another world, a world where social class
and gender are differently ordered. The river was central to the
way in which the idea and ideologies of leisure unfolded in
Britain from the 1300s onwards. This has not been sufficiently
recognised, and the omission needs rectifying, particularly since
the examination and contemplation of the extent and nature of
river‐based leisure activities can shed new light on the wider
socio‐cultural landscape of Britain.
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58
A River Does Indeed Run Through It:
Angling and Society in Britain Since 1800
Richard Coopey
Introduction
Angling, it is often noted, is the most popular participation
pastime in Britain. This chapter will examine the nature of
angling as a sport or leisure activity, tracing both its growth and
importance, and the changing nature and meaning of angling to
those participating. We will establish the fundamental point that
there are, and have been, ‘many anglings’ – that the sport has
taken on a wide variety of forms, and has appealed to a very
varied cross‐section of society, each of which has imbued it with
a complex range of meanings. The chapter will also reprise the
recent trends in the history of British society and the history of
sport and leisure, locating the history of angling among the
central debates. The history of sport and leisure has expanded
considerably in the last decade (see works by Richard Holt,
Jeffrey Hill, John Walvin and John Walton, for example) and much
has been made of debates over social control, rational recreation,
class, professionalisation, and the role of the media. Angling,
however, has been very poorly served by this expansion of
interest, with only John Lowerson’s articles carrying scholarly
weight. (Lowerson, 1988, 1989) Within a general social history
of angling in Britain, issues raised in this chapter will include
class and gender, regionalisation versus national standardisation
and homogeneity in angling, the urban‐rural divide, and angling
and nature – particularly attitudes towards the environment and
environmentalism among anglers and the ways these change
over time. The chapter will also introduce key hypotheses,
notably the trend towards the industrialisation of culture and
recreation in Britain, and the place of angling in the shifting
relationship between human society and an understanding of
nature in the modern world.
59
There are broad phases identifiable within the history of
angling, and the identification of these establishes a new outlook
for the study of sport and leisure. The chapter will demonstrate
that angling as a sport and pastime, with its range of varieties,
methods and constituencies, was established in its modern form
by the early part of the 20th century. Methods, rules, technologies,
organisations and cultural boundaries were all fixed by the end
of this period. There then began a period of conservatism,
constructed nostalgia and tradition, which lasted until roughly
the end of the 1960s. This was subsequently replaced by a new
dominant paradigm, based partly on changes in technology, but
also part of a mental re‐alignment in British society, which
reshaped concepts of nature, leisure and, above all, class
aspiration. Notions of affluence, the commercialisation of many
aspects of leisure fishing, and the drive for a post‐industrial
existence drove increasing numbers of anglers to identify
themselves with a new concept of angling involving the quest for
separateness, and specialisation. This reshaped the nature of
both game fishing and course fishing in profound ways and set
the scene for the further development of angling in the 21st
century. These new trends also saw a re‐emphasis on angling in
rivers.
The Art of Angling in Britain
Freshwater fishing originated as a form of cultivation for food. As
might be expected, during the medieval period monasteries, and
those with rights and access to them, built and exploited water
resources for the propagation of fish which have since
disappeared from the British diet – for instance, carp, pike, perch
and eels. Rivers were universally netted for both domestic and
migratory fish, including salmon, shad, lampreys and eels, under
a regime of local and national rights and charters. The major
conflict over river rights was unlikely to have been related to
angling, but would probably have revolved around disputes
between boatmen, millers and commercial fishermen, variously
seeking free navigation, free flowing or impounded water for
mills or the most advantageous site for fishing ‘engines’.
60
Fig. 1. A drawn at Somerly. From Cholmondeley‐Pennell 1889.
61
From the early modern period the gentlemanly sport of angling,
popularised by Isaac Walton (and Charles Cotton) in the mid‐17th
century, began to develop. Walton and his peers, with their
arcane views on natural philosophy, were interested in food, but
they also introduced the notion of leisure and stimulation in the
‘art’ of angling (fig. 1). In this volume, Karen V. Lykke Syse
describes the development of angling in the early modern period,
epitomised by Walton’s gentleman angler, engaging in a ‘sport’
only in as far as it meshed with a broader trend in philosophical
enquiry. For the development of angling as a sport, with
attendant methods and meanings, and relationships to other
sports and pastimes, considered within the debates on
‘sportisation’ and society, we need to move forward in time, into
the eighteenth and nineteenth century and begin to construct the
constituency of angling during a period before the formal
constructions of modern, twentieth‐ century leisure time.
One of the fundamental divides in angling in Britain is that
between coarse and game fishing. Game fishing refers to angling
for trout and salmon; coarse fish comprise all other species (fig.
2). Today this divide would be further defined perhaps into those
fish which are edible, and those which are not (though this
division would not pertain to earlier periods when almost all fish
in rivers would have been eaten, with the exception of the chub
perhaps, which even Walton found to be beyond culinary
redemption). There was no game/coarse schism in the early
modern period – coarse fish being referred to separately as
foodstuff (white fish) but not quarry. In the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, the ensuing division of the sport into
coarse and game coincided with, and reinforced, the social
division of its participants. Salmon and trout angling became
increasingly the preserve of an elite in British society. This elite
is most visible in the landed aristocracy, and its recruits from
industry, the city, or the repatriated nabobs of the East India
Company and empire generally. As the country house movement
consolidated its presence in the British landscape, its Veblenite
pursuits of hunting and fishing warranted considerable efforts.
62
Fig. 2. ‘Water babies’. From Cholmondeley‐Pennell 1889.
63
It is notable that pursuit of salmon was one of the principal
sporting occupations increasingly open to elite women. (Foggia
1995) In a little studied phase of the enclosures, the rights to
fishing in rivers, particularly for what was now designated the
monarch of the stream, the salmon, developed into a contest
between landowners, commercial fishermen, and latterly
poachers. Later, transport developments meant that game fishing
came to envelop the better off middle classes as the game fish –
principally the trout and the salmon – developed into an elite
quarry in Britain generally, and in Atlantic Britain particularly.
This elite bred its own methods, rules and etiquette of fishing –
centred around the artificial fly – and an ethic of sportsmanship
which was aimed at equalising the contest between angler and
fish. Fly fishing set itself apart as an art form – a balance of
aesthetic and entomological knowledge embedded in the
landscape of wild streams and untrammelled nature. (Rattler,
1850)
As the 19th century wore on, game fishing, the sport of
gentlemen, settled into a hierarchy of its own. The landed elite,
incorporating the new entry landowners from industry and
elsewhere, consolidated their hold on the salmon rivers of
England, and in particular those more productive rivers in
Scotland and Ireland, and, to a lesser extent, Wales. There is an
identifiable concurrent trend in the development of trout fishing.
This, to some extent, became the preserve of the middle class
angler. The sprawling demographic of middling businessmen,
professional classes, and, as with so many leisure activities, the
ubiquitous clergy, kept afloat by generous clerical stipends and
with ample leisure time. There was, of course, something of the
Waltonian ethic about these gentlemen of science and leisure. Fly
fishing was the sole method to be employed, but was to be
accompanied by the expectation of a range of etymological,
biological, geological and botanical knowledge. Subtle divisions
emerged in the sport between purists favouring the dry fly
(usually tied in imitation of some ephemeroptera) and those wet
fly fishermen, fishing downstream with the current, in imitation
of larvae, or other small stream dwelling creatures. (Rowlands
64
1836) Often these middle‐class fly fishermen formed themselves
into clubs, for conformity and companionship, but also to ensure
the acquisition of stretches of the river, and to enforce the
exclusion of other anglers, particularly coarse anglers, from these
stretches. With the enclosure of rivers, control over the range of
species in a particular river could be controlled through
abstraction or stocking. Stretches were netted and unwanted
coarse fish removed to be killed, or occasionally transferred to
rivers controlled by coarse angling clubs. On some rivers, such as
the Wye, coarse anglers were encouraged to fish during the
periods when salmon were not running in the river, on the
understanding that any coarse fish caught would be killed. Chub
were quite prolific in the Wye and large numbers of these
inedible fish were often simply dumped on the riverbank.
Grayling, not quite considered to be a game fish, in spite of its
good eating qualities (perhaps not favoured because of its plain,
coarse‐like appearance), were particularly sought after by coarse
angling clubs as they were netted from the trout streams. Many
grayling were transferred in this way from the natural habitats in
the chalk streams of southern England, to the Severn River
system in the Midlands.
One further dimension to the growth of game fishing which
should be mentioned here is the development of angling within
the British Empire. As an increasing number of members of the
middle classes went out across the empire as administrators or
members of the military, they took their sporting pastimes with
them. The spread of British sports such as football, cricket, rugby,
tennis and golf throughout the world is well known. Occasionally,
these sports were engaged in freely with local participants. More
often than not, they served to reinforce or underline the
difference between ruler and ruled, and formed a bond with
home rather than a bond with imperial subjects. British anglers
in the empire faced two alternatives in the absence of their
domestic quarry, notably the Atlantic salmon. Firstly, they could
find local substitutes such as the mahseer. The mahseer fitted the
bill well, given its size and fighting qualities and the fact that it
swam in the wild rivers fed by the Himalayas in Northern India.
65
The second alternative was to re‐engineer the local fish stocks to
suit English tastes. To this extent large quantities of trout were
shipped as far afield as New Zealand, where they went on to
achieve prodigious growth levels. As with fly fishing generally,
the sport‐science fusion was also evident among the anglers of
the empire. (Thomas 2005)
As the slow rearguard reforms of the political system in
Britain in the nineteenth century ensured the continued tenure
of the landed aristocracy, increasingly allied to a middle class in
fear of working class reforms, so these two mutually‐supporting
strata of society consolidated their hold on the nation’s river
angling resources. That the most prized of these were to be found
in remote rural areas, or even the last vestiges of wilderness, in a
growing industrial and urban nation, dovetailed nicely with the
other growing passion of these classes – the romantic notions of
the British landscape. The picturesque and romantic movements,
and later arts and crafts Gothic revivalism, had created an ideal
of Britain, and Britain’s landscape, situated somewhere between
a medieval Camelot and the rugged beauty and mountain waters
of the Lake District. Ironically, perhaps, the very technologies of
the blighted industrial world opened up remote areas for the
exploitation of this new class of romantic anglers. As the train
system carved inexorably its way to the outer regions of the
British Isles, it created the opportunity for many hundreds of
hotels to be established, offering fly fishing breaks and holidays.
While the sport of game fishing developed its privileged base,
its new methods, and its own internal divisions, coarse fishing
also underwent fundamental change during the18th and 19th
century. Though many rivers were appropriated by game
fishermen, there were plenty of rivers where game fish no longer
thrived, or indeed had never been numerous. Salmon and trout in
the Thames, for example, gradually declined with the sprawling
growth of London and attendant pollution in its lower reaches.
(A. Septuagenarian, 1859, pp. 123‐4) The Severn, a prolific
salmon river, did not lend itself to fly fishing techniques in its
lower reaches given its breadth and depth. Salmon fishing on the
Severn was mostly undertaken by commercial fishermen using
66
nets and traps. Many rivers in industrial areas suffered loss of
fish, particularly of game fish, to pollution, the direct
consequences of industrial growth, as in the case of the Trent and
Mersey, for example. However, industrialisation created an
urban middle and working class angling fraternity which
increasingly looked for and gained leisure time and angling
opportunities. Unlike their game fishing counterparts, this side of
the sport was dominated by men in terms of participation, by
women in terms of permission.
Social reformers, labour unions, enlightened employers and
politicians forced or facilitated a range of increased leisure
opportunities into the later nineteenth century, reflected
principally in shorter working hours and consequent increases in
leisure time. Coarse angling grew in line with this enhanced
opportunity. Industrialisation also created new sites for angling –
notably the extensive canal systems. One very clear feature of the
period is the development of clubs and governing bodies, on a
local, regional and national scale. (Waterhouse, 1948) Towards
the end of the 19th century, there was an exponential rise of both
the individual ‘pleasure’ fisherman and the activities and power
of the new angling clubs, with their attendant regime of
competition fishing, which continued up until the First World
War and into the inter‐war period. Clubs were based on an
arrangement of networks and communities, including
workplaces, pubs, local societies or city‐wide associations.
Within the growth of coarse fishing, distinct variations in
methods, styles and customs developed on a regional basis.
Nottingham‐ or Trent‐style fishing, with longer rods and
centre‐pin reels, fished in the flow of the river, contrasted with
the fine, sometimes sedentary styles of the Thames angler. The
new world of industrial production also ushered in the first
revolution in tackle, as cheap and reliable rods, reels and a host
of other equipment, became available (fig. 3). Rods constructed
of exotic tropical hardwoods such as ironwood or greenheart had
already replaced the traditional British hickory. Now these in
turn were replaced by bamboo cane rods, Tonkin cane being
particularly popular. For those who could afford it, ‘split cane’
67
rods, hexagonally constructed to reduce the weak spots in the
nodes in bamboo, were also becoming available.
Coarse anglers were by no means restricted to the local canal
during this period. Transport again played a part in the progress
of the sport, often reconnecting the worker to the (mostly
non‐salmon‐, non‐trout‐bearing) landscape. At weekends, trains
packed with anglers would pour out of Birmingham bound for
stations on the lower Severn, for example. Similarly trainloads of
anglers would leave the steel‐producing town of Sheffield and
pour into the Fens of East Anglia. (Lowerson 1998) Train
companies promoted this trend, offering concessionary fares to
anglers, and chartering special trains for weekend trips. Tackle
dealers could be found aboard these trains, dispensing tackle or
bait as the latter made their way out of the city at dawn. On
ordinary trains there were complaints that some were abusing
the system, carrying their fishing tackle on ordinary journeys in
order to claim reduced prices. The Birmingham Angling Club
grew steadily from the 1890s onwards to become the largest
angling club in the world.
Fig. 3. Pike tackle. From Cholmondeley‐Pennell 1889.
68
The ethics of angling changed as coarse fishing consolidated its
position as the country’s most popular pastime. Around issues
including the conservation of stocks, the relocation of species,
guarding against pollution or netting, a general stewardship ethic
began to pervade the sport as what can be identified as a
proto‐environmentalist anglers’ movement began to take shape.
(Coopey and Shakesheff 2010) The approach of anglers to the
preservation of their quarry, or indeed the preservation of the
river, was still fairly exploitative by modern standards. Fish were
usually killed when caught, particularly during competitions.
These competitions took numerous forms. As in most working
class group pastimes, the competitive element was at the centre
of collective leisure activity, with its attendant gambling
opportunities. Competitions took place within and between clubs
on a regular basis, and leagues began to appear in working class
areas. Competitions took place with a fixed start and finish time,
with prizes being awarded on the basis of the heaviest aggregate
weight, with perhaps additional prizes for the heaviest fish of a
particular species. Some of the larger clubs had separate sections
for women, with separate prizes, although in the case of the BAA
the women involved eventually objected to this separation and
demanded to be treated equally with the men of the club. In
order for the completion to be judged, all the fish caught were
killed, in order to be kept until the weigh‐in at the end of the
contest. This practice, deleterious to fish stocks, gradually
became replaced by the use of keepnets – small cylindrical nets
pegged to the bank side – which were developed in the year
before World War One. (The promotion of keepnets may also
have been stimulated by the need to cut down on cheating in
competition by bringing dead fish along hidden in the
fisherman’s basket. Frequently at the weigh‐in anglers would be
disqualified for trying to weight fish that were not ‘fresh’.) During
the early twentieth century, the larger angling clubs began to flex
their political muscle in pursuing the maintenance of river water
quality, and expanding access to water for the urban working
classes. BAA representatives took up offices on the Severn River
Board during the inter‐war years, for example.
69
As noted above, game fishing had become an almost separate
form of angling from the early twentieth century onwards. There
were areas where these fishing cultures overlapped, particularly
in the lower reaches of major rivers such as the Wye, Severn,
Hampshire and Avon. Here angling tended to be more open,
certainly less aristocratic, and although still an expensive
occupation, still one which a dedicated general angler might
afford. Often groups of anglers coexisted – the coarse fisherman
useful in ridding good salmon beats of ‘nuisance’ fish. The purity
of the fly fishing was also diluted by the periodic allowance of
bait fishing (usually worms or prawns) or spinning, usually with
the ubiquitous Devon minnow – a cylindrical, finned tube,
painted in bright colours, rotating around a wire trace and
three‐pointed ‘treble’ hook. In the Atlantic peripheries, however,
traditional methods, even extending to the 20‐foot long ‘Spey’
rods, persisted, and elites continued to control an increasingly
exclusive angling. We also need to recognise the different
availability of fishing to local anglers in these peripheries, and
the symbiotic relationships which often developed – notably in
the role of the local gillie. The gillie developed as a profession
comprised of men of local knowledge – essential to the tourist
angler – and skills in methods and the handling of salmon.
Salmon angling, perhaps more than any other branch of the sport,
requires knowledge of the local conditions in the river – whether
temporary, in terms of water condition or levels, lures to suit
particular conditions for example, or permanent, in terms of
holding pools, and casting methods. The gillie was also on hand
to prepare or provide tackle, to assist in the landing of fish, or
provide sustenance or refreshment to the salmon‐angling
consumer.
As with so many aristocratic pastimes, the twentieth century
saw increasing pressure on this class, with, of course, some
notable exceptions. The continuing demise of salmon in many
rivers into the latter half of the twentieth century, possibly
related to commercial fishing pressures, allied to the increasing
affluence of a new working class, placed additional strain on this
increasingly limited resource. In this atmosphere of increasing
70
exclusivity, new alternatives were sought. These might include
overseas travel, in line with the general rise in overseas tourism
brought about by the advent of cheaper jet travel, or, more likely,
alternative forms of game fishing, which could be expanded to
meet demand. Trout and grayling fishing on the exclusive
streams – notably the chalk streams of the south, echoed salmon
angling in adhering rigidly to an exclusive clientele and suffering
no dilution of traditional methods. The fly‐only rule persisted,
although traditional cane rods and silk lines were superseded by
synthetic alternatives in many cases. Fly fishing for trout
expanded, however, through the stocking of reservoirs such as
Chew Magna, Blagdon, Rutland Water, and the Elan Valley with
factory‐farmed fish. These waters also saw the introduction of
the North American rainbow trout, faster growing and more
adaptable that the native brown trout. In addition there were,
and continue to be, many attempts to repopulate Britain’s major
rivers with salmon. Indeed, in rivers such as the Trent and
Thames, the return of salmon has become the primary symbolic
reference in terms of restored river water purity.
At the same time that game fishing underwent changes in its
demographic and methods in the latter half of the twentieth
century, coarse fishing also went through a period of
transformation. As noted above, there was a continued growth
and consolidation of angling clubs, including the politically‐active
larger federated clubs such as the Birmingham Anglers’
Association and the Sheffield United Anglers, whose work in
formulating the rules of fishing, minimum catch sizes, and close
seasons protecting the angling environment, and furthering the
general angling cause in regional and national politics was
notable.
The participation rates of women in the sport increased
throughout the 20th century, although the ratio of women to men
remained much higher in the game sector than in coarse fishing.
During the post‐war period, in moves that echoed the activities of
their nineteenth century empire angling counterparts, coarse
anglers attempted to manipulate the stocks of rivers in Britain in
order to enhance their sport. Sometimes these attempts were
71
unsuccessful, as in the case of the transplanting of the eastern
European huchen into the Thames in the 1950s.
Other schemes were arguably more successful than planned.
Two post‐World War II examples stand out in this regard – the
importation of the zander from continental Europe and the
transfer of the barbel from the rivers of eastern Britain to those
of the west. In the case of the zander, the fish, originally
introduced into the fens of East Anglia, found its way through the
connecting canals and waterways to large areas of England,
including all the major river systems. With no natural predator
commensurate with the growth of the species, by the 1960s there
were real fears that this species would wipe out other coarse fish,
particularly roach, the staple of the competition coarse angler.
This has proved not to be the case. A similar imbalance has
occurred in the case of the barbel. A voracious bottom‐feeding
fish favouring fast flowing water, the barbel was originally only
found in rivers in the east of Britain, as part of a system of flora
and fauna that dated back to the period before the formation of
the North Sea, when the rivers of eastern England formed part of
the Rhine Basin. When transferred to western rivers such as the
Severn, Wye and Hampshire Avon, the barbel thrived at the
expense of the indigenous coarse species. Given the powerful
nature of this fish and its relatively large size – up to 8 or even 10
kilos – there has been less alarm amongst the angling fraternity
over its increased numbers.
The last half of the twentieth century also saw a second
major transition in tackle and technologies used in angling. At the
heart of the angling experience is the notion of fairness, of some
form of sporting competition with the quarry. Hence the use of
the rod itself, in preference to more effective fishing methods
such as the net. There was an evolving balance between more
effective methods of hooking and landing fish, and the idea that
angling should incorporate a level of sporting prowess and retain
an element of difficulty or even luck. As modern twentieth
century industrial techniques and materials were applied to
angling equipment, this balance became increasingly complex.
Rod and reel manufacturers developed innovative equipment
72
using mass production and standardisation. The fixed spool reel
is one example. It promised easier long distance casting and,
through adjustable clutch mechanisms, reduced the chance of
larger fish breaking the line. Organic materials were replaced by
synthetic‐based products; as cane rods gave way to fibreglass,
gut and silk lines were replaced by nylon, as were waxed coated
cotton nets. In the case of rod materials, fibreglass, initially used
in solid form, and later spun into hollow tubes, offered a
lightness and strength greatly exceeding ordinary cane rods,
again shifting the balance in favour of the angler in terms of
casting and playing the fish.
Tackle manufacture itself has generated many businesses in
Britain. Indeed, all leisure activity generates business
opportunities ranging from the provision of facilities to
equipment manufacture. An economic history of angling should
encompass all these aspects, including, for example, seemingly
peripheral activities such as gambling and bait provision. Anglers
increasingly needed to travel. As we have seen, revenue to train
companies from the late nineteenth century was substantial, as,
for example, rail companies operated special trains and discount
systems for anglers. Hotels and guest houses catering for angling
tourism were also important from the early nineteenth century
onwards.
The manufacturing and retailing of fishing tackle was also an
important sector of the economy, often generating regional
business clusters, such as the hook and general tackle
manufacturers of the Redditch district. British manufacturers
attained a global presence, as firms in the high quality sector,
such as Hardy Brothers, Sharpes and Farlows combined elements
of mass production with individual craftsmanship in rod and reel
manufacture. Some manufacturers were part of larger general
supplier and retail chains, such as Gamages or Army and Navy,
catering partly for the Imperial trade. Other firms, including
Allcocks, K. P. Morritt, Sealey and Milwards, catered for the
general market in mass‐produced fishing tackle. British
manufacturing held its place in global terms, with the notable
intrusion of French firms such as Garcia Mitchell and Racine, and
73
Swedish firm Abu, until the Japanese multidivisional firms,
including Shimano and Daiwa, penetrated the British market into
the 1970s. Interestingly, there was no penetration of this sector
by US firms.
Retailing in the angling sector in Britain, on the other hand,
at least until the 1970s, was dominated by the small enterprise ‐
the individual tackle shop owner, sometimes doubling as a
barber, or general goods retailer. Manufacturers rose and fell
through a range of product innovations, as hardwood rods were
replaced, first by split cane, later by fibre glass and then more
recently by boron and carbon fibre. As this trend continued, the
tackle industry underwent the same international competitive
pressures as other light engineering and consumer goods
manufacturers, initially from Japanese firms, later from other
emergent manufacturing nations in Asia. It would be wrong,
however, to ascribe changes in equipment as being simply
pushed out into the market by increasingly sophisticated
manufacturers. As we have seen, reels underwent radical
changes, from the simple winch which developed into a basic
centre‐pin, to the complex
gearing, clutch and bale arm
constructions which made up the
fixed spool (fig. 4). Technological
development is a complex social
process. However, there is a
strong
case
for
social
construction
of
technology
analysis in this sector following
Weibe Bijker, Donald MacKenzie
or Bruno Latour, for example. In
angling, as noted above – indeed
in all sport perhaps – there is
a tension between technological
development and tradition. A
good example here would be the
retention of the centre‐pin style Fig. 4. Slater’s ‘perfect combination
reel’. From Cholmondeley‐Pennell
reel for fly fishing, despite the 1889.
74
technological advances available. In recent years there has also
been a renaissance of the less effective, but aesthetically more
pleasing centre‐pin in coarse fishing: triumph of tradition and
integrity over modern technological effectiveness.
When not at the riverbank, anglers have always liked to read,
either for information about catches, for tips on how to fish, for
guides on where to fish or for evocative accounts of angling to
stir the emotions. The inception of angling has been accompanied
by a growing angling literature, and in addition, more recently, a
considerable angling media. This literature began very early – as
Karen V. Lykke Syse has pointed out, with perhaps the first
treatise on angling being written by Dame Juliana Berners in
1496. In the nineteenth century, a great many memoirs of anglers
and descriptive accounts of memorable experiences and fish,
began to emerge throughout Britain and the Empire. In addition
to this ‘boys own’ literature, instructional and informative books
have proliferated since Walton’s Compleat Angler, itself in many
ways an instructional text. Some angling writing has been
recognised as being of considerable literary merit. Beyond the
fiction and exotic global adventuring of aficionados such as
Ernest Hemmingway or Zane Grey, there are fine examples of
writing relating to the common angling experience in Britain. In
Rod and Line, Arthur Ransome, sometime Manchester Guardian
correspondent and childrens’ author, for example, produced one
of the most evocative and rich texts in the English language.
Bernard Venables’ Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing is imprinted on the
childhood memories of generations of post‐war anglers. Both
Ransome’s and Venables’ books originated in the columns of the
daily press, but angling also has its own dedicated press,
including the Angling times and Angler’s Mail and regional
publications such as the Midlands Angler.
In recent years, however, this literature has tended to be
replaced by a more sensational and immediate style. If there was
a ‘golden age’ of the angling narrative it has, despite spirited
interventions by cultural figures as diverse as Robert Hughes and
Jeremy Paxman, nevertheless faded under the onslaught of more
populist, less literate styles of writing (Hughes 1999; Paxman
75
1994). During the last decades of the twentieth century,
fundamental changes took place in terms of angling styles
themselves, available venues, and levels of participation. Such
changes did not detract from the general rhythm of the pastime,
as millions of individual anglers continued to fish established
river venues in only slowly changing traditional ways.
One of the most notable developments of the period was the
rise of the commercial fishery – venues constructed and stocked
with farmed fish, aimed at a day ticket angler. Many of these had
their origins in attempts by the farming community to diversify;
an alternative use for marginal agricultural land was found in
catering to a newly identified post‐industrial or ‘leisure society’
(a similar, though much grander process developed in the sport
of golf, which saw a proliferation of new courses during the same
period). Some of new venues were later developed into
multi‐pool angling complexes, and several companies emerged to
run chains of such enterprises, in addition to tackle development
and retailing, for instance, Preston Innovations and Maver. Pools
appealed to the continuing strength of the competition angling
market, which remained undiminished throughout the post‐war
period, bolstered by manufacturers’ sponsored teams. New
venues dovetailed with new methods and technologies to change
the face of both modern competition and pleasure angling. In
pools typically over‐stocked with carp, carbon fibre pole
technology,1 scientifically formulated particle baits and a range
of other innovations saw the intensification of the angling
experience – a shift from quiet contemplation to maximisation of
the catch. BAA contests of the mid‐twentieth century, along the
River Severn, were the largest angling competitions in the world
1) Pole fishing developed much earlier in continental Europe, but was greatly
enhanced by the new strength and light weight of carbon fibre, which made
rods of 20 feet and over much easier to handle. This method dispenses with a
reel. Instead, the line is attached, via an elasticated ‘shock’ link, to the tip of the
rod. The advantage of this method is the angler’s ability to dispense with
casting, and to place the bait in exactly the spot required. This method is often
preferred on still water, as flowing rivers require movement, or distance in the
cast.
76
with up to 8,000 competitors fishing fifty miles of riverbank. Yet
catches seldom exceeded five pounds in total weight. At the end
of the twentieth century, catches exceeding 100 lbs were
commonplace in commercial pools. There were still, of course,
many ‘anglings’ during this period, including the continuation of
the traditional club and individual activity. The angling
community was served by a changing and expanding media
during this period. Specialist papers and magazines were
introduced, and, with the proliferation of TV channels, a large
number of programmes and nationally recognised personalities
began to emerge, including John Wilson and Matt Hayes.
‘Angling in short, is not merely a matter of skill in the
catching of fish. It is participation in the life of river, lake and sea,
an awareness of beauty, an understanding of the mystery
beneath the shining waters. It is the quietness at the centre of the
world storm.’ Thus wrote Howard Marshall, Founder of the
Angling Times, in 1955. Angling is unique among mass
participation general leisure activities in terms of its engagement
with the environment, with the landscape. In a discussion of
angling in Britain, it might be useful to take a long‐term overview
of the ways in which angling has coexisted with, and in some
ways shaped its environment. The range of angling interactions
with nature is wide indeed, from the gentlemanly entomologist
on the chalk stream, to the canal tow‐path angler whose interest
in woodbine is limited to the cigarette brand. These extremes,
contrasts, paradoxes and commonalities at the level of the
individual need to be explored, and the changing balance of
groups and their awareness of environmental issues needs to be
charted.
Angling organisations have been prominent in their
campaigning for a regulated and protected environment. From
the nineteenth‐century Thames Angling Preservation Society to
an angling club presence on the Board of Severn Conservators,
officials representing anglers have fought to stave off pollution,
and to have rivers re‐stocked, restored and maintained. The
angler played an important part in the growing landscape and
countryside movements which developed throughout the
77
nineteenth and twentieth century in a variety of forms. One
high‐profile issue is the position of angling in the general
anti‐hunt politics of late twentieth century Britain. The anti‐hunt
movement was primarily aimed at securing legislation to ban
fox‐hunting with hounds. This style of fox‐hunting involving
packs of dogs and pursuers on horseback retains strong echoes
of an aristocratic past, and this, in conjunction with the violence
of the kill, combined to promote a wide coalition of antipathy
among social and political groups either interested in class
politics or the with the sensibilities associated with conservative
environmentalism or vegetarianism. The anti‐hunt movement is
also seen as the triumph of urban politics over the traditions of
the countryside. Angling representatives, when faced with the
developing power of this anti‐hunt lobby, and wary that animal
cruelty charges would be made against them next, face ongoing
choices in the area of resistance and affiliation to pro‐hunting
groups such as the Countryside Alliance. In their defence, it is
clear that there has long existed a delicacy and sensibility within
British angling which was not replicated elsewhere in the world,
at least not until the relatively recent establishment of
interventionist environmental protection regimes in Europe and
the North America, for example. Anglers in Britain increasingly
afforded their quarry a reverence not replicated elsewhere until
very recent times – in developing the use of appropriate keep
nets, the returning of fish to the water unharmed, barbless hooks
and the observance of close seasons.
Conclusions
In recent years, angling in Britain could be said to have become
an increasingly ‘Fordised’ world of fishing, where venues and
quarry are progressively more controlled or engineered, rather
than the product of ‘untrammelled nature’. Modern methods and
equipment have begun to change, and the mystery and craft of
angling is perhaps being replaced by the deskilled angler with
the ethos of catching fish at any cost. Angling in Britain has seen
an increasing number of manufactured environments
incorporating factory‐farmed fish, notably carp in coarse fishing,
78
and rainbow trout in game fishing. While the emphasis on the
introduction of one particular ‘commercial’ style of fishing has
never had the impact of comparable disasters elsewhere –
notably the black bass crisis in Japanese angling ‐ many in Britain
see the trend as worrying. Factory‐farmed fish are arguably less
cautious and therefore more easily caught than wild fish.
Technologies of coarse fishing in particular – electronic bite
indicators, fish finders, bolt rigs which automatically hook fish,
‘method’ feeders delivering large quantities of scientifically
formulated baits ‐ increasingly ensure fruitful fishing expeditions.
In fly fishing for farmed fish, the emphasis has been placed on the
selection of the fly – predominantly garish patterns which no
longer seek to imitate natural insects – rather than the skill in
locating the fish and discerning its natural diet.
The general homogenising experience of this kind of angling
has, however, produced its own antithesis in a noticeable trend
for both exclusivity and nostalgia. There has in recent years been
a call for ‘silver’ fisheries replacing predominantly carp stocked
pools and a re‐emphasis of the value of river fishing. There have
also a series of trends which might be seen as an attempt to
construct an ersatz exclusivity mimicking the exclusively of
traditional game fishing. These include the trend towards
specialisation – fishing for one targeted species only. The earliest
of these specialisations began in earnest in the 1980s with the
exponential growth of carp fishing, but has since spread to
include pike, barbel, and even chub. At the extreme end of this
trend, participants may even attempt to recreate the world of the
etymologist angler of the nineteenth century. A good example of
this is the Chub Study Group, who are certainly anglers, but ones
who, in true Waltonian style, articulate a dedication to the
natural philosophy of the chub. An alternative strategy in terms
of the quest for exclusivity or individuality is to take an elite
method and transpose it to a new quarry – for example the
growing popularity of saltwater fly‐fishing with wide arbour
reels for quarry such as bonefish and tarpon in the accessible
coastal waters of tourist Florida, Cuba or the wider Caribbean.
Yet another strategy involves using the travel revolution of the
79
late twentieth century to attempt to recreate the angling
imperialism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, pursuing
mahseer in the Himalayan foothills, giant catfish in the rivers of
the Iberian peninsula, and the giant Nile perch in Egypt. There
has also been a noticeable wave of nostalgia for an imaging past,
revealed in the resurgence of the traditional centre‐pin reel, and
wood and cork materials for rods and landing nets, all of which
indicate both a disquiet with modern mass production angling,
and a direct line of contact with anglers of the past, and their
quest for communion with nature, the ethos of the sportsman,
and the flowing waters of the river.
References
Bickerdyke J. (1920). Angling for Coarse Fish London, Upcott Gill.
Coopey, R., and Shakesheff, T. (2010). “Angling and Nature:
Environment, Leisure, Class and Culture in Britain 1750 – 1975” in
Genevieve Massard‐Guilbaud and Stephen Mosley (eds.) Common
Ground, Converging Gazes: Integrating the Social and Environmental
in History, Cambridge, Cambridge Scholar’s Press.
Cholmondeley‐Pennell H., (1889). Fishing: Pike and Other Coarse Fish,
London, Longmans Green.
Dewar G. A. B. “From a Test Angler’s Diary”, Longman’s Magazine, Vol.
35:206, 1889.
Foggia, L. (1995). Reel Women: The World of Women Who Fish, Three
Rivers Press, New York.
Halford, F. M. (2000). The Dry Fly Man’s Handbook (1913), New York,
Derrydale Press.
Hall D. (1980). The Complete Coarse Fisherman, London, Ward Lock
Hayter, T. (2002). F. M. Halford and the Dry Fly Revolution, London,
Robert Hale.
Hughes, R. (1999). A Jerk on One End: Reflections of a Mediocre
Fisherman, New York, Ballantine.
Kissack, K. (1982). The River Severn, Lavenham, Dalton.
Lowerson J, (1988). “Brothers of the Angle: Coarse Fishing and English
Working Class Culture 1850‐1914” in Mangan J. A. (ed.). Pleasure,
Profit and Proselytism: British Culture and Sport at home and
Abroad 17001914, London, Frank Cass.
Lowerson J., (1989). “Angling” in Mason T., (ed.). Sport in Britain: A
80
Social History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Parker, Capt. L. A. (1954). Roach and How to Catch Them London,
Herbert Jenkins.
Paxman, J. (1995). Fish, Fishing and the Meaning of Life, London,
Penguin.
Ransome, A. (1967). Rod and Line, London, Sphere.
Rattler, M. “Touching Fly‐Fishing”, Fraser’s Magazine, August 1850.
Rowlands, A. (1836). Fly Fishers Entomology London.
Septuagenarian, A. “Angling Near and Around London”, New Sporting
Magazine, 224, August 1859.
Sylvanus Swansquill, “A Day on the Trent”, New Sporting Magazine July
1831.
Sullivan Thomas, H. (2005). The Rod in India. Being Hints on How to
Obtain Sport, with Remarks on the Natural History of Fish, their
Culture and Value, Naval and Military Press, (first published 1873).
Taylor F. J. (1981). My Fishing Years, London, David and Charles.
Walton I., and Cotton C., The Complete Angler, London, Nathaniel Cooke
1854 edn.
Waterhouse T. A. “Mr. T. A. Waterhouse’s Address to the N. F. A.
Conference”, Midlands Angler, June 1948.
Wheeler A. (1979). The Tidal Thames: The History of a River and its
Fishes, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.
81
82
Searching For The Molendinar –
Unearthing Glasgow’s Hidden Past
Justin Carter
Introduction
In 2001 I was invited to develop a new project on the theme of
water for an exhibition and conference to be held the following
year.1 The focus of the group exhibition was the meeting point of
art and ecology – seen through the lens of water. My response
was to research the story of the Molendinar, a burn I had heard
of but never seen. What follows is a reflection on what I
discovered – not from the expert position of historian,
geographer, sociologist or ecologist, but from the viewpoint of an
artist working between these disciplines.
I began by locating maps and images of the Molendinar in
order to build up a visual picture of Glasgow over time – from
rural retreat to urban sprawl. This led to site visits and walks, re‐
mapping the course of the burn, and occasionally catching
glimpses of the hidden stream. Semi‐structured interviews were
also conducted with a number of individuals representing a
range of associated groups including local residents, the Glasgow
Humane Society, the National Geological Survey, Glasgow City
Council (GCC), the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency
(SEPA) and Scottish Water (SW). These interviews attempted to
uncover the social, economic and environmental impact of the
stream’s historical shift from open waterway to underground
culvert. Video documentation of these interviews, contextualized
by other documents including photographs and maps, later
formed part of the installation at Mile End Gallery.
What does it mean when a stream so central to a city’s
history becomes almost entirely culverted? What impact does
Crossovers Exhibition at Art Pavilion, Mile End, London. Watershed:
Environmental Art – Engendering a Community of Change Conference at
Whitechapel Art Gallery 11/10/03.
1.
83
this physical change have on a place and its population? The
Molendinar Project set out to investigate the disappearance of a
stream at the heart of Glasgow’s medieval past. How and why has
the burn almost completely vanished, and what physical and
psychological residue remains? This chapter explores the
relationship between city and stream, with shifting attitudes to
water over time, suggesting different notions of progress. How
and why should we remember the Molendinar, and what role can
art play in this process?
Historical Overview
‘The township spread from the High Kirk gate,
And grew to a city rich and great,
And the poor little burn its head must hide,
Deep in the breast of the River Clyde.
The Clyde is the river of Glasgow town.
No river could be finer;
But with fond regret we’ll pay our debt
To the vanished Molendinar.’
(Rev. Robert MacOmish. The Burgess Song of Glasgow)
Glasgow, famed for its shipbuilding in the last century, continues
to construct its future identity and prosperity on the banks of the
River Clyde. Mushrooming up from the shadows of its
manufacturing past, vast architectural icons to the service
industries can be seen clinging to the riverbanks in the form of
new museums, conference centres, hotels and media
headquarters. These shimmering glass and titanium shells
attempt to project an image of confidence and creativity through
a who’s who of world architecture. The post‐industrial
wastelands of Scotland’s premier manufacturing city are being
given a sequinned costume to wear on the global stage. This
shimmering image is a far cry from the City’s ancient and humble
beginnings on the banks of another waterway seldom heard of
beyond Glasgow.
84
Fig. 1. Plan of Glasgow by Charles Ross. (1773) By courtesy of the Mitchell
Library, Glasgow City Council.
‘The traditional view is that St. Kentigern or Mungo (518603)
founded a monastery on the banks of the Molendinar Burn, three
quarters of a mile north of the ford over the Clyde, on land
formerly consecrated by St. Ninian (360432) as a burial ground.
This soon became the seat of a bishopric, a place of pilgrimage
and hence a settlement’.2
There are other competing versions of Glasgow’s birth, but the
Molendinar myth has such symbolic potency that it has become
Gordon J. & T. M. Devine. Glasgow Volume 1: Beginnings to 1830. Manchester
University Press. Manchester. (1996). p. 18.
2
85
psychologically rooted. Reverend Robert MacOmish testifies to
this in his Burgess Song of Glasgow. The important thing to
appreciate is that with Mungo and the Molendinar, the concept of
Glasgow is effectively anchored in the popular imagination. In
water, the Molendinar gifted early settlers both a mythical
symbol and a vital natural resource. Glasgow and its Cathedral
grew out of a fundamentally spiritual connection with water.
In his book A Tale of Two Towns,3 Neil Baxter describes a city
emerging with two distinct centres and two distinct forces –
religion and commerce. This schism became increasingly
pronounced in the industrial age, as attitudes to nature shifted.
With Glasgow’s growth over the centuries, water was
increasingly viewed in mechanistic terms, devoid of religious
reverence. Ross’s plan of Glasgow, from 1773, shows how the
ancient ecclesiastical centre around the Cathedral had by this
time been superseded by a commercial centre at the intersection
of High Street and Gallowgate (fig. 1).
From an industrial perspective, waterways provided a
multitude of functions for an expanding population. From 1556
the Molendinar was used and consumed through its brewery, a
process that made its water safe for human consumption.
Importantly too, the Molendinar presented the opportunity for
energy to be harnessed from the moving stream. Water mills
increased efficiency for processing grain, much of it still farmed
locally. Similarly, in the city’s sawmill the Molendinar accelerated
production to support a myriad of industries including
boatbuilding, cooperage and construction. The Molendinar was
particularly well suited to this purpose as it was easily breached
in a number of locations. Finally, and perhaps more dubiously,
the Molendinar provided emerging industry with the
opportunity to convey waste effluent downstream. Possibly the
most noxious example of this would have been produced by the
city’s tanneries, where dung and urine were used in large
quantities to prepare rawhide. Earlier still, the burn had been
Baxter N. A (ed.). Tale of Two Towns – A History of Medieval Glasgow (2007),
Royal Incorporation of Architects/Glasgow City Council.
3
86
used to dispose of domestic waste, but the demands of industry
were on a completely different scale that fundamentally
challenged the water ecosystem.
Fig. 2. Plan of part of Glasgow and course of the burn of Molendinar, by
James Barrie (1764). Used in the legal case involving William Fleming. By
courtesy of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow City Council.
87
It is typical of a waterway with such a longstanding proximity to
human settlement that it should already have been exploited in
the ways described above (raw material, energy production and
waste conveyance), long before the Industrial Revolution.
Indeed, mills of various descriptions had been such an integral
part of the burn’s early life that they effectively gave their name
to the stream.4 By the time the Industrial Revolution gripped
Glasgow, the Molendinar had been so heavily exploited and ill
managed, due to the complications of riparian law, that its fate
was effectively sealed.
A map drawn up, for legal reasons, in 1764 is one of the
finest illustrations of how the Molendinar had become
interwoven within the fabric of the city (fig. 2). This map charts
the course of the burn from the college gardens to the Clyde,
through a series of tunnels, archways, dams and sluices.
Slaughterhouses, tanyards and gardens jostle for position along
the banks of the burn in an increasingly dense urban sprawl. The
purpose of this map is revealed in the caption, located in the top
right‐hand corner, which reads:
‘A plan of ye City of Glasgow and course of the Burn Molendinar
leading to the saw mill erected by William Flemming Wright in
Glasgow in 1750 1751 and set agoing in 1752. Demolished by
the magistrate of Glasgow on the 23rd June 1764 for which he
then commenced a process against the said magistrate before
the court of session and in consequence of a final judgement
given on July 1768. Magistrates paid the pursuer on the 18th
November following £610..1..4 Sterling and were also obliged to
relieve him of the expense of extracting the deficit’.
‘Molendinarius – of or belonging to a mill’. Fisher J. The Glasgow Encyclopaedia
(1994) Mainstream Publishers. (Edinburgh) Or Moulin meaning mill ‐ ‘stream
of the mills’.
4
88
Fig. 3. A view from the South on the East side of St Mungo’s Church X111 (R.
Paul), July 1769. From Early Views of Glasgow. By courtesy of the Mitchell
Library, Glasgow City Council.
89
This document depicts two important issues that would be key
to the Molendinar’s future. Firstly, the increased demand and
strategic jockeying for land within the city centre. This impacted
greatly around the site of the University, which became
surrounded by dense slums. Secondly, it depicts the very process
by which ownership of land, and therefore ownership and
responsibility for the Molendinar, could change hands through
legal process. The conflicts of riparian ownership remain to this
day one of the biggest challenges of effective management. This
is a point emphasized by Scottish Water: ‘In the past there has
been no planning control of culverts and hence landowners have
constructed them with little or no consideration for any impacts
beyond their boundaries’.5
That same decade, Robert Paul’s etching of 1769 captured
the Molendinar from a very different perspective – this time an
unlikely meeting place for man and animal (fig. 3). As one half‐
bent human figure tips his water vessel into the burn, another
weary‐looking figure seems to meet the gaze of a cow on the
opposite bank, its hoofs sunk into the water. This moment of
identification suggests either deference or resignation. As the
Cathedral spire slips behind the branches and wall to the left of
picture, the burn is no longer an elevated symbol of life and
religion, but a very grounded stage where everyday acts of
survival are carried out dutifully. Ironically, this same period saw
Glasgow’s fortunes begin to sparkle from the profits of tobacco,
sugar and cotton brought into the Clyde from the colonies. For
those who still lived and worked on the banks of the old
Molendinar, such riches must have seemed but a distant dream.
In 1574 the plague descended on Glasgow, an event that
became the catalyst for the digging of a new well in the
Gallowgate the following year. Despite these early attempts at
renewal, it took the rational pragmatism of the Enlightenment to
really address the compounded problems of urban planning.
Paper No 4 – The Strategic Response to Glasgow East End Flooding. David
Wilson (Scottish Water) Martin Spiers (Montgomery Watson Harza) 19 June
2003. p. 3.
5
90
Fig. 4. A View of the Middle Walk in the College Garden. XV by Robert Paul,
April 1756. Foulis Academy. By courtesy of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow City
Council.
Growing awareness of the links between health and sanitation,
and perhaps a desire to live up to Daniel Defoe’s description of
Glasgow being the ‘cleanest and beautifullest, and best built city
in Britain’,6 created a renewed impetus to remove the tarnished
waters of the Molendinar from public gaze. The Lady Well, still
standing outside Ladywell brewery, was one of 16 available
public wells in 1726. However, after the establishment of the
6
Defoe D. A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain. (1724‐26).
91
Necropolis in 1831, the water was considered ‘tainted in
consequence of its proximity to the graves’.7 By the late 1860’s,
many of Glasgow’s wells had been superseded by the new mains
water link to Loch Katrine in the rural north. During this same
period, the college gardens were said to have resembled a
‘blackened waste, on which the playing of cricket was fraught
with the greatest danger’.8 This was a situation that no amount of
landscaping and drainage could rectify. In 1870, the whole
University uprooted itself and migrated to its present home at
Gilmorehill in the west of the city. This migration west was
symptomatic of a psychological shift away from the encroaching
problems of the past, towards the promise of a cleaner, brighter
future.
With its limited capacity, perceived threats and dubious
appearance, the Molendinar must have seemed all but useless to
the Victorians. Their ingenuity, though, enabled the burn to serve
the city in its final role, as outlet for an extensive sewage
network. This relationship later became even more formalised
through a series of combined sewage overflows (CSOs). The burn
literally became a pressure release valve for the city sewers,
preventing homes from being ‘backed up’ with sewage.
Described by George Rattray from SEPA as ‘a necessary evil’,9 it
is clear that the water quality of the Molendinar was now
effectively at the mercy of the elements (fig. 5).
These developments did not, however, go unnoticed.
Theodore Brotchie’10 described this transition from ‘pellucid
stream’ to performing the ‘role of ordinary city sewers’ as a
‘debasement’:
7 Small D. Sketches of Quaint Bits in Glasgow still standing in 1885. p. 34.
published David Bryce & son (1887).
8 Mackie J. D. The University of Glasgow 14511951. (1953) Jackson & Son & Co.,
Glasgow. p. 277.
9 Rattray G. (SEPA) Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. Extract from
interview.
10 Brotchie T. Glasgow Rivers and Streams – Their Legend and Lore (1914) p.
139.
92
Fig. 5. View of the wasteland site at the intersection of Duke Street and High
Street where the college gardens once stood (2008). Note the new high‐rise
developments in the background and the remaining façade to what was once
the College Goods Rail station.
‘A great city is not the haunt wherein we can hope to find the
wimpling burns of which poets, and artists, and wayfarers fondly
dream. The arctic eye of commerce looks askance at the humbler
waterways of nature, and as the octopus of industry advances
over the verdant countryside she absorbs and then hides them
from human ken’.11
Despite its obvious lyrical appeal, Brotchie’s description borders
on sentimentality. The Molendinar was not the victim of
industrialisation, as Brotchie would have us believe. It was the
victim of a much slower death, which began far earlier (fig. 6).
11
Ibid., p. 136.
93
Fig. 6. ‘A prospect of ye town of Glasgow from the North East’, John Slezer
(1690). Theatrum Scotiae. Foulis Press. By courtesy of the Mitchell Library,
Glasgow City Council.
The indelible semi‐rural image left to us by Slezer in 1690, of a
man and his dog crossing the burn, could easily add weight to
Brotchie’s misty‐eyed view of the past, were it not for the more
candid descriptions left to us in the Guild Records of Glasgow,
referred to by Dr. Patricia Dennison. One medieval citizen
remarked;12 ‘even a tinker would not deign to drown his dog in
it’.
Making Sense of History
‘Do you think children now would know what the Molendinar is?’
‘No, they wouldn’t have a clue’ (Agnes Campbell, interviewed
2002).
Dennison P. Daily Life, Disease and Death, from: A Tale of Two Towns. A
History of Medieval Glasgow, ed. Baxter N. (2007), p. 68.
12
94
Today, according to Scottish Water,13 over 95% of the
Molendinar Burn has been culverted. The ancient stream can
only be glimpsed in a couple of select places along its course.
There appears to be a clear relationship between this lack of
visibility and corresponding levels of awareness about the burn’s
history. This lack of knowledge is apparent both within the
population at large, and amongst those considered ‘experts’.
Whilst remaining physically underground, the Molendinar
does occasionally surface in the form of street names or urban
myth. Someone might tell you (as I had been told) that a river
once flowed down the hill where Wishart Street separates the
Cathedral from the Necropolis. You might also be told that the
reason the stream is no longer there has something to do with
the brewery positioning itself at the bottom of the hill. To many
people, the link between brewery and disappeared burn suggests
some kind of alchemical transformation of water into golden
lager. Although this myth has obvious appeal and logic, the Lady
Well brewery has not actually taken water directly from the burn
for over a hundred years.
It was precisely this myth and mystery that attracted my
initial research interest. When I began my search in 2001, I
happened to approach Glasgow City Council and Scottish Water
at a time when both they and the British Geological Survey14
were carrying out their own field research in order to bolster
their knowledge of the burn. Part of their objective was to
physically locate the Molendinar as it flowed beneath ground
level. Joe Fisher, in his Glasgow Encyclopaedia, alludes to this
realm of uncertainty when he refers to the subterranean streams
of Glasgow:
‘The rapid spread of the city has meant that most of these burns,
which once flowed through fields or between thatched wooden
houses, now run obscurely underground (often no more than
Paper No 4 – The Strategic Response to Glasgow East End Flooding. David
Wilson (Scottish Water) & Martin Spiers (Montgomery Watson Harza), 19 June
2003.
14 Quigley S. and Fordyce F. (British Geological Survey).
13
95
sewers) so that in many cases neither their source nor their route
is definitely known’.15
Fisher’s remarks are perhaps a little exaggerated when it comes
to knowing the source of these waterways. However, his point
does reflect the kinds of difficulties associated with managing
and mapping underground streams.
There has been renewed interest in the Molendinar this
century. This is partly down to the incoming Water Framework
Directive (WFD) ‐ European Union legislation agreed in 2000,
and brought into force in January 2004. The aim of the WFD was
to elevate the overall quality of all waterways within its
jurisdiction to what it describes as ‘good status’. With this in
mind, Scottish Water and Glasgow City Council were both keen to
learn the extent of their own responsibilities within this
framework directive.
At the time of my investigation, George Rattray from SEPA
had the task of monitoring water quality in Glasgow. In 2002 he
described the quality of the Molendinar as ‘very poor, class d’.16
The indicators of such quality are ascertained through measuring
PH levels, dissolved oxygen levels (necessary to support living
organisms) and amino nitrate levels (indicating organic
pollution). Secondary indicators include the presence of sewage
fungus, which lives off sewage. Despite having spawned salmon
in medieval times, the Molendinar is now unable to support any
substantial forms of aquatic life.
The return of salmon to the Molendinar is not likely to
happen, but Rattray optimistically suggests, ‘We could possibly
get localised fish life and improved bird life. When a body of
water has been heavily modified there will be lesser targets. We
will never achieve the good status of the Water Framework
Directive’. Rattray is fairly certain that in terms of good status
(class a2): ‘the Molendinar will not reach that target...All water in
Scotland will have to reach good chemical and ecological status, I
15
16
Fisher J. The Glasgow Encyclopaedia, p. 364.
Video of interview included in exhibition at Mile end Gallery.
96
don’t think that it will even reach fair (b)’. Under the WFD, SEPA
have certain powers to sanction those in breach of regulations.
However, as Neil Tytler from the Foundation for Water Research
points out, ‘Environmental Protection Agencies in the UK are
increasingly under pressure financially to win such cases, and
often only take such steps if the outcome is more or less
guaranteed’.17
The second major factor behind renewed interest in the
Molendinar was the advent of an extreme weather event on 30
July 2002. This culminated in intense rainfall, said by Scottish
Water to be a once‐in‐a‐hundred‐years event. The whole west
coast of Scotland was subjected to this deluge, but it was in
urban areas such as the east end of Glasgow where the impact
was most acute. The flooding had its greatest impact on some of
the city’s most disadvantaged people. ‘Many lost all their
possessions because many households were uninsured’.18
Scottish Water concluded in their report that ‘as investigations
into the flood event progressed, it became evident that there had
been considerable inter‐action between the sewers and
watercourses at certain flood locations’.19 This same report went
on to say that ‘Safe flood routing becomes a greater problem in
the Glasgow East End where over 90% of watercourses are
culverted leading to increased overland flow risks and potential
flooding of low lying areas’. Furthermore, where there is more
detailed analysis of the factors leading to these flooding
problems, a number of interesting facts emerge, suggesting an
infrastructure which is unsatisfactory, overburdened, and, in
places, at odds with the underlying physical geography.
As a result of this flooding, the Scottish Executive (now the
Scottish Government) funded the development of a strategic
Tytler N. in discussion at the International Conference on Human Ecology,
Manchester University, 29th June – 3rd July 2009.
18 Thomas G. Cash Floods In To Clean Up Burn. East End Independent. October
20th, 2004 p. 1.
19 Paper No 4 – The Strategic Response to Glasgow East End Flooding. David
Wilson (Scottish Water) & Martin Spiers (Montgomery Watson Harza), 19 June
2003.
17
97
drainage plan to be co‐ordinated by GCC, SW and SEPA. The
overall aim is a more sustainable and coherent plan for the
future of all Glasgow’s waterways. Despite the obvious attempt
to develop a more ecological and sustainable outlook, the
Scottish Water Strategic Response report of 2003 occasionally
slips up in its thinking. ‘What is evident’, it says, ‘is that the
watercourses are now an integral part of the urban drainage
system [my emphasis]’. The suggestion that watercourses have
somehow evolved into a useful drainage mechanism is
symptomatic of the problem. In reality, a drainage system
emanates from a watercourse, and is built around it. As the
Burgess Song of Glasgow suggests, perhaps we are now paying
‘our debt to the vanished Molendinar’ (fig. 7).
A similar disregard for history can be seen in the approach
taken by Amey Highways, responsible for much of the road
network in the UK, including the M8 motorway that runs across
the Molendinar, separating Blackhill and Blochairn from the old
medieval centre. No doubt in the 1970’s, when the motorway
was being built, engineers managing the project took this
heritage into consideration. However, when Amey Highways
were asked to comment in 2002, they responded as follows: ‘We
don’t have any historical knowledge whatsoever – five to six
years max’.20 This detached approach stands in stark contrast to
that of George Parsonage from the Glasgow Humane Society,21
who has an intimate knowledge of Glasgow’s waterways – one
that has been passed down through the generations. A story he
recounted, during interviews in 2002, suggested that two
additional factors have led to the loss of knowledge about the
Molendinar: privatization and political boundary changes. These
are in addition to the inevitable challenges posed by riparian
ownership.
Drummond G. Amey Highways.
The Glasgow Humane Society is a charitable organization, which polices the
Clyde.
20
21
98
Fig. 7. The ‘Bridge of Sighs’ connecting the Cathedral grounds to the
Necropolis. The tarmac road running beneath the bridge would have once
been a body of water running South‐West towards the college gardens.
(Photographed in 2008).
When these infrastructure difficulties are considered in relation
to the pressures of developers and councilors promising
regeneration, it is possible to appreciate the scale of the problem.
For several decades there has been a widely‐held belief that the
east end of Glasgow needs regeneration in order to address some
of the wider social and economic issues. In the UK as a whole
there is an urgent demand for new housing stock. In 2004 Gail
Sheriff, development consultant with Milnbank Housing
Association, discussed a £10 million regeneration project for the
local area. A local newspaper reported that this would: ‘include
private housing, affordable homes for rent, office space and
99
nursery facilities’.22 The main obstacle to such investment was
good quality infrastructure. As George Rattray stated, ‘The city is
regarded as being blighted because its sewage system is full to
capacity. Without this there is no way that there can be further
development. The east end is crying out for regeneration at the
moment’.
What is clear from these incidents of flooding and pollution
is that the radical physical changes made to the Molendinar over
the centuries have had repercussions that will be felt long into
the future. The impact of climate change will bring ever more
extreme and unpredictable weather. In the age of climate change
we are likely to witness more frequent incidents of flooding,
particularly in low‐lying areas and in urban areas where surface
run‐off will test our resilience. If watercourses in the industrial
ages were valued for their ability to provide power and
transportation, and perhaps tolerated for their ability to dispose
of waste effluent, then, in the age of climate change, waterways
should be valued for their ability to sustain diverse forms of life,
and for managing water hydrology within a drainage basin. From
an ecological perspective, a waterway is water management in
action.
Green Space, Green Place
‘In order to do anything about water, we have to talk about the
earth’ (Helen Mayer Harrison).23
In Sustainable Urban Design, Randall Thomas reflects on the
place of landscape and nature in the city:
‘Landscape design and the presence of nature are critical to the
quality of our urban environment. Landscape is a fundamental
element of the design process, and may even be the starting point
Thomas G. Cash Floods In To Clean Up Burn. East End Independent. October
20th, 2004 p. 1.
23 Harrison Helen M. Santa Fe Watershed: Lessons from the genius of place.
(2004) DVD Santa Fe Art Institute.
22
100
of design. Shouldn’t the city grow from its setting rather than be
imposed on it?’ 24
The word ‘Glasgow’ translated from Gaelic (Glaschu) literally
means ‘dear green place’. The physical impact of human
development within the city boundary has been such that this
name has a certain degree of irony attached. Glasgow, though,
has reason to be proud of its green heritage, boasting the world’s
first public green – Glasgow Green, as well as an array of
Victorian parks north and south of the Clyde. Of course, Glasgow
was settled by St. Kentigern ‘because of the placid beauty which
he found’.25 Although this aesthetic quality has been lost in the
case of the Molendinar, it is perhaps worth remembering its
story as an example to learn from in the future. Jack House, in his
article of 1946,26 lamented this loss, putting forward a proposal
he called The Molendinar Project to clean up and reinstate the
Molendinar as a way of bringing about a greater sense of
connection between people and place. His proposal echoed
Brotchie’s earlier sentiment:
‘Glasgow has changed vastly since the times when it was
considered a privilege to have one’s house on the banks of the
Molendinar. We have polluted and then buried the historic
stream and its humbler confreres: and in doing so have we not
perhaps buried something else – that subtle breath which the
woodland path and wimpling burn give forth to all who care to
woo them? However much it may represent industrial activity
and commercial greatness, the evolution of a limpid stream into
a foul sewer seems a questionable exchange. It is certainly far
short of being either an elevating or inspiring spectacle’.27
24 Thomas R. Sustainable Urban Design. Span Press. (2003) Chapter 4,
Landscape and Nature in the City. p. 33.
25 Brotchie T. Glasgow Rivers and Streams – Their Legend and Lore (1914),
published by James Maclehouse & Sons. p. 139.
26 House J. ‘Beauty Treatment for Glasgow’s Burn’, Evening Citizen 7/1/46.
27 Brotchie T. Glasgow Rivers and Streams – Their Legend and Lore (1914),
published by James Maclehouse & Sons. p. 145.
101
What impact, then, did the removal of the Molendinar have on
the city’s population? Lucy Lippard states, ‘sense of place is the
geographical component of the psychological need to belong to
somewhere, one antidote to a prevailing alienation’.28 Human
relationships with rivers are multifaceted and complex, and in
this case go back to ancient times. Emotional ties and identity are
rooted in the landscape that surrounds us. Reflecting on
landscapes, Paul Claval suggests: ‘as mental constructs they help
people know who they are and from whom they differ’.29 In the
interviews carried out with local residents, it is clear that what
these people valued most in the Molendinar was a place to walk,
a place to fish and play. Agnes Campbell stated: ‘It was absolutely
beautiful when we came here. David used to go fishing with his
jam jar’. Tom Elliott too reminisced about ‘catching a small bag of
minnies’.30 Other local residents had even been known to plunge
into the water. On one occasion Tom Elliott contacted me after an
interview session in order to recount his dream:
‘I still refer to the Molendinar as her. I knew she had gone into
the Clyde so I went down the Clyde in a boat on an imaginary trip
that the Molendinar would take, wondering where it would lead
to. And I discovered that it led to the Firth of Clyde and
eventually into the Irish Sea and we joined the Gulf Stream which
was coming from the North and working its way South. So I was
quite content that this was where the Molendinar had ended;
joining the Gulf Stream to wherever it was going around the
World’.
Measuring this kind of connection on a scientific scale is always
going to be difficult. When it comes to city landscapes, aesthetic
value is not simply about superficial pleasures perceived by the
human eye. Aesthetic pleasure has a deep impact because ‘the
existence of landscape in the city can influence the human psyche
28 Lippard L. The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentred Society. New
York, New York Press, 1997.
29 Claval P. The Idea of Landscape. P. 7. PECSRL conference keynote. September
2008. Lisbon and Obidos.
30 Interview with Tom Elliott, Mearnskirk House, Mearnskirk, Glasgow, 2002.
102
and well‐being. Clinical trials have shown that hospital patients
looking out over trees have a faster recovery rate, lower blood
pressure and need less medication than patients who look out
over paved areas’.31
‘Nature not only has psychosocial value in the city context, it
also improves the local microclimate, relieves environmental
pressures on the city region and provides mental relief and
contrast for urban dwellers. Nature and landscape in the city are
hence important for improving the quality of life in urban areas
and for making those areas more sustainable in every sense of
the word – ecologically, socially and economically’.32
To enable future progress in these areas, it is vital that we go
beyond the notion of seeing economic gains and social benefits in
binary terms. As Randall Thomas points out, ‘Nature and
landscape in the city are economically beneficial because they are
aesthetically pleasurable and help in the process of retaining
property values because of perceived better quality of life’.33
With all of this evidence showing the potential benefits of
open waterways, and with a culture change shifting towards a
more sympathetic ecological register, is it now conceivable to
imagine a city like Glasgow actually turning back the clock and
opening up more of the burn? When I put this question to Neil
Tytler34 from the Foundation for Water Research, in June 2009,
his measured yet enthusiastic response was as follows: ‘If you
can put forward a scheme which takes into account the three
critical registers – social, economic and ecological, and in balance
there are overall benefits, then there is no reason why such a
plan couldn’t be put into action’. He went on to cite similar
31 Hewitt M. Can trees cut pain? Times, 4 September 2001, section 2, p. 10.
Anecdotal evidence also suggests a positive impact on human behaviour:
People living on tree‐lined streets are less prone to show violent behaviour,
take drugs and be depressed.
32 Thomas R. Sustainable Urban Design. Span Press. (2003) Chapter 4;
Landscape and Nature in the City. p. 33.
33 Ibid., p. 33.
34 Human Ecology Conference, Manchester, 29th June – 3rd July 2009.
103
initiatives on the Wandle and Fleet in London, which are moving
forward by addressing the subterranean, industrial legacy of
these rivers.
The most dramatic example of this type of regeneration is
perhaps that of Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul in South Korea,
where an 8km section of waterway was reinstated between 2003
and 2005. This action brought with it a plethora of associated
benefits including reduced summer temperatures and increased
breezes, as well as a significant reduction in the quantity of
traffic, since people were encouraged to use pedestrianised
areas.35 The political benefits of such an innovation were felt
most acutely by the then Seoul mayor President Lee Myung‐bak,
who spearheaded the beautification project and was
subsequently elected president of South Korea in 2007. Even the
Scottish Water report of 2003 states:
‘Urban regeneration should provide opportunities for improving
the environment and open watercourses should be considered as
assets in this regard. A further project objective is therefore to
explore the possible opportunities for “deculverting” of
watercourses. Along with other measures such as provision of
attenuation ponds, this could provide valuable habitat
enhancement in an area where it is much needed’.36
Such measures are critical to the health and sustainability of a
city and its population. Dr. Ian White puts forward these same
arguments in his paper ‘The Absorbent City: Urban Form and
Flood Risk Management’.37 White calls for green spaces to be
protected and even created within the city to prepare adequately
Carter J. Climate Change Adaptation in Theory and Practice. Paper given at
the Human Ecology Conference, Manchester, July 2009. ‘The average summer
temperatures were reduced by 3.6 oC, as summer breezes were encouraged by
up to 50%. In addition, Vehicle traffic was reduced by 2.3%’.
36 Paper No 4 – The Strategic Response to Glasgow East End Flooding. David
Wilson (Scottish Water) & Martin Spiers (Montgomery Watson Harza) 19 June
2003.
37 White I. The Absorbent City: Urban Form and Flood Risk Management. Urban
Design and Planning 161 Issue DP4.
35
104
for the extremes of future weather systems. He concludes: ‘The
dominance of economic issues in the development of urban form
has created a legacy of exposure and vulnerability to flood risk,
and a growing recognition of the limitations of this methodology
has led to a desire to manage flooding in a way more harmonious
with nature’38. He describes natural management as the process
whereby ‘land is given back for floodplain restoration, and more
room is given over for rivers’.39 Glasgow ‐ ‘Dear Green Place’ ‐
could do worse than reflect on its natural heritage in order to
prepare for its future. This point was taken up by George
Parsonage in 2002: 40
‘Now, how far up does the Camlachie burn back up because we’ve
now got flooding in the basement of the People’s Palace, and we
had all the flooding in Shettleston last year, or at the beginning
of this year. And I do believe that it’s all linked to what they’ve
done at the Molendinar and Camlachie burns. Now if that’s the
case this would reinforce the case for opening up as much of the
Molendinar as we can so that, I mean if it’s culverted, it jams up’.
A Place for Art?
In 2001 the Molendinar Park was completed – part of a broader
regeneration strategy known as the Royston Road Parks
Project.41 The design brief given to Greg White of Loci Design
was for the ‘Provision of a safe body of water for play and
relaxation. A space to move through or stay within. Durability
(provision of barriers to keep out recurring problem of joy riders
dumping cars). Provision of an educational landscape’.42 White
goes on to explain the rationale behind the design: ‘The
watercourse forms the main structure of the park. As the only
place in Glasgow where the historically significant Molendinar
Ibid., p. 159.
Ibid., p. 152.
40 George Parsonage, Glasgow Humane Society.
41 The other major park completed was Spire Park in Royston. Both initiatives
looked to the heritage and sense of place as a platform for further developing a
sense of community.
42 Royston Road Parks. Gardiner L. (ed.), (2002), Published by The Centre. p. 14.
38
39
105
Burn flows above ground43, the aim of the design was to channel
water from the existing waterfall to the culvert and provide a
safe, accessible body of water (able to cope with fluctuating
water flow and never exceeding 200mm depth)’.44 The project
essentially set out to create a more manageable environment
where burn and residents could co‐exist.
Extracts from interviews with locals made during the
opening of the park were subsequently published as a testimony
to the apparent success of the scheme.45 Locals were asked,
‘What is the one thing that really has improved in this area?’
Answers included: ‘The new housing first and foremost, and the
pond…I was born in the area and we used to actually swim in
that pond, years ago, and then kids started throwing things
in…but now its beautiful, really beautiful, and hopefully it will be
taken care of – the people in the area will make sure it’s well
taken care of’.46
Despite this enthusiastic response, one of the most
disappointing design elements remains its ‘greyness’; how little
it resembles nature or provides hydrological attenuation. The
Molendinar simply flows through a series of straight channels set
in concrete. Underfoot, concrete paths direct you efficiently
through the space. Durable, yes; absorbent, no. In fact, what is so
striking about the design brief is the failure to represent
adequately the importance of sustainability and ecology. This is a
‘green’ space of sorts, but the hard architectural edges that play
such a fundamental part in the overall design create an
atmosphere of management and restriction. The park is not
inviting to wildlife and does not seem to represent a significant
addition to the city’s absorbent skin. When I interviewed Agnes
Campbell a year after the opening of the park she told me ‘I
43 This is a technical inaccuracy. At the time there were at least three exposed
sections of the Molendinar and these still remain.
44 Royston Road Parks. Gardiner L. (ed.), (2002), Published by The Centre. p. 14.
45 Ibid., p. 74.
46 Ibid., p. 74 (anonymous).
106
would like to have seen a seen a better idea than what they have
done’.47
On returning to Molendinar Park in 2008 (fig. 8), I
documented the various changes since its unveiling. Where trees
had been planted in the hope of reaching maturity, unkempt
foliage and broken stumps could be found. Bicycles and shopping
trolleys had been discarded in the moving stream and Toby
Patterson’s sculptural works had been daubed with graffiti. The
park might have provided a platform for amenities such as the
Molendinar Community Centre, but the design itself leaves a lot
to the imagination. Are these failings those of the designers and
artists, and the process they set in motion? Or, does it suggest
that people’s expectations for urban regeneration are sometimes
unrealistically high, given the underlying socio‐economic issues?
On the evening of the Park’s opening one local resident reflected:
‘There has been a lot of change in this area, for the good. It’s all
very well doing up the houses but they need jobs as well’.48
Towards the Idea of a Living Monument
‘One thing that we can say motivates all of our work and it’s
called bringing forth a new state of mind. Changing the way
people look at the environment and their relationship to it. That
is what we mean when we talk about changing the vision of place
that people have from a vision of a disconnected entity that exists
outside of themselves, to an entity that they are part of, that they
are connected to and all people around there are connected to’.49
The discursive, inclusive approach outlined above by
environmental artist Helen Mayer Harrison has many valuable
characteristics applicable to the Molendinar, and there are a
number of lessons that can be drawn from it.
Agnes Campbell, interviewed Blackhill, 2002.
Royston Road Parks. p. 75. Gardiner L. (ed.). Published by The Centre (2002).
49 Harrison H. Mayer. Santa Fe Watershed: Lessons from the genius of place.
(2004) DVD Santa Fe Art Institute.
47
48
107
Fig. 8. Molendinar Park as it appeared in 2008, seven years after its official
opening.
Firstly, it suggests that ‘expertise’ can be rhizomatic in nature;
capable of throwing up shoots of knowledge horizontally, not
vertically. Local knowledge should therefore be identified,
consulted, and valued. Secondly, it follows that without
communal visions and imagination, future solutions will remain
divisive and exclusive. Finally, this ‘new state of mind’ ‐ the new
approach ‐ is increasingly necessary because, as Einstein
famously said: ‘We can't solve problems by using the same kind
of thinking we used when we created them’.
The Molendinar should be seen not as a problem, but as part
of a solution. Many of the difficulties experienced in Glasgow
during the summer of 2002 were exacerbated by a failure to
grasp and appreciate the hidden landscape of history. The
infrastructure problems facing Scottish Water and Glasgow City
Council are compounded by a persistently mechanistic outlook
that has disregarded the hidden benefits of nature in the city.
108
Fig. 9. A forgettable memorial to the Molendinar on Viewpark Avenue/
Alexandra Park Street, Dennistoun. Note the M8 slip road in the top left of
the picture.
This has essentially stockpiled future environmental problems. If
this process of removal and forgetting has created hidden
dangers, then how should we remember waterways like the
Molendinar in the future?
A focussed walk around most cities will reveal monuments
and memorials relating to ‘notable’ events and ‘distinguished’
citizens – all of them substantiated by the dominant social and
political ideologies of the time. A monument to something like a
waterway is somewhat less common. To remember it you simply
keep it there, protect it through legislation. So what about a river
that has already disappeared? The only physical monument to
the Molendinar appears to be a small metal plaque at the side of
the slip road off Viewpark Avenue, heading west onto the M8
motorway in Dennistoun (fig. 9). It simply reads: ‘Below this
point flows THE MOLENDINAR BURN’.
109
The capital letters seem to denote significance to the subject,
but simultaneously make apologies for excluding any further
information. ‘What is the Molendinar?’ pedestrians might ask. To
the outsider, the only clue seems to be the word ‘flows’. The
fundamental design flaw, however, is that to be able to read this
memorial you would either have to stop your car, or else stand in
the middle of the road – both of which have obvious dangers
attached. This is a busy slip road with no pavements and few
pedestrians. We can extrapolate from this design that it was
intended to maintain a low profile for the subject remembered.
Brotchie testifies that: ‘We may bury it [the Molendinar]
from sight, but its memories linger forever amongst us’.50 If this
is indeed true, then where is that lingering memory? By putting
the words ‘Molendinar Burn’ into any well‐known online search
engine, amongst the references that appear are a significant
number of sites either dedicated to the Molendinar Burn, or sites
in which the Molendinar plays a central role. These sites link
disparate communities through a fascination with the lost, the
hidden and the subterranean.51 Many of these underground
converts and psycho‐geographers pay homage to history through
covert expeditions into the city’s sewers and waterways. All
seem dedicated to the task of remembering and disseminating
Glasgow’s subterranean past.
This vision of secret journeys to underground streams
underlines the special power the Molendinar still has. This fact
supports George Parsonage’s vision for the Molendinar as a civic
attraction: ‘I would like to see the city fathers open it up, do
something with it to make it a real asset, a tourist asset. I mean
Glasgow has cleaned itself up so much; it would be pretty ironic
if it wasn’t cleaned up. I mean every city van in Glasgow is
showing the emblem of the Molendinar and what have we got to
Brotchie T. Glasgow Rivers and Streams – Their Legend and Lore (1914),
published by James Maclehouse & Sons. p. 139.
51 Websites like urbanglasgow.co.uk www.28dayslater.co.uk
www.hiddenglasgow.com
50
110
show for it?’52 Similarly, Jack House laments the plight of the
Molendinar by drawing comparisons with Scotland’s capital:
‘I wondered what Edinburgh would have done about a burn like
the Molendinar? Dr C. Stewart Black says: ‘when Edinburgh was
no more than a group of huts nestling beneath a fortress,
Glasgow had already a past of a thousand years’. But Edinburgh
seems to make more of its past’.53
The London based artist/activist group PLATFORM (founded in
1983) has been involved in a number of ambitious and long‐
running projects addressing issues of social and ecological
justice. In 1989, they embarked on a series of related projects
exploring the River Wandle – a tributary of the Thames. The
Wandle had for centuries been the center of various settlements
providing water for ‘drinking, washing, cooking, for water to help
grow crops; as a place to fish and hunt; to wash the newborn
infant and the dead’.54 From the seventh century to the
nineteenth century, it had been a milling river processing corn,
textiles, copper and cloth. By the late twentieth century, much of
the river had been covered in brick, tarmac and concrete –
physically and psychologically buried. The series of interventions
PLATFORM developed included a micro‐hydro turbine and a
large bell mounted on a sluice gate activated by the tides. The
electricity generated by the turbine was used for lighting the
music room in the local primary school where PLATFORM
members had been resident artists. ‘The Tree of Life – The City of
Life’ project lasted almost three years and involved a deep
engagement with people and place. The fruits of this relationship
lasted longer still in various forms such as RENUE – a renewable
technology charity based in the Wandle Valley that ran from
1994 to 2002.
George Parsonage, interview (2002).
House J. Beauty Treatment for Glasgow’s Burn. Evening Citizen p. 23. 7/1/46.
54 Marriott J. ‘In The Storms Of The World – Building Communities to Assist
Social and Ecological Justice’ from The Practice of Public Art (2008), Cartier C. &
Willis S. (eds.), Routledge p. 210.
52
53
111
Subterranean waterways have also been a point of reflection
for the artist David Haley. The project ‘Unculverting the
Ulverston Beck’ (1992) took a very direct approach
incorporating guerrilla action as well as patient civic
consultation. The project culminated in a portion of the
Ulverston Beck being dug up with permission from the relevant
authorities, who had never before been approached with such a
request. After consulting the necessary regulations and
legislation, they saw no reason for refusal, so long as the
necessary safety precautions were followed. Haley likes to use
the American term ‘daylighting’ to describe the process of
revealing the stream. This is significant, because it is the
presence of daylight that potentially allows the watercourse to
heal itself. As Haley himself testifies, ‘Within a month the stones
turned green with algal flow‐forms, wagtails arrived, and a year
later someone saw a kingfisher’.55 Haley’s memorial to the
Ulverston Beck, was the Ulverston Beck; not a reminder of what
had been, but a living monument to what could be. This vision
was given permission, but created from the ground up.
Conclusion
Glasgow’s Clyde waterfront is currently undergoing a huge face‐
lift, part of a £2 billion, twenty‐five year, masterplan that sees the
reconnection of the river with its people as one of its principal
objectives. This investment is a serious attempt to breathe life
back into the void left by shipbuilding. Huge, glass‐fronted
apartment blocks offer the perfect vantage point for
contemplating the changing fortunes of this great city – fortunes
that have been tied up with its rivers and streams. The decision
to locate new housing so close to water at sea‐level is a confident
gesture which must be reinforced by an integrated approach to
the whole environment. To neglect the Molendinar and any of
Haley D. Water, Time and Grace – Questions of Art and Ecology. p.14, Engage
(no.21) The International Journal of Visual Art and Gallery Education. Art and
Climate Change edition.
55
112
the other forgotten waterways of Glasgow would be to neglect
the Clyde, because all streams flow there.
If just a fraction of the resources currently being pumped
into the Clyde waterfront were made available to the
Molendinar, then perhaps this investment too would pay back
future dividends in terms of creating a visitor attraction, re‐
establishing a sense of place and, more importantly, ensuring a
safe, sustainable environment for future generations. The history
of the Molendinar provides a valuable lesson illustrating not just
the hidden costs of treating nature mechanistically, but also in
terms of underlining a failed capacity for society to ‘think long’.
When economic gain is achieved through environmental
degradation, we need to re‐evaluate the meaning of wealth. This
said, there is much to be optimistic about. During field research I
saw seals swimming nonchalantly down the Clyde – no doubt
looking for spawning salmon. Although it is difficult to imagine
the day when these same fish might return to the Molendinar,
this situation does give some room for optimism. When, some
months ago, a neighbour gave me a salmon steak he had caught
on the Clyde, I consumed it with delight, and a very real sense of
connection.
References
Baxter, N. (ed.). 2007. A Tale of Two Towns – A History of Medieval
Glasgow. Royal Incorporation of Architects/Glasgow City Council.
Boney, A. D. 1988. The Lost Gardens of Glasgow University. Christopher
Helm (Publishers) Ltd.
Brotchie, T. 1914. Glasgow Rivers and Streams – Their Legend and Lore.
James Maclehouse & Sons.
Defoe, D. 1991. A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain. (1724‐
26) Edited by P. N. Furbank, W. R. Owens, and A. J. Coulson Yale
University Press. New Haven.
Fisher, J. 1994. The Glasgow Encyclopedia. Mainstream Publishers.
Edinburgh.
Gardiner, L. (ed.). 2002. Royston Road Parks. Published by The Centre.
Gordon, J. & T. M. Devine (eds.). 1996. Glasgow Volume 1: Beginnings to
1830. Manchester University Press. Manchester.
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Lippard, L. 1997. The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentred
Society. New York. New York Press.
Marriott J. 2008. In The Storms Of The World – Building Communities
to Assist Social and Ecological Justice. In Cartier, C. & Willis, S.
(eds.). The Practice of Public Art. Routledge. London.
Mackie, J. D. 1953. The University of Glasgow 14511951. Jackson & Son
& Co. Glasgow.
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Published by David Bryce & Son.
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Articles and Papers
Carter, J. (2007). Spatial planning and the Water Framework Directive:
insights from theory and practice: The Geographical Journal 173
(4): 330‐342.
Carter J. (CURE: University of Manchester) Climate change adaptation
in theory and practice. Paper given at the International
Conference of Human Ecology, Manchester University, 29th June
– 3rd July 2009.
Claval, P. The Idea of Landscape. PECSRL conference keynote.
September 2008. Lisbon and Obidos.
Douglas J. 1964. Glasgow’s Molendinar. Scotlands Magazine, Vol. 30. p.
26.
Haley D. Water, Time and Grace – Questions of Art and Ecology. P.14
Engage (no.21). The International Journal of Visual Art and Gallery
Education. ‘Art and Climate Change’.
Harrison, H. Mayer. Santa Fe Watershed: Lessons from the genius of
place. (2004). DVD Santa Fe At Institute.
Hewitt M. 2001Can trees cut pain? The Times, 4 September, section 2,
p. 10.
House, J. Beauty Treatment for Glasgow’s Burn. Evening Citizen 7/1/46.
Thomas, G. 2004. Cash Floods In To Clean Up Burn. East End
Independent. October 20th, p. 1.
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Harza) Paper No 4 – The Strategic Response to Glasgow East End
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Websites
www.28dayslater.co.uk
www.hiddenglasgow.com
www.urbanglasgow.co.uk
115
116
Constructing a ‘Wild Land’ Cultural
Heritage for Britain: ‘Water’, ‘Wilderness’ and
Development in the Highlands of Scotland
Jill Payne
Introduction
The emergence of the ‘wild lochs, bens and glens’ Highland
aesthetic for which Scotland remains known internationally was
due as much to geography and the socio‐political relationship
between the Highlands and the rest of Britain as it was to the
more general, Romanticism‐inspired reappraisal of ‘wild’
landscapes that reached a high point during the nineteenth
century. As the Industrial Revolution gathered momentum in
Britain over the course of the late eighteenth century, various
less‐developed regions, including the Cumbrian Lake District, the
Derbyshire Peak District and the Highlands of Scotland – all
upland areas bordering the heartlands of burgeoning industrial
development – garnered new social significance as visual and
cultural reminders of Britain’s pre‐industrial landscape (both
real and imagined). Changing attitudes to water in particular lay
at the core of revised perceptions of relatively remote
mountainous areas like the Highlands, previously prone to
dismissal by outsiders as ‘sterile’ and underutilised, but
subsequently the subject of much positive attention within
nineteenth‐century British social, literary and artistic circles. The
accelerated harnessing of metropolitan British water systems for
energy and transport paved the way for the rise of an enhanced
appreciation of ‘natural’ lochs and geological features like
waterfalls in peripheral locations; by necessity, appreciation
focused on areas not immediately critical to contemporary
industrial expansion. Over the same period, Scotland’s extant
historical and literary legacy – the lost Jacobite cause; the poetry
of Robert Burns – was augmented by highly influential fiction;
most notably that of the Reverend James Macpherson (who went
117
to extraordinary lengths to convince the public of the
authenticity of what was essentially his creation, the works of
‘Ossian’, the ‘Gaelic Bard’), and Sir Walter Scott. The post‐1800
need to celebrate Britain’s remaining non‐industrialised water‐
and‐mountain landscapes tapped into an existing Scots heritage,
rich in regional symbolism, to which, whilst it lost little of its
‘Scottishness’, various sectors of the wider British population
also began to lay claim. A very specific nineteenth‐century
Highland ‘wild land’ aesthetic came into being. It lingered on into
the twentieth century (and beyond) and proved to be
insufficiently elastic when it came to accommodating post‐
nineteenth‐century development demands, particularly with
regard to renewable energy. Over a century later, the tensions
stemming from efforts to integrate industrial development into
the non‐industrial Highland landscape remain unresolved.
Constructing ‘Wild Land’ in Scotland
‘Unspoiled’ or ‘natural’ landscape is a cultural construct rather
than a precise environmental condition, as is the very idea of
‘landscape’ itself. ‘Wild’ is a similarly relative term.
Contemporary tourism brochures have a tendency to encourage
would‐be escapees from more urbanised areas to lose
themselves in the ‘natural’ Highland landscape: lochs, hills,
heather, birch and pine, augmented by histories and legends
loaded with cultural and literary significance. However, a
number of influential environmental history studies have
included further analysis of the substantial level of development
that has been maintained over time within the Highland region.
John Sheail (2002) and IG Simmons (2001) approached the
subject within their Britain‐wide studies, and both RN Millman
(1975) and D Turnock (1995), after WG Hoskins (1955),
considered in general terms the extent of human‐induced
landscape change in rural Scotland. TC Smout expanded the
environmental discussion he initiated in his 1990 Raleigh
Lecture, ‘The Highlands and the Roots of Green Consciousness,
1750‐1990’ (Smout 1990), in Nature Contested: Environmental
History in Scotland and Northern England since 1600 (Smout
118
2000). Judith Tsouvalis (2000) has investigated afforestation in
Britain, and this has been augmented by Smout’s (2003) edited
volume People and Woods in Scotland: A History. The somewhat
‘empty’ appearance of the region is the result of changes in, for
example, population density rather than due to less ecological
manipulation.
Academic analysis notwithstanding, the ‘wild’ Highland
landscape continues to figure prominently within facets of both
Scottish and British cultural identity. At the same time, while this
is often alluded to, it is seldom explored in detail – in direct
contrast to the expanding body of discourse linking English
cultural identity and the idealised landscapes of the English
countryside (see for example Daniels 1993, Matless 1998). The
well‐studied English attitudes to the landscapes of the south,
however, form an important counterpoint to the manifestation of
attitudes towards the north. The ‘outsider’ perception of the
Highland region as ‘unspoiled’ developed in response to more
obviously discernable changes in the south of Britain. The
startling disparity between the cultivated appearance of rural
England and the ‘wild’ Highlands originally overwhelmed but
later gratified English travellers in Scotland during the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Positive attitudes
towards the landscape of the Highlands must therefore be
analysed with an eye to the appreciation of the English
countryside already in place. Such contextualisation allows for
the acknowledgment of two aspects of the non‐urban landscape
ideal within Britain, with the ordered rurality of the enclosed
South providing a significant contrast to the less constrained
‘wild’ places of the North.
Much analysis has been devoted to what James Hunter
(1981:56) in 1981 termed, ‘the worldwide potency of all the
standard symbols of Scottish identity’. These symbols – the loch,
the burn, the heather, the thistle, the grouse, the red deer, the
mountain peak, even the tartan – are largely elements, no matter
how derivative, of the ‘natural’ Highland landscape. Powerful
indicators for people removed from (and sometimes completely
unconnected to) that landscape, they serve, on a global level, to
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trigger memories and imaginings of the wider landscape they
represent. That they became such key symbols of the positive
aspects of the Highland landscape can be attributed to outside
influences; the approbation of Queen Victoria, for instance. These
symbols currently exist as tangible links between cultural
identity and the environment, but, embedded as they now
appear, they are for the most part the product of early
nineteenth‐century cultural consciousness.
The earliest positive comments about ‘natural’ scenery made
by those visiting – rather than inhabiting – Scotland can be
traced to the late eighteenth century and the influence of
Romanticism. Prior to this, ‘outsider’ impressions tended to be
negative. Some of the most well‐known remarks are those made
by Samuel Johnson in the course of his journey around Scotland
with James Boswell in 1773, in which he described the landscape
before him with a marked lack of enthusiasm (Smout 1983:99,
2000:12, see related commentary in Dingwall 1997:162, House
and Dingwall 2003:128). However, seminal to this essay is
Johnson’s emphasis that he had ‘not come to Scotland to see fine
places, of which there were enough in England; but wild objects,
– mountains, – waterfalls, – peculiar manners; in short, things
which he had not seen before’ (Boswell 1955:81, Smout
1983:101). Boswell (1955:238) himself takes this interest in
Scotland a step further: ‘the people of taste in England, who have
seen Scotland, own that its variety of rivers and lakes makes it
naturally more beautiful than England, in that respect’. Boswell
and Johnson represent the cusp of the outsider change in attitude
towards Scotland, appreciating their surroundings sometimes
because the novelty of these made them noteworthy, and
sometimes because they found them aesthetically appealing.
Romanticism forms the basic foundation on which most
subsequent landscape appreciation in Scotland has rested.
Romantic values were mediated through individuals who,
through their writing and influence, succeeded in moulding the
Romanticism‐based appeal of history, literature and landscape
into a number of enduring images that permeated ideas of
Scotland throughout the nineteenth century and well into the
120
twentieth. Romantic ideas about landscape per se are generally
accepted to have emerged from the continental experiences of
European philosophers, writers and artists during the mid‐
eighteenth century. Jean‐Jacques Rousseau (2000:155),
remembering Paris in the 1730s, made clear the origins of his
disgust for the urban environment: ‘I saw nothing but dirty,
stinking little streets, dark and ugly houses, an air of filth and
poverty, beggars, carters, old crones mending, hawkers of herbal
teas and old hats’. For him, the antidote for the malaise of
urbanisation was increased interaction with the natural world:
‘…the way of life I like above all others. Moreover, what I mean
by fine scenery must by now be clear. A flat landscape, however
beautiful, has never seemed so to my eye. I need rushing streams,
rocks, pine trees, dark woods, mountains, rugged tracks to
scramble up and down, precipices on either side to fill me with
fear’ (Rousseau 2000:168).
Echoing Rousseau (fig. 1), new efforts to express feelings invoked
by the contemplation and experience of ‘wild’ nature revolved
around ideas of the ‘sublime’, the ‘terrific’, the ‘majestic’ and the
‘picturesque’. The turnabout in thinking that enabled people to
see those forces of nature least controllable by humans –
mountains, rivers, waterfalls and storms – as positive, meant that
when they came to Scotland, they began to read the landscape
differently. Significantly, they also began to visit Scotland with
the specific intention of exposing their senses to these less
controllable aspects of nature. By the early nineteenth century,
positive imagery relating to the ‘wild’ and ‘romantic’ beauty of
the Highlands had become more common, as was a concurrent
interest in the links between Highland scenery and literary
references and historical events (see for example Burns 2000,
Southey 1972, D Wordsworth 1934, W Wordsworth 1956).
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Fig. 1. For Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, the isolated setting of the Pont du Gard –
the Roman aqueduct in the south of France ‐ was all‐important. Source:
Rousseau, J‐J. 1831. The Confessions of Jean‐Jacques Rousseau. Translated
from the French. Reeves & Turner. London. Page 208.
That Scots themselves viewed the landscape of Scotland in a
positive light (although not necessarily the same light) far earlier
than this, is a point acknowledged by both early and late
twentieth‐century commentators (Smout 2000:12‐18). A 1926
account of Skye explained how ‘long before Sir Walter Scott
inaugurated the cult of scenery‐appreciation, the princely
Coolins, the queenly Maidens of Mcleod and the faithful Stob‐a‐
Stoir received the warm homage of the natives’ (Matheson
1926:220). In its Report of 1947, the Scottish National Park
122
Committee quoted lines from Duncan Ban Macintyre,
commenting that ‘our native writers and bards have always
highly praised the scenery and wild life of their country’ (Scottish
National Park Committee 1947:4).
Industrialisation and the Romanticisation of ‘Wild Land’
Between the end of the eighteenth century and the onset of
World War I, romanticised interpretations of Highland ‘wild
land’ became entrenched within the broader British cultural
consciousness. In the interests of burgeoning industrialisation,
Britons accepted the inevitability of significant changes to
metropolitan environs. Environmental historians, in their efforts
to trace the emergence of ‘green’ thinking, have spent time
chronicling contemporary concerns about the negative impact of
the Industrial Revolution. This has tended to detract attention
from the positivity and celebration of progress that characterised
elite attitudes in particular towards late eighteenth‐century
industrialization. Samuel Johnson (1992: 366‐367), for one, took
great pride in the imposition of order that canalisation had, by
the 1770s, brought to the water systems of the English Midlands.
In July 1771, he described to Hester Thrale how he had:
‘crossed the Staffordshire Canal one of the great efforts of
human labour, and human contrivance, which from the bridge
on which I viewed it, pass[e]d away on either side, and loses
itself in distant regions uniting waters that Nature had divided,
and dividing lands which Nature had united’.
At the same time, it became comforting to imagine some regions
remaining in their ‘natural’ state. In addition to ‘wild nature’,
Scotland had one of the most clearly definable pre‐industrial
cultures remaining within Britain. In tandem, these two elements
combined to provide a counterweight to the industrialization of
the metropolitan heartlands.
Another aspect of the change in the way in which Scotland’s
landscape was perceived by the outside world has been
attributed to the dilution over time of the ‘Highland threat’ that
123
was posed by the Jacobite cause until the end of the first half of
the eighteenth century. It has been argued that the ‘Highland
threat’ of the Jacobites later gave way to the more positively‐
perceived ‘Highland myth’ that romanticized the entwined
tragedies of the defeated Jacobite cause, the clearances and the
subsequent Scots diaspora – and, ultimately, the landscape of
lochs and hills against which this played out (Womack 1989). By
the 1820s, the Highlands had become a place increasingly sought
out by those in search of the romantic, the picturesque and the
sublime.
Arguably, recognised sites of historical or literary
significance within a landscape act as ‘markers’ that jog a
society’s collective memory of that landscape and enable it to
‘remember’ its socio‐cultural history more easily. Christopher
Tilley (1994) brought an important new understanding to
neolithic monuments by examining various groups of these
within the context of the landscapes in which they were placed,
as well as their situation in relation to one another. He suggested
that the primary function of many of these monuments was to
act as markers in the landscape, emphasising both important
geographical or physical attributes of water and land, such as
rapids and the spurs of valleys. To contemporary societies, this
would have increased the psychological or cultural significance
of the markers. Tilley’s argument has shed further light on the
way in which prehistoric societies may have interacted with
their environments. However, his approach can also be used to
lend clarity to the understanding of attachment to landscape
within the historical period.
In terms of Tilley’s hypothesis, James Macpherson’s ‘Celtic’
verse, the first ‘fragments’ of which were published in 1760, can
be viewed as an initial catalyst for an emergent outsider interest
in Scottish landscapes that saw particular prominence given to
sites linked to Ossian (Macpherson’s largely fabricated ‘Gaelic
Bard’). Samuel Johnson was one of those who disputed
Macpherson’s claims, and the validity of the Ossianic verses was
a constant topic of discussion during his and Boswell’s Scottish
travels (Boswell 1955:43;71;115;169‐70;270‐2). The poetry of
124
Robert Burns (2000), with its continuous references to specific
locations and historic events and personages, such as those
relating to the Jacobite cause, is a further significant influence. Sir
Walter Scott was an additional catalyst of critical proportions.
Although most famously associated with the Border region, Scott
was by his own admission ‘a most incorrigible Jacobite’ (Scott
1894:326), and a potent force behind renewed interest in
landscapes linked to the uprisings of 1689, 1715 and 1745 (see
for example Scott 1891). His interpretation of the life of the
outlawed clansman Rob Roy McGregor (Scott 1891) meant that
further attention was paid to the Trossachs area, which had
already come to his readers’ notice as the scene of his earlier
ballad, The Lady of the Lake, first published in 1910 (Scott 1847).
Much of Scott’s work was centred (if loosely) on historical
occurrences and it is most often the manner in which these
generalised histories have become tied in with associated
landscapes still there to be viewed that has been the foundation
for lasting Romantic images of Scotland. There has perhaps been
a tendency to overemphasise his role as primary catalyst of the
new interest. In the 1829 preface to a new edition of the
Waverley novels, in which he admitted to their authorship, he
maintained that the positive response to Lady of the Lake with its
‘recollections of the Highland scenery and customs’ was what
encouraged him to think of writing prose along similar lines
(Scott 1891:4). His own explanation of his development as a
writer of prose centred on this region suggests that he saw
himself as a secondary catalyst; the link between the positive
reception of his work and an emergent popular interest in the
Highlands into which he was delighted to tap.
Late‐eighteenth‐century Scottish poetry and prose must be
considered within the context of the wider European Romantic
movement. At the same time, early‐nineteenth‐century tourists
like William Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy Wordsworth, and
Robert Southey acknowledged the extent to which their interest
in Ossian, Burns and, in particular, Scott, shaped the direction of
their Scottish travels. In addition, the accounts of these literary
travellers’ journeys provide descriptions of the growing tourist
125
attractions that sites associated with Ossian, Burns and Scott had
become. They, and those drawn north in their footsteps, must
therefore be considered key influences in the burgeoning
Regency interest in the ‘controlled threat’ by then presented by
both the subdued Highlanders and the landscape inhabited by
them.
William and Dorothy Wordsworth visited Scotland in 1803
in the company of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (D Wordsworth
1934, W Wordsworth 1956). William was to make a second
journey in 1814, and Dorothy in 1822. Subsequently responsible
for widespread interest in the landscape of the English Lake
District, the Wordsworths were assiduous visitors to sites of
literary significance within the Scottish landscape. In the journal
she kept of the 1803 tour, Dorothy described a conversation with
a farmer and his workers in the vicinity of Loch Katrine, with its
associations with The Lady of the Lake and Rob Roy MacGregor:
‘a laugh was on every face when William said we were come to
see the Trossachs; no doubt they thought we had better have
stayed at our own homes. William endeavoured to make it
appear not so very foolish, by informing them that it was a place
much celebrated in England, though perhaps little thought of by
them...’ (D. Wordsworth 1934:240241).
For Dorothy, ‘a range of hills’ gained in importance because they
were ‘the hills of Morven, so much sung of by Ossian’ (D
Wordsworth 1934:300;302). William further cemented the
reputation of the Narrow Glen between Dunkeld and Callander
as the resting‐place of Ossian by incorporating the tradition into
the poem ‘Glen Almain, or The Narrow Glen’ (W Wordsworth
1956:229). Dorothy also referred to their hopes of seeing the
Falls of Bruar which they ‘wished to visit for the sake of Burns’
(D Wordsworth 1934:338). Burns had famously advised the
Duke of Atholl in verse that the surrounds of the falls would be
much improved by tree planting, a task duly undertaken by the
Duke (Burns 2000:210‐212).
126
With the Wordsworths as part of the (already relatively
numerous) advance guard, the number of visitors to the
Highlands grew exponentially over the following decades. Robert
Southey’s (1972:28‐29;31) comments on a carriage journey
made between Callander and Loch Katrine in 1819 are evidence
that road conditions of the time made access to the loch from the
east most uncomfortable. However, once at the loch, he found
that the local boatmen were sufficiently familiar with The Lady of
the Lake to be able to point out to tourists such scenery as could
be linked to the poem and that these entrepreneurs did not
necessarily distinguish between the historical and the literary
when variously recounting the stories of Robert the Bruce,
Cromwell, Rob Roy and The Lady of the Lake (fig.2).
Fig. 2. A nineteenth‐century depiction of Ben Lomond, by G. F. Robson, from
the illustrative companion to Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy. Source: Robson, G.
F. 1832. ‘Ben Lomond’. Landscape Illustrations of the Waverley Novels with
Descriptions of the Views. Vol. I. Charles Tilt. London. Page 20.
127
In 1822, when Dorothy Wordsworth (1934:516) was again in
Scotland, she commented on the attraction that Rob Roy’s cave
had become:
‘Our Highland musician tunes his pipes as we approach Rob
Roy’s cave. Grandeur of Nature, mixed with stage effect. Old
Highlanders, with long grey locks, cap, and plaid; boys at
different heights on the rocks. All crowd to Rob Roy’s cave, as it
is called...they seem to have no motive but to say they have been
in Roy’s cave, because Sir Walter has written about it’.
Fifty years later, in his 1874 essay ‘On the Enjoyment of
Unpleasant Places’, Robert Louis Stevenson expressed a similar
appreciation of Scott’s influence on outsider perceptions of
Scotland:
‘I suppose the Trossachs would hardly be the Trossachs for most
tourists if a man of admirable romantic instinct had not peopled
it for them with harmonious figures, and brought them thither
with minds rightly prepared for the impression. There is half the
battle in this preparation’ (Stevenson 1925:178).
Primary catalyst or not, it is difficult to overestimate the seminal
influence of Scott’s scenic descriptions on people’s ideas of what
constituted important Scottish landscapes during this formative
period. By 1829, idealised, Scott‐derived images of the
Highlands were becoming entrenched. That year’s editions of
the Waverley novels incorporated the artwork of Landseer,
Wilkie, Leslie, Newton, Cooper and Kidd. Landseer’s work, in
particular, represents a link between Scott and a new ‘layer’ of
influence and cultural memory that coalesced around Queen
Victoria
and
Prince
Albert’s
mid‐nineteenth‐century
appreciation of the eastern Highlands as a landscape of
exploration, sport and refuge.
The mid‐nineteenth century was an important period of
change, during which the visual appreciation of the Highlands
became progressively more entrenched and classless in its
application. Facilitated by the development of steam and rail
128
travel and further aided by substantial advances in image
reproduction, what had been an upper‐ and then middle‐class
indulgence became accessible across a range of social sectors,
ushering in an era in which, by the end of the nineteenth century,
even the more affluent sectors of the working class had began to
make proprietary aesthetic claims on the Highland region
(Grenier 2005), see figs. 3‐5.
Critically, the democratisation of the Highland landscape lent
fuel to an emergent desire for further physical interaction with
the land. The tradition of appreciating the aesthetics of the land
from an external vantage point, in the way that a viewer looks
into a picture, was succeeded by a new attitude concerned with
more active engagement within it. Walking and botanising were
already relatively established, but mountaineering and cycling
began to attract significant followings, with these latter pursuits
linked to a growing emphasis on health and fitness, and a more
integrated experience of the natural world. In some instances,
class lines became pointedly blurred, as with the Scottish
Mountaineering Club’s traditional emphasis on:
‘its Members frank and free,
Professors and Proctors – Divines and Doctors –
And Duffers like you and me’ (Stott 1912:1512; Lambert
2000:168).
These changes represent a discernable shift in the
insider/outsider perspective: the population of Scotland’s
urbanised Central Belt began to find in the Scottish waterways,
lochs and hills a visual and physical respite from the urban
sprawl of its weekday surroundings. Both the scenic upper
reaches of the River Clyde, and the close proximity of the Loch
Lomond region, to increasingly industrialized Glasgow meant
that these landscapes in particular began to assume increased
significance within the cultural consciousness of an outsider
group that now included Lowland urban dwellers of all classes.
129
Fig. 3. A nineteenth‐century depiction of Corra Linn, the largest of the four
linn, or falls, on the River Clyde, South Lanarkshire. Source: John Marius
Wilson. 1860. Nelsons' Hand‐book to Scotland: For Tourists. T. Nelson & Sons.
Edinburgh. Following page 166.
The burgeoning interest in mountaineering added a further
dimension to the visual appreciation of the Highlands. The
aesthetic perception (see Yi‐fu Tuan’s seminal introduction:
1990) of previously little‐accessed (or even non‐accessed) high‐
level sites shifted, as these places became visited rather than
merely viewed from afar. Once visited, they began to serve as
windows on the entirely ‘new’ landscapes that lay revealed below
the viewer. These landscapes with previously little identity, in
the sense that few people saw them, became highly significant to
mountaineers and climbers who, as a group, increasingly sought
to protect them from change.
By the turn of the nineteenth century, the impact of the
Romantic movement on the aesthetic experience of the
Highlands was diluted by a range of secondary influences. The
actual appreciation of the aesthetic value of landscape was
becoming second hand.
130
Fig. 4. A nineteenth‐century depiction of the Grey Mare’s Tail waterfall,
Dumfriesshire, now owned by the National Trust for Scotland. Source:
Wilson, J.M. 1860. Nelsons' Hand‐book to Scotland: For Tourists. T. Nelson &
Sons. Edinburgh. Following page 40.
131
Fig. 5. A nineteenth‐century depiction of Loch Lomond, from an illustrated
edition of James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel
Johnson. Source: Boswell, J. 1860. Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with
Samuel Johnson, LLD, Illustrated (Forming Vol. V of Boswell's Life of Johnson).
Third Edition. Routledge, Warne & Routledge. London. Page 290.
By 1897, the Liberal politician James Bryce was acutely aware of
this change. Bryce (1897:127), a highly influential early
campaigner for public access to Scotland’s uplands, commented
in an address to the Cairngorm Club how he had ‘often observed
that out of the whole number of tourists there were a good many
who were quite ready to go into ecstasies when they reached a
place which the guidebook indicated as having a beautiful view,
132
who were perfectly indifferent to equally beautiful views that
had not been mentioned in the book’ (see also Lambert 2001:60‐
73). The nature of scenery also attracted further interest outwith
literary, artistic and recreational spheres. On one hand, this is
reflected in works seeking to explain how scenery was formed,
such as Sir Archibald Geikie’s (1865) Scenery of Scotland and
John E Marr’s (1903) Scientific Study of Scenery. Marr (1903:1‐7)
in particular makes it clear that he is providing explanations for
the evolution of scenery rather than mere topography, quoting at
length from John Ruskin and William Wordsworth in his
introduction. Following World War I, this scientific approach, in
combination with the literary perspective exemplified by the
Scots Magazine (SM), was extended to form the basis for a
scientific‐cum‐literary idea of landscape to which general late‐
twentieth century perceptions retain clear links.
The SM was first published in January 1739, largely as a
medium for political comment, but also ‘That the Caledonian
muse might not be restrained by want of a publick echo to her
song’. The first modern edition of the SM was produced in April
1924, with an editorial foreword promising to fill the gap for ‘a
high‐class literary periodical devoted entirely to Scotland and
things Scottish’. It went on to provide a lively forum for debate
throughout the period under consideration. Editorial comment
wavered where the position regarding the land‐use/landscape
protection debate was concerned. Finding a middle ground
proved difficult for editors focusing on the interests of both
Scotland in general and the Highlands in particular. Many of the
contributors to the SM during the interwar period were familiar
with the Scott novels in particular, and were responsible for
introducing them to a wider audience (see for example Matheson
1926:222). In 1931, HR Cook (1931) enthused about the
Callander region as:
‘Scott country rich in story and rich in scenery. The Trossachs,
Lake of Menteith, Aberfoyle, the Rob Roy country, Lochs Lomond,
Tay and Earn are all easy of access and no one can fail to
explore them without receiving mental stimulus’.
133
On the centenary of Scott’s death in 1932, there was an
outpouring of reprints and re‐editions of his work, and the SM
devoted much of its September 1932 issue to aspects of his life.
Even though in 1934 the editor questioned the new generation’s
familiarity with the likes of Rob Roy and Quentin Durward, it was
still felt that texts like Ivanhoe remained relatively well known
(Scots Magazine, 1934:318‐319). Other significant commentators
of the previous century were given similar treatment, which had
the effect, firstly, of familiarising readers with old traditions and,
secondly, of providing these traditions with further layers of
added significance by association, as with the following reference
linking Craigellachie, just outside Aviemore, with both a Clan
Grant tradition and Ruskin’s treatment of it:
‘Passing into the shadow of Craigellachie, the gathering rock of
the Grants, something of the steadfastness underlying it that
animated and rallied the old clansmen in battle enters into one.
With Ruskin one feels:
How often the remembrance of these rough grey rocks and
purple heaths must have risen before the sight of the Highland
soldier; how often the hailing of the shot and the shriek of battle
would pass away from his hearing, and leave only the whisper of
the old pine branches – “Stand fast, Craigellachie!” ’ (Mcpherson
1932:88).
The SM’s profoundly Scottish orientation makes it a valuable
source by which to measure the degree of interest in landscape
change and landscape protection shown by those with an
avowed interest in Scotland, particularly since it consciously set
out, during this period of heightened interest in emigration from
Scotland, to encompass and stimulate the interests of Scots living
abroad: ‘Each month as much space as possible will be specially
devoted to those who have gone overseas from the old Grey
Mother, but whose hearts still fondly cling to her’ (Scots
Magazine 1924:2).
It is arguable that contemporary popular images of Scotland
have been influenced greatly by the thoughts and writings of
134
émigrés nostalgic for ‘home’, a factor responsible for the
emergence of an exaggerated identification with the ‘homeland’.
The images of Scotland held by people living away from Scotland
have as much to tell us as those of people still living there. The
popularity of the SM was an important influence on the
corresponding idea that there were many Scots living abroad
who would potentially support schemes to protect and improve
elements of Scotland’s ‘heritage’, with Alan Graeme commenting:
‘We have that immense body of Scots in other countries who
would be certain to subscribe very large sums [in this regard]’
(Graeme 1929:9). There was a sound basis for the concept of
outsider support for projects of this nature. The many Scottish
societies emerging in the United States, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand and the British colonies and dominions in Africa were
the subject of much publicity in Britain. Expatriates in South
Africa, for example, formed the Federated Caledonian Society, an
umbrella organisation linking various Scottish‐interest groups
across the country, and produced the first edition of The
Caledonian magazine in 1922 (Scots Magazine 1935: 406‐7).
The travel writer HV Morton’s lyrical and decidedly
subjective accounts of his journeys around Britain and elsewhere
began to attract an extensive readership during this period. His
sketches of London were published in the Daily Express in the
early 1920s and his subsequent publications included travel
volumes on London, Britain, the eastern Mediterranean, the
Middle East and South Africa (Morton 1930, 1932, 1933, 1934b,
1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1946 and 1948). His two volumes on
Scotland, In Search of Scotland (Morton 1949) and In Scotland
Again (Morton 1934a), explained the significance of sites in the
Highlands and elsewhere to audiences of the interwar period and
later. He laced his commentary on the scenes he visited with
traditions, histories and the descriptions of earlier travellers,
noting, as Dorothy Wordsworth had done, his disappointment at
seeing Glencoe in sunshine and utilising an account by Charles
Dickens to convey to his readers what he felt should be the true
bleakness of the pass (Morton 1949:228). He was conscious of
his place at the margins of the then century‐and‐a‐half old
135
tradition of outsider interest in Scotland (Morton
1949:13;27;122;134) and even his volumes unrelated to
Scotland contain references to Scott’s role in the generation of
specific national images (Morton 1934b:188). In the 1929
introduction to In Search of Scotland (Morton 1949:vii‐viii), he
summarised the contribution of those in whose footsteps he
followed, making a case for the origins of tourism in Scotland
broadly similar to that arrived at by TC Smout (1983, 1990 and
2000) and Alastair Durie (2003). Morton could be pompous and
patronising, and his writing was often highly resonant with the
purple prose of an earlier age, emphasising the influence of the
literary past on his perspective, as with his description in 1929 of
a drive alongside the far from ‘natural’ Caledonian Canal: ‘What
scenery, what primeval wildness, what splendid solitudes, what
lonely mountain‐crests, what dark gloom of pine and larch, what
sudden bright glimpses through trees of deep water reflecting
the curves of guardian hills’ (Morton 1949:182). Concentrating
on the romance of the past, Morton focused his readers’ attention
on the visual reminders of the pre‐twentieth‐century landscape.
For the most part, he excluded commentary on human‐
engineered constructions, and did not contribute to
contemporary debates over land‐use.
Such imagery could not have jarred with his inter‐war
audience to any significant extent. By 1949, Methuen had issued
a thirty‐sixth edition of In Search of Scotland. Morton had also
gained the approval of the SM (1933:233) which suggested with
satisfaction that a high proportion of Morton’s readers were
Scots (Scots Magazine, 1934:frontspiece). Such a statement is
difficult to quantify, but it is certainly arguable that the work of
travel writers of the inter‐war years in general, and that of
Morton in particular, did much to inform the view of the precise
components of attractive Scottish landscape. In addition – and
mirroring James Bryce’s turn‐of‐the‐century conclusions – it is
also arguable that the work of travel writers served to modify
perceptions of ‘good’ landscape, with readers concluding that the
mention of a particular spot in guidebooks gave it precedence
over less publicised sites. It is possible that this had far‐reaching
136
implications, impacting as it would have done on the views of
people concerned with shaping landscapes and developmental
policies in other parts of the world (see for example Cronon
1983).
Hydroelectric Development and the Protection of ‘Wild Land’
The extent to which this Highland image had become entrenched
within the general cultural mindset became apparent when
industrial expansion in the form of hydroelectric development,
initially in the interests of aluminium production and later for
general power supply, threatened to intrude upon the cherished
places associated with the ‘Highland myth’. Proposals for large‐
scale hydroelectric development in the region emerged from the
socio‐economic concerns of the early twentieth century and
before. Scotland had experienced a protracted period of
economic decline, and the Highlands in particular lagged behind
the remainder of Britain in terms of basic living standards,
employment levels and industrial development. The growing
power of the political left in Scottish politics during, and
subsequent to, the inter‐war years focused attention on this
imbalance and there was a notable drive, particularly post‐1942,
to facilitate development in all corners of the Highlands. With the
establishment of the North of Scotland Hydro‐electric Board
(NSHEB), an effectively state‐mandated concern was created to
drive through hydroelectric schemes (initially private
commercial enterprises) in the Highlands. The NSHEB quickly
came into conflict with core landscape appreciation/protection
groups over the best use of Highland landscapes. The standoff
between the two sides can be ascribed to different valuation
criteria, which made compromise difficult, if not impossible.
Hydroelectric development utilised two principal natural
resources of the Highlands, open space and extensive water
systems, and appeared to represent a viable solution to a swathe
of socio‐economic problems. However, many of the Highland
sites most suited to this development were landscapes valued for
their natural beauty and socio‐cultural associations, exhibiting
links to ideas of national and cultural identity and the tendency
137
to utopianise Britain’s pre‐industrial past. Hydroelectric
development was seen to threaten these landscapes with
irrevocable aesthetic change. Its opposition served to articulate
twentieth‐century perspectives on landscape appreciation and
protection, in the process highlighting the incompatibility of
contemporary desires for non‐modified landscapes with
contemporary energy requirements. The trappings of industry,
no matter how well designed, have no place within the ‘ideal’
landscapes of the Romantic mindset. Their presence may be
tolerated, for a variety of reasons, but is seldom accepted as
anything more than a necessary negative.
The importance of the Romantic ideal becomes apparent
when addressing the opposition to hydroelectric development
initiatives that were seen to threaten the aesthetic quality of the
Highland landscape. Initial disquiet related to localised
landscape modifications such as the diversion of water flow and
the diminution of well‐known waterfalls, which diluted the
template Romantic idyll. By the late 1920s, critics of
hydroelectricity were articulating their concerns regarding a
range of more large‐scale negative factors, although their
misgivings were also increasingly offset by their concern not to
be seen to be thwarting socio‐economic projects of significant
advantage to Highland communities. This opposition served to
galvanise the establishment and expansion of Scotland‐
orientated voluntary organisations (like the Association for the
Preservation of Rural Scotland and the National Trust for
Scotland) and their demands for greater legislative protection for
‘cherished’ landscapes.
Water flow change became the focus of initial opposition to
hydroelectric development because it led to dramatic landscape
modification. The vital element in hydroelectric power
generation is a steep gradient down which to channel the water
driving electric turbines. Waterfalls accompany many steep
gradients, and famous and much‐visited waterfalls like those of
Foyers, as well as Corra Linn (fig. 3), Bonnington Linn and
Stonebyres Linn on the River Clyde, lost a significant proportion
of their flow to diversion. In 1897, James Bryce denounced the
138
British Aluminium Company for the desecration of the Falls of
Foyers, ‘…a perfectly unique piece of scenery, the most striking of
all British waterfalls’ (Bryce 1897:129‐130). In spite of Bryce’s
disapproval, the Company was legally inviolate, having bought
the surrounding 8,000 acre estate of Lower Foyers as well as the
additional water rights it required from other neighbouring
landowners (Payne 1988:5). Influenced by the late‐nineteenth‐
century emergence of the national park system in the United
States – and arguably the first person to articulate the need for
broad landscape protection measures in the Highlands ‐ Bryce
suggested that one way of forestalling similar actions in the
future might be to create:
‘some means of preserving for the nation as a whole a thing in
which the nation as a whole had an interest, and which was part
of the inheritance the nation received, and wished to hand on’
(Bryce 1897:129130, Lambert 2001:68).
More than any other visible changes to the land brought about by
power generation in the early part of the twentieth century, the
drastic diminution of waterfalls engendered a significant sense of
loss that began to be articulated in terms of cultural heritage.
There is little direct linkage between Bryce’s suggestion and the
later, more specific, calls for a National Trust for Scotland and for
national parks. At the same time, however, memories of the
impairment of the Falls of Foyers lingered on as a tangible
example of the losses that might result if hydroelectric
development in the Highlands was to proceed unregulated.
Romantic values dictate explicitly that trees complement
waterscapes and vice versa; this is arguably one reason why the
greatest opposition to post‐World War II hydroelectric
developments in Scotland arose in response to proposals centred
on landscapes incorporating lochs and watercourses with
wooded banks: lochs Sloy, Lomond, Tummel and Affric, rather
than Glen Cannich. In the 1940s, the exigencies of war and
reconstruction enabled the NSHEB to proceed with a highly‐
contested hydroelectric scheme incorporating lochs Lomond and
139
Sloy ‐ the ‘Sloy Scheme’. However, during the 1970s, opposition
groups were able to combat a subsequent hydroelectric
development threat to Loch Lomondside (figs. 2 and 5) through
emphasis on its iconic, romanticised status. Protestors and the
media made practical use of the cultural connotations at their
disposal, in a way that they would never have been able to do
with NSHEB’s Cruachan hydroelectric development at the
relatively less well‐known, but arguably no less scenic, Loch Awe.
A significant degree of mileage was obtained from references to
the lyrics of the song ‘Loch Lomond’, in which, for instance, the
loch’s ‘bonnie, bonnie banks’ were compared to a post‐
developmental ‘Bonnie Waste Dump’ (see the Stirling Observer
3/8/1977; Carson and Leiper 1978). The socially‐prominent Earl
of Arran referred to ‘the astonishing plan of building a power
station inside Ben Lomond, on the bonnie banks of the loch’ and
the destruction of ‘Britain’s number one beauty spot’ (The
Scotsman, 20/7/1978). In June 1978, the Glasgow Herald
produced a lengthy synopsis that also played on the ‘Loch
Lomond’ lyrics:
‘For them [NSHEB] there is no high road or low road, but only
the one unavoidable road leading straight up to a savagely
splendid ridge they have codenamed Craigroyston which nestles
on the broad shoulders of Ben Lomond… The rape of the loch,
the destruction of Europe’s greatest wilderness, the betrayal of
future landscape starved generations who will be cheated out of
the unspoiled freedom of Rob Roy’s hills…These are just a few of
the accusations levelled at the Hydro Board in their proposed
‘shock assault’ on 114 square miles of Scottish Grandeur’
(Glasgow Herald 20/6/1978).
A statement by the Vice‐Chairman of the Buchanan Community
Council summarised the general mood: ‘Loch Lomond, the Ben
and its banks are among Scotland’s most priceless assets, known
in song and story the world over’ (Frend 1978).
At the same time, close inspection of opposition to the
development of Loch Lomondside suggests that a significant
amount of opposition was based largely on what are now
140
recognised as ‘not in my backyard’ (NIMBY) principles. ‘Memory
tags’ in the form of landmarks of cultural significance were
referred to, but their importance to heritage was seldom defined
satisfactorily, with the result that ideas of public ‘ownership’ and
inheritance on a cultural basis remained insufficiently clarified.
By contrast, NIMBYist concerns were more explicitly noted, thus
providing Hayden Lorimer and Andy Wightman (1999) with the
evidence necessary to support their contention that landscape
protection is traditional landownership in disguise (Lorimer
1997).
Conclusion
Following the Industrial Revolution, idealised ‘wild’ upland
landscapes increasingly began to serve as meaningful points of
reference for Britons intent on reinforcing their weakening ties
with a romanticised pre‐industrial past. By the twentieth
century, the cherished ‘natural’ places on which landscape
awareness pivoted, while arguably rooted in remote but
nonetheless actual memory, were static scenes of the collective
imagination. In terms of both significance and reality, these
areas, of which the Highland landscape is a notable example, had
come to be substantially disassociated from the land‐use
requirements of a ‘Western’ culture sustained by high‐level
energy consumption and the large‐scale constructions
accompanying it.
Intertwined ideas of water, wilderness and landscape
constitute much of the core of the contemporary Highland
identity. Outsider‐imposed, this construct is a comparatively
recent phenomenon based to a significant extent on the
romanticised responses of non‐Scots and Lowlanders, who, from
the second half of the eighteenth century onwards, went north in
search of ‘natural’ scenic and cultural evocations of Britain’s pre‐
industrial past. By the 1900s, the lochs, glens and hills of the
Highlands had become representative of Scotland as a whole, to
the point where any industrial development threatening to
impinge on the ‘natural’ status of specific cherished places within
the region was, in effect, seen to threaten the notion of
141
‘Scottishness’ itself. As a result, the idea of hydroelectric
development in areas like Loch Lomondside inevitably caused
controversy. This inability to reconcile land‐use and landscape
was a recurring theme through much of the twentieth century,
and has, in the form of the ongoing debate over pylons and wind
power, continued to colour the environmental debates of the
early twenty‐first century.
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