TDGNHAS Series III, Volume 90

A hydroacoustic survey carried out at Loch Skeen in 2007 to assess fish stocks also collected water depth data as a by-product. These data have been used to update knowledge of the loch’s bathymetry from that measured in 1905 by Murray and Pullar (1910) and a more detailed and informative bathymetric map is presented here along with revised morphometric parameters.

In this case-study of the parish of Lochmaben (Dumfriesshire), the author follows a twofold approach: first, the early medieval (c. AD 600–1000) settlement pattern within the parish boundaries is identified through the use of place-name evidence. The analysis includes eighteen place-names which are ascribed with a rough chronology based on their etymology and comparative place-name types. In cases of uncertainty, archaeological evidence is added, where possible, to aid the dating process. Seven place-names have been found to point to early medieval settlement activity, and another four are considered possible indicators of human occupation in the study period. As a second part of the study, place-name analysis is used to determine the potential age of the parish boundaries. Based on a detailed study of þveit type place-names, the parish boundaries are roughly dated to the period before AD 1000, and may go back to British or Anglian territorial or estate units. It is argued that the parish boundaries, as they are seen on nineteenth-century maps, only received their ecclesiastical function during the twelfth century, when David I of Scots and his successors implemented a structured parochial system. In the course of the casestudy, a particular focus has been placed on locating the now lost settlement of ‘Ouseby’. The suggestion is made that this settlement became deserted in the fourteenth century, and was re-settled under the name of either Greenhill or Heck, both of which survive to the present day.

Contemporary and near contemporary medieval accounts dating from the period of the Wars of Independence frequently describe the tumultuous events of the period but are singularly inaccurate in providing accounts of the number of people involved; exaggeration and distortion are the norm. There are very few sources available by which we can objectively estimate and verify this population with any accuracy. Nevertheless (with many riders and provisos) it is possible to use the few statistics we have available to calculate a range of population totals for specific geographical areas. Sources dating from the period of the Wars of Independence indicate the sharp nature and degree of dispute that occurred but the human tragedy which befell the region and its inhabitants is put into sharper focus by comparison with calculated population totals.

Lit by gaslight and powered by steam, by 1815 the cotton-spinning mills of Ancoats in Manchester represented technology at the leading edge of the industrial revolution. Side by side on the Rochdale canal, two huge cotton-spinning factories dominated Ancoats, each employing over 1000 workers (Kidd, 1993, p.24). Remarkably, the founders of these two mill complexes, partners John Kennedy (1769–1855) and James McConnel (1762– 1831), and brothers Adam (1767–1818) and George Murray (1761–1855), all came from Kells parish in the Glenkens district of Galloway. The industrial revolution, which transformed Britain between the 1780s and 1830s, drew many thousands of people from similar rural backgrounds into fast-growing towns and cities. Very few, however, were able to succeed and prosper by mastering the technological and economic challenges of these new environments. Why were the Glenkens group able to do so? To answer this question requires an understanding of the social and economic background from which they emerged. A key argument will be that the development of the cattle trade with England led to the early advent of capitalist farming in Galloway. By the later eighteenth century, the social and economic environment of Galloway had been shaped by market forces for the best part of a century. Although this was a form of agricultural rather than industrial capitalism, it meant that when Kennedy, McConnell and the Murray brothers began their businesses in Manchester, the marketplace was a familiar rather than alien environment.

At the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society meeting on the 17 October 1913, Mr Hugh S. Gladstone MA, FRSE, FZS, FSA(Scot) read as his Presidential address: Addenda to the Statistical Account of Dumfriesshire and Galloway written at the end of the Eighteenth Century by Capt. Robert Riddell LLD, FSA(Scot).3 Gladstone had found in his own library six volumes of the Statistical Account of Scotland, volume I and volumes III to VII. As Volume I and volumes III to VI contained annotations by Robert Riddell, Gladstone assumed that Riddell had annotated all of the first six volumes. He regretted that all his efforts to trace volume II had failed and hoped that the publication of his paper would lead to its discovery.

This article seeks to provide a narrative of the development of the Dumfries and Maxwelltown Co-operative Provision Society (DMCPS) during the 1870s through a detailed reading of the first of the extant minute books of the society held at Dumfries and Galloway Archives, and covering the period from June 1870 to December 1879. Co-operative societies developed in Scotland from the late eighteenth century onwards as attempts by groups of working people to provide good-quality food supplies for themselves at affordable prices. The article shows that, during the 1870s, DMCPS experienced sustained growth in its trading activities, consolidated its membership and moved to enlarged premises. First established in 1847, more than twenty years before the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society, DMCPS survived and prospered in the 1870s at a time when Dumfries itself was enjoying a period of increased prosperity. The article considers this growth in some detail and attempts to place the experience of DMCPS within the wider contexts of Victorian social and economic development, and the contemporary growth of both Dumfries and the wider co-operative movement in Scotland and Britain as a whole.