Shopping Saturday - Shetland House, Edinburgh

I haven't done a 'Shopping Saturday' post for a while; in fact my blogging has been a little erratic of late as I've been travelling a lot. I have just returned from a week in Oxford where I attended a summer school class on 19th Century Working Lives with the wonderful Dr Alan Crosby. He is a regular contributor to Who Do You Think You Are? magazine, and you can find him online on the magazine's Local history blog. This is marginally relevant to my shopping post, because while in Oxford I was on the look-out for second-hand books, as usual. This is harder than it used to be, since many booksellers no longer have shop premises, they trade online instead. Many of my Oxford favourites have disappeared in the last decade, but there is still the second-hand section of Blackwell's (an interesting shop in its own right), the Oxfam bookshops, and, on Thursdays, a couple of stalls in the market at Gloucester Green. This is where I found a few treasures this year - quite cheap, too. One was Black's Guide to West Kent (1906), which includes the Medway Towns, where I grew up; still not relevant to the subject in hand, but hold on, I'm getting there.

Post Office Edinburgh and Leith  Directory 1911-12

Like other books of its kind, the West Kent guide is full of advertisements, many of them illustrated, for places and services all over the British Isles. One which particularly caught my eye was the one above. Knowing that the National Library of Scotland has a big collection of online trade directories, I thought I would use these to see how long the business was in in existence, starting with the most recent online edition of the Post Office Directory for Edinburgh directory, 1911-12. When I clicked on the link to the title page for this directory, I was amazed to find not only an advertisement for the very same shop, but a picture of it, too! The actual directory entry reads 'Shetland House, John White & Co., Manufacturers of Shetland Shawls, Hosiery, Underclothing, Etc.' . Tracing back through the directory years, John White & Co were at 10 Frederick Street in 1891-92 described as 'successor to W B Mackenzie'. In fact, John White was the successor to W B Mackenzie all the way back to 1861! In 1858 12 Frederick Street was occupied by William White, woollen draper, men's mercer, and hatter. This turned out to be John's older brother. An assortment of census returns shows that they also had three sisters, and the family came from Crieff, Perthshire.

Shetland House at 32 Frederick Street is also listed in the Valuation Roll for 1915, still occupied by J White  & Co. The shop is still there, just off Princes Street in Edinburgh's New Town (ie the Georgian part) and the lease is even available, if you have £133,000 to spare for the rent.

'The property comprises a four storey, B-listed, stone building, with attic and basement, which was constructed 1786-92'

 

Mappy Monday - around Edinburgh

Edinburgh street plan 1877

With the release of the Scottish 1911 census last week, Scotland has been uppermost in my mind recently. Since I have no plans to visit Edinburgh in the immediate future, some maps are the next best thing. 

I have just scanned many of the illustrations from 'Black's Guide to Scotland', which include a number of maps. The large map at the top is a street plan of the whole city, and the others show what the guides considers the most interesting parts is more detail. 

Edinburgh Castle 1877

The castle is of course Edinburgh's most famous feature, and therefore merits a map of its own. If you look closely you will see that the detail includes the castle's famous gun, Mons Meg.

Calton Hill 1877

 Calton Hill is at the eastern end of the city centre, and while this map shows some interesting features of Edinburgh it just misses one of its most interesting ones;  one the left-hand side of the map you can see the caption 'Register House', but the building itself is just outside the frame. This is the building that now houses the ScotlandsPeople Centre, and for the genealogist this is the real centre of Edinburgh.

Greyfriars Churchyard 1877

The detailed plan of Greyfriars Churchyard points out what the Guide considers to be the most significant graves. It is easier to find it on the main map when you realise that the top of the this map is east, not north.

Edinburgh University and Museum 1877

  This map shows the City Chambers, St Giles cathedral and the old Parliament House as well as the university and museum, and is turned even further round from the norm, with south at the top of the map.

Between them, these maps tell us a lot about what Edinburgh was like in the late nineteenth century, except for one important thing; the route from any point A to any point B in Edinburgh is always uphill, and when you go back again it's still uphill.