Dunkeld - An Eighteenth-century Market Town

In the next century we have many glimpses of Dunkeld, but the fullest and clearest picture is to be found in Sinclair’s Statistical Account of 1798. Dunkeld had already some reputation as a health resort and a beauty spot, and the Account proudly quotes the poet Gray’s description of Dunkeld. According to this many houses were even at that time west of the Cathedral, and the Duke’s grounds were intersected with roads and streets.
over which he had thrown ornamental bridges. There was at that time no bridge over the Tay, and communication between Dunkeld and Little Dunkeld was by ford or ferry.

The town was a barony borough, for though Charles II had offered to raise it to the status of a royal borough,
the offer had been refused; and though in Queen Anne’s reign the Charter was actually prepared it was never implemented, presumably because of the expense. The population had already begun to decrease, and in 1789
amounted to 1086. It was still, however, a market town of some importance to the surrounding country. There were six yearly markets, chiefly for yarn and cloth; though on March 25th horses were sold as well, and Hallow Day was devoted to black cattle, sheep and goats. A weekly market was held every Saturday, for all kinds of produce and the hiring of servants. This persisted to within the memory of still living inhabitants.
There was one chartered mercantile society, the Chapmen, whose charter dated from the time of James V. The Chapmen met yearly at a ‘Court’ on June 10th, the day after the St. Columba’s day market. To this court
each member had to bring his weights and measures for checking. The standard eli measure was built into the wall of a house at the Cross, which is now called the Eli.

Needy members were assisted after the manner of the ancient guilds. After the business of the meeting was done there was a dinner, and after the dinner the chapmen demonstrated their sobriety by feats of skill, of which the chief was the ancient pastime of Riding at the Ring. The chief trade of the town was in yarn, which was spun in the neighbouring countryside and brought down to Dunkeld for sale. As many as 200,000 spindles of yarn were sold yearly. There was also some weaving of linen and a tannery, which depended upon the supply of oak
bark. Oak bark itself was also sold to distant tanneries. In the old days the Dunkeld tanners, who were also shoemakers, had a monopoly of the shoe trade in the Highlands, and the right to seize any faulty shoes that
were exposed for sale; but the tannery must have been already on the decline by 1798, for the Statistical account does not mention the monopoly, and in the list of trades there are sixty weavers and fourteen tailors, but only two tanners, twenty shoemakers, two saddlers and two glovers. There are twelve keepers of inns and alehouses. By 1798 picturesque improvements and the planting of trees had long been fashionable, and the district was enriched by all sorts of deciduous trees, as well as by larches and a variety of conifers.

The Dunkeld House gardens were at that time remarkable throughout Scotland for their beauty. Evidences of the cult of the Picturesque and the eighteenth-century Gothic still remain to us in Ossian’s Cave, the Hermitage and Lady Charlotte’s Cave up Craig-y-Barns, a very early example, dated 1704. The age, too, of philanthropy had begun, and Dunkeld had two schools founded by the
Duchess of Atholl in addition to the Royal School. The most important was the Sunday School, for which the teacher was paid a guinea a year with the addition of sixpence a quarter for each scholar. There was a public examination every year, at which a collection for the upkeep of the school was taken. At the first of these, which happened three months after the school started, several pupils recited the entire Book of Psalms, the whole Paraphrases and Translations and many chapters from the Old and New Testaments. The examination must have taken some time.

There was also a female school, where girls learned sewing and tambouring, and were given a daily lesson in reading English. This school was revived and re-housed by a later Duchess of Atholl, Anne, 1814-1897, and
continued until 1898. Previous inhabitants of Dunkeld received their first education at it, and testify that they were taught to sew beautifully, to curtesy politely, and were given besides a good general grounding.

The Statistical Account of Dunkeld concludes by giving a very favourable character of the inhabitants. ‘They are distinguished’, says the author, ‘by a frank and open-hearted cordiality to strangers. No one ever resorted
to Dunkeld, whether as an invalid for the recovery of his health, or as a traveller, on an excursion of amusement, without experiencing that they were an hospitable and obliging people.’ It is impossible to say fairer than this, and it is a tribute very creditable to people who had lived for generations among the alarums and excursions of what was practically a border country.

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