Tour Dundee

Dundee sits on the north side of the Firth of Tay, eighteen miles east of Perth, a former royal burgh, it grew into a major port and commercial and industrial centre, and became known for the three is: jute, jam and journalism, only the last of which is still a major employer. In the 18th century the linen industry developed rapidly, specialising in coarse linen and sailcloth. From the 1830s jute was imported from India and after 1850 became a major industry. Cox’s Stack by James Maclaren (1865), in the western suburb of Lochee, is the finest factory chimney ever built in Scotland, a relic of the Camperdown Works, once the largest jute factory in the world.

Shipbuilding was also important, and Captain Scott’s polar
research ship Discovery, which was built here, is now back in the city at the old ferry terminal, with the Discovery Point Visitor Centre. Docked a short distance away is the Unicorn, a Royal Navy frigate built in 1824.

The town was a major centre of the whaling industry, the oil being used in the ‘batching’ (softening) of jute to prepare for spinning, but the trade failed to survive the
transition to factory ships and catchers in the 20th century. Keillers of Dundee pioneered the manufacture of marmalade here, but during the 19th century moved the bulk of their operations to London, keeping only a nominal capacity to make marmalade and jam in Dundee.

D.C. Thomson continues to be a major producer of newspapers and popular magazines, including the Sunday Post and the long-lasting comics, the Beano and the
Dandy. Its headquarters is a magnificent Edwardian building by Niven Ft Wigglesworth, with sculpture by Albert Hodge. Much of the town centre was replanned by William Burn in 1824 and again in the 1870s by William Mackison, inspired by Baron Haussmann’s work in Paris. St Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral by Sir George Gilbert Scott (1853-5), with its 210ft tall spire, is on the site where the castle once stood. The 15th century St Mary’s steeple is all that remains of a very large medieval burghal church.

Dundee was recovered from English control by Robert I in
1312. One of the 3 most important medieval royal burghs, it suffered a setback in the 1540s, when a major English garrison held Broughty Ferry Castle and raided Tayside. It took even longer to recover from the storming, massacre and sack of 1651 at the hands of the English General Monck. It was strongly Jacobite in the 1715 Rising, much less so in the 1745. The jute industry was low-wage and woman-dominated making Dundee a unique town with a poor female proletariat and high male unemployment. Restructuring after 1945 was necessarily traumatic, but new light industries and extensive slum clearance have dramatically improved it. Winston Churchill was
Liberal MP for Dundee from 1908-22.

The city has several museums and an art gallery, the
McManus Galleries, formerly the Albert Institute, a memorial to Prince Albert by Sir George Gilbert Scott (1865). The Mills Observatory on Balgay Hill is Britain’s only full-time public observatory. The Dundee Rep Theatre, established in 1939, is home to Scotland’s only full-time theatre company, and now an excellent theatre by Nicoll Russell (1982); associated with it is the Scottish Dance Theatre. Dundee Contemporary Arts has galleries, cinemas and other cultural and educational provisions in
a large modern building by Richard Murphy in the Nethergate. The Verdant Works is a restored 19th-century jute works. At 571 ft the highest point in the city is Dundee Law, the remains of a volcanic plug and the site of an Ifon Age vitrified fort. At its top is the city’s war memorial with a beacon that is lit 4 times a year. Camperdown, now a well-equipped public park, was once the estate of the Earls of Camperdown. Admiral Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Camperdown, defeated the
Dutch fleet at the Battle of Camperdown off the Dutch coast on 11 October 1797. His son built the neo-Greek Camperdown House, designed by William Burn, in 1824-8; it is now used as a function venue, golf club and café. Other parks include the centrally situated Dudhope Park, the grounds of Dudhope Castle, and Sir Joseph Paxton’s Baxter Park (1863), to the east of the city.

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