Manuscript Grand Tour of Early Industrial Britain by a Scottish Landowner
A manuscript Grand Tour of Early Industrial Britain over 6 volumes, 60,000 words and 9 trips made between 1794 and 1839. Written by a Scottish landowner and mine manager, the grandson of his namesake the post-Newtonian mathematician, James Stirling (1772-1856) was motivated by a powerful sense of intellectual curiosity and his wish to record and understand the state of Britain in the 1790s and across the following decades, its commerce, industry, land values and agricultural techniques, its burgeoning cities and the ‘sublime’ beauties of Scottish, English and Welsh landscapes.
Stirling travelled thousands of miles (1694 alone, he calculates, in his 1805 tour) and his range is encyclopaedic as he reports on the towns and cities of northern England, views papyrii in England’s ancient universities, menageries of wild animals on the Strand in London and is amazed by the sight of Portsmouth fully mobilised during the Napoleonic Wars with ‘upwards of 5,000 men employed, of whom about 500 are convicts, they are kept employed here till they can be sent to Botany Bay’. Twice he visited the ‘Ladies of Llangollen’ and thrice enjoyed the performances of the ‘young Roscius’ in Chester - the prodigious child actor, William Henry West Betty. Stirling’s prose is workmanlike and only infrequently lyrical though he is not above marvelling at a landscape. His description of the famous beauty spot at Symonds Yat in Gloucestershire unites his aesthetic and everyday concerns:
‘the view at new wear [weir] wonderfully fine, the smoke from the iron forges added much to it with the singular cottages one above the other peeping through the thick hanging woods… vast quantities of coals from the forest, dragged up the river to Hereford by men, each man draws two Tons… Saw a man fishing in his Cobble or Corracle… made of hide or canvas and slender hoops - paddle same as that used on the northwest coast of America, weighs 2.0 lbs.’
Drawing upon the example of writers like Arthur Young (whose tours were prescribed reading for Stilrling at Edinburgh University) the emergence of these manuscript accounts of Stirling’s tours after more than two centuries of private ownership by his descendants, offer multiple research possibilities. The journals are a major primary source from the period when Britain briefly led the world in industrialisation. The authorship by a Scot, frequently recording his view of England, will be of particular interest (see Linda Colley, Britons) in attempting to understand the construction of a new British identity after the American War of Independence.
Undoubtedly it is Stirling’s reportage on early industrial England that is most potent here. In 1803 he found himself walking ‘through a great part of the Town of Manchester the streets dirty & few handsome; an immense number of Cotton Mills worked by steam; covering the whole town with immense thick volumes of smoke’ thence continuing underground into one of the lost wonders/horrors of 18th century industrial England, the ‘Duke of Bridgewaters famous subteraneous Canals into his Coal mines’. Travelling by foot, on horseback and post chaise Stirling is astonished by the speed of change: ‘before you reach Newcastle columns of smoke ascend from all quarters from the innumerable steem [sic] engines… very considerable iron forges, & glass works here’. As a proprietor of a lead mine in the Scottish lowlands, Stirling was horrified by the death rate of miners using dynamite in Welsh copper mines and observes with compassion the consequences of the Highland Clearances and ‘the poor wretched people that were driven out of their professions transporting their movables across the lake [Loch Lugal]... My guide much affected at the miserable situation of his countrymen’ though the immense scale of the African slave trade out of Liverpool, when he visits, leaves him unmoved. Stirling relishes technical detail, describing in detail the construction of Thomas Telford’s Pontcysyllte Aqueduct (still the highest in the world) and obsessively records the state of the crops he sees, the quality of soil and agricultural practices, crop prices, the cost of land and rents as well as showing a practical interest in measuring the girth of trees.
Stirling responded conventionally to the beauties of the English and Scottish countryside and the innumerable country ‘seats’ that he passes, and sometimes visits (Castle Howard in Yorkshire prompts raptures), Harewood House (pre Barry’s intervention) is ‘rather pleasing than grand’; but it is Britain’s burgeoning cities that excite him, notably his repeat visits to London where he relished the ‘fine paintings’ at the Shakespeare Gallery and gained entrance to the Exeter menagerie on the Strand where he ‘saw an Elephant 12 year old showed wonderful sagacity… The Casuary from Java… Two black swans of irregular plumage from Botany Bay.’
James Stirling (1772-1856) was the son of Archibald Stirling of Garden and the grandson via his mother of the mathematician James Stirling. He was highly regarded for improving the family estate at Garden near Stirling and for his leadership of the family mining concerns at Leadhills. He studies at Edinburgh University for a single year in 1799 under Professor Andrew Coventry. His lecture notes are held at Edinburgh University Library.
DESCRIPTION:
1 - 1796-1797: June 1st-August 16th’ 1797 July 12th-September 16th:
Quarter roan over marbled stiff card boards; lower cover detached. Vertical chainlines; (11x18cm) [pp] 166 leaves of manuscript; a few stubs and 3 blank leaves, c14,000 words A few calculations precede the text which begins with the departure from Leadmills.
NARRATIVE: Carlisle, Whitby, Castle Howard - ‘the dome has a very fine effect within but undoubtedly disfigures the building without from its height.’ York, Tadcaster, Leeds to Wakefield ‘tho’ not rich; immense number of coal pits. Thirty thousand [people] in Leeds including suburbs fifty thousands.’ Sheffield ‘Saw the steel manufacturer & the forge, converting it into small bars for the use of difference manufacturers; Chatsworth, Nottingham, Lincoln, Hull ‘an immense wet dock’, Durham, Alnwick, Berwick.Leadmills
(‘Journal of a Jaunt thro’ the north of Scotland 1797) Kinross, Perth, Glamis Castle, ‘Lord Gardenstone’s public library a small room fitted with considerable elegance; confronting the door a small museum with a few stuffed birds and some quadrupeds and some drawers underneath with fossils and shells, Blair Castle, ‘Met with Mr Farquharson of Monaltry told us that Mr F Invercauld had planted 200,000 larches a year for twenty years, Elgin, Fort Augustus ‘an immense cauldron boiling furiously’.
2 - 1804 July 1st-November 14th:
Marbled wrappers, wove paper [pp] 126 manuscript; [pp] 6 blanks, c11,500 words.
NARRATIVE: Carlisle, Harrogate, Leeds, Burghley House, Portsmouth ‘The Troops drawn up along the ramparts & shore for miles, kept up a running fire for some time in the dark, a very fine effect… Went on board a Convicts hulk, a shocking scene ’, Isle of Wight; ‘Pass a man hung in chains, 3 more on Hyndhead’; London, baffled by luxury of the Fleet Prison’. Oxford 'extraordinary customes, they are called to dinner by a trumpet’; in Blenheim Park ‘measured a number of venerable oaks… average 18 feet girth’; Bristol and onto Monmouth and Wales, Leominster,Llangollen, ‘the retreat of Lady E Ponsonby & Miss Button, disgusted w.t the state & vanity of fashionable life about 27 years ago eloped from their friends in Ireland & have never since moved from this sweet spot’. Pontcysyllte Aquaduct, saw William Henry West Betty twice at Chester, ‘Saw Roscius act Hamlet, he made £1520 for 14 days at Liverpool.’ Manchester. ‘504 miles.’
3 - 1805-1806 April 18th-September 27th & January 1806:
Quarter roan over marbled stiff card boards (18.5x11.5cm) speckled edges; vertical chainlines; preliminary blank and paginated by Stirling, pp181, c16,000 words.
NARRATIVE:
Edinburgh - Haddington - Berwick - Alnwick - Morpeth - Newcastle - Durham - Sunderland - Ripon - Harrogate - Bradford - Halifax - Huddersfield - Buxton - Lichfield - Droitwich - Tewksbury - Gloucester - Monmouth - Swansea - Bristol - Exeter - Ilfracombe - Camarthen - Snowden - Bangor - Conway - Gowen - Neston - Liverpool - Preston - Penrith - Carlisle
Visits Mona dn Parys copper mines om Anglesey (then biggest copper mine in the world) ‘before breakfast, the open excavation 70 yards deep and upwards of a mile long - water drawn up by means of horse engines, a scaffolding hanging over the gulph, they sometimes give way with the people at work on them’. From Neston to Liverpool ‘the country naturally rich but under wretched management’, ‘1694 miles’.
4 - 1806, May 7th-September 1st: Full roan wallet-style binding with flap and leather thong, red speckled edges (15.5x10cm) vertical chainlines, paginated by JS, pp138; six terminal blanks, c8000
NARRATIVE: Stirling - Perth - Highlands - ‘Island of Hoy ‘500 salmon have been taken here at one draught, much scarcer than formerly’, Beringdale - Dunbeath - Caithness - John O Groats - Elgin - Aberdeenshire, ‘Dined at Dunlugass at Mr Leslie’s who made his fortune in Norway - saw two wooden houses brought from Norway fitted up and furnished exactly in the Norweigan style’ - Wales
5 1811, April 25-August 18th:
Half roan over marbled boards (19x12cm), speckled edges, bookseller’s ticket: ‘Manufactured by Cowan & co. Edinburgh’, vertical chainlines [pp] 92 and blanks, c8000 words
NARRATIVE: Castlemilk - Kilmarnock - Carlisle - Keswick ‘ visited an extensive manufactory of spades and edge tools where a good deal is done by the assistance of machinery’. Cockermouth - ‘Saw Mary of Buttermere but so much changed since the last time I saw her that I would not have remembered her - now married to a man of the name Harrison’. - Derwent Water - Windermere - Lancaster - Liverpool ‘ l dined at Belle Vue with Major Hawkin and Captain John [Eton] of the Scots Grays’ - Warrington - Chester -Wrexham - Birmingham ‘smoke from the steam engines on the coal pits and iron furnaces covering everything - Lord Dartmouth went to Thomson’s manufacturing shop consisting of 2 storeys.. consisting of a vast display of jewellery - we walked through the principal streets - spacious and handsome’ - Warwick - Aylesbury - Middlesex - London- ‘saw the Cameloguanaco native of the snowy mountains of Peru’ and observes potato fields on Hounslow Heath, Cambridge - Northamptonshire - Lincolnshire - Grantham - Wetherby - Carlisle - Selkirk - ‘ the farmers’ club dines once a month here, upwards of 40 came to dine today’.- Garden. More preoccupied with recording crops, soil, cultivation, weather, landowners and increasingly trees.
6 1833-1839, June 13th-23rd; 1836, June 15th-28th; 1839, June 18-22nd [pp] 60. Marbled card wrappers (15.5x10cm) Lined paper, ‘Wise’ watermark, c4500 words. Sequence of short Scottish trip ending in St Andrews.