Questions and Exercises


The purpose of these web pages has been to demonstrate the varied aspects of urban life which need to be taken into account in order to try to understand the development of towns. Visual evidence has been used to demonstrate how subjects such as architecture and material culture can be used to complement documentary history.

All the images used are available on the SCRAN website. Although a geographical spread of examples has been aimed at, this has been limited by the available resources. Where factual detail has been provided, it has deliberately not been exhaustive. There is plenty of scope for students to investigate any topic further, or to study one town or area in detail.


Questions

Towns:
How would you define a town?

Every town has a reason for its existence. From prehistory onwards the reasons are basically geographical. Man chooses to live where crops can be grown or natural resources exploited. Settlements grow up at key sites such as natural harbours, each end of a loch, the lowest point a river can be bridged, or where travel routes intersect. What is the reason for the location of any town you are interested in?

Genius Loci:
Is it possible to analyse how each town differs subtly from it neighbours, even within a group conforming to the same basic pattern.

How can we pin down that spirit of place? What criteria contribute to it? Is it purely practical, relating to geomorphology or building materials? Or is it more subtle and complex?

Scottishness:
How did the establishment and development of towns differ in other countries with different political and administrative systems?

Did the Scottish burgh system work well compared with towns in other countries?

In other countries such as England, where the transformation and modernisation of towns was spread over a longer period, did this make any difference to the result by the nineteenth century?

Anglicisation:
During the eighteenth century the use of architects or architectural pattern books led to the decline of regional variations, and vernacular building features almost disappeared from towns. Cupar was described proudly by its minister in the New Statistical Account as having 'the appearance of a clean and comfortable English town'. Was this true of all towns, or of those near Edinburgh, or of travel or leisure towns?

There are at least three areas covered by these web pages, other than architecture, where anglicisation, or homogeneous Britishness, was a result of developments in urban life. What are these, and can you identify any more?


Exercises
Having asked these questions, and others which occur to you after looking at the pages above, consider the particular town you have chosen to study.

Where does it fit into the wider regional or national pattern? What type of town was it?

What was the economy of the town you are studying based on, and how did this change over time? What financial institutions had been established in it by the 1820s?

Which industries developed there, and why? How long did they last?

If the town was a burgh of barony, what happened to the original founding family, and how did this affect the development of the town?

If the town was a royal burgh, was it truly independent? How much influence did powerful neighbouring landowners have over the town at various periods?

How did the town council behave during the long eighteenth century? Was it effective? Was it corrupt? Was it irrelevant?

At what periods did the population grow? Why did people move into the town, and from where? Why did they leave, and where did they go?

How many schools were there in the town by the 1820s, and how did they differ from each other?

How many different denominations had built places of worship in the town during the long eighteenth century, and what sort of people attended each one?

Is there a surviving subscription list for a school, charitable institution, public monument or local publication? What can you deduce from the names on it?

Can you demonstrate changing patterns of transport, and the effects they had on the town and the surrounding area?

Can you plot developments in townscape? When were the first suburbs built, where and why?

Was the town already in decline by the eighteenth century? Did it have a Georgian heyday? If so, what evidence remains? What happened to the town in the nineteenth century?

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