Road to the Gallows

The swinging Sixties; the Profumo Scandal showed morals were on the decline.  But in 1963, Aberdeen had its own case of fatal attraction which would lead, for one man, directly to the execution chamber.

Henry John Burnett – the last man hanged in Scotland – had an affair with a married woman.  In a fit of jealous rage he shot dead her estranged husband in her mother’s house in Jackson Terrace.  Harry would later tell a constable who looked after him at his trial that he had given Thomas Guyan ‘both barrels’.  His escape route out of the house towards a garage in Seaforth Road, where he would commandeer a car, with his paramour, Margaret, had a chilling significance for his eventual fate.

Rewind to 17th century Aberdeen, and Parson James Gordon’s fascinating illustrated map of the city.  There were two routes north in those days, one through ‘Aberdon’, part of Kings College’s university town and the other via the links, which passed by the Gibbet.  Situated on a lonely hillock opposite the Broad Hill, the ‘hanging tree’ stood as a warning to all.  Often there would be the gruesome skeleton of the last criminal executed there, swinging in the breeze, its empty eye sockets terrifying any traveller on the route.

Today the Gallows Hill, as mentioned previously in this blog, stands at the top of Errol Street by Trinity Cemetery; that medieval route north now follows Park Road and crosses Urquhart Road at Urquhart Lane.  Did it occur to the fleeing Harry Burnett, three centuries later, that he was within sight of the ancient place of execution? Urquhart Lane passes directly by the corner of Jackson Terrace and the house where the murder took place.

Executioner's kit - gruesome legacy of capital punishment

In August 1963, Harry would be the only man to face execution in Aberdeen since John Booth had been hanged at the Castlegate in 1857.  The former’s death took place in the privacy of Craiginches Prison, the only time the execution suite was used before the abolition of the death penalty in 1969.

The significance of the old Gallows’ road may indeed have eventually dawned on Harry, as a retired policeman recalled his anguished words when leaving the dock a condemned killer, ‘I’m goin’ tae hang!’

Urquhart Lane, an anonymous street of garages has witnessed many on that long final road, perhaps none more tragic than Harry Burnett, the fair-haired lad who didn’t intend to kill.

Skipper Scott and Prince Jamie

Peacock Close - c.1900

Most folk in Aberdeen have heard the name Peacock Court, either because of a local art studio or the city’s first dancing master, Francis Peacock after whom the lane is named.  The next one off Castlegate is Peacock Close, its old name, however, was Skipper Scott’s Close.

‘Skipper’ Alexander Scott was a Jacobite, a supporter of the exiled Catholic dynasty of Britain.  It would be he who gave hospitality to the ‘highest Stuart o them aa’ on a dank, foggy night two days before Christmas 1715.  Scott was a ship owner and lived in the large tenement which stretched all the way back to what was then a great expanse called the King’s Meadow; now East North Street.  He and fellow Jacobites including George Keith, the 10th Earl Marischal, were delighted and honoured to receive ‘The Old Pretender’ aka Prince James Edward Stuart, to the city.

However, by November of that year, the Prince’s army, led by his deputy, John Erskine, the Earl of Mar, had been defeated at Sheriffmuir.  It seemed James’ cause was lost before he even arrived.  Neighbours of Skipper Scott reported seeing three men on horseback, dressed in French naval officers’ uniforms arrive outside the close late on the 23rd of December.  The skipper was seen to bow to one of his guests as they dismounted.  Jacobites all knew this was their future king, who at the time was suffering from a cold and had only arrived in Scotland the previous night.  Alexander probably gave the prince a king-sized feed and sent him to rest with a wee dram.  Of course, the 1715 Rebellion failed miserably and James Stuart left in February 1716 from Montrose, never to return.

Door lintel showing Alexander Scott and Janet Kinear's initials

Very recently, I took a wander up Peacock Close and discovered a very interesting sight:  On the left wall halfway down the close, you will find a lintel stone with two sets of initials: AS, IK and the date 1710.  Parish records reveal the marriage of Alexander Scott and Janet Kinear in 1696.  Could the ‘I’ be a ‘J’ which was not uncommon in late medieval script?  If so, then the couple moved in five years before Prince Jamie came to call, and perhaps it was Mrs Janet Scott who brought the ‘uisge beatha’ for His Royal Highness to drink almost three centuries ago.

The Torry Coo that Doesn't Moo

The Torry Coo is not a bovine, but the foghorn situated below Girdleness Lighthouse on Greyhope Road.  Sadly the horn has not sounded since the late 1980s, as it and all others in Scotland were shut off by the Northern Lighthouse Board, modern ships thought to be too large and enclosed for the captain to hear a fog signal.  However, there are still signals near some Scottish lighthouses, and in the south of England, ‘fog cows’ regularly bellow as the mist envelops the coast.

But our ‘Coo’ was completed in 1902, replacing an earlier fog signal east of the present site.  The ‘moo’ was ingeniously created by means of 25bph oil-fired engines which produced compressed air, then forced it through a rotating siren.  The large tanks on the fog horn stored the air as the ‘Coo’ sounded her warning to ships.  The lighthouse and fog signal were introduced to patrol Greyhope Bay as a result of the terrible sinking of the Oscar, a whaling ship which ran aground in a storm in 1813, with the loss of 42 lives.  However, it would be another twenty years before these safeguards were in place and the Stevenson-designed lighthouse was opened in 1833.

It was a Scot who invented the automated fog signal after centuries where only a bell was used (Aberdeen’s fog bell can still be seen near the new Marine Operations centre in Fittie).  Robert Foulis, who had emigrated to Canada, heard his daughter’s piano playing as he returned home on a foggy night and noticed the low notes carried further.  He built a steam-powered device which sounded sonorous bass notes and it was installed on Partridge Island, New Brunswick in 1859.

The sound of our Torry Coo not only resembled the bovine braying, but to a legendary sea monster that lived in Greyhope Bay it sounded just like a male of her species.  The story goes that she cried back to the fog horn’s sound, thinking it was a potential mate, yet was eternally disappointed as although she heard the returning call, she could never find her handsome male monster!  The echoes of the fog signal out at sea were apparently the lady monster’s anguished utterances, until of course, the Coo was silenced forever.

Ships today are full of technical wizardry which have made the Coo and her ‘herd’ obsolete, but you never know when we will need them again!

The Last Tram Line

In the dead of night on a May evening in 1958, few of the residents of Constitution Street would have heard the rumble of the entire fleet of Aberdeen’s trams, destined for their funeral pyre on what was left of the old Sea Beach line.  Those that did rouse themselves and attend the almost arcane end to what had once been the city’s main form of public transport would have seen the first twenty cars bump along the track and draw up in two rows before being doused in paraffin and set alight.  All that remains of that sad day for tram enthusiasts are the forlorn steel rails which can be found on the Links near the Beach Boulevard.  Wander along there today and you might notice the churned up tarmac — could it contain charred fragments of those wonderful trams?

Aberdeen’s very first horse-drawn tram appeared in August 1874, two years after the Aberdeen District Tramway Company was set up by local businessmen.  The first routes ran from King Street to Queen’s Cross depot and St. Nicholas Street to Kittybrewster Central Park, later the site of the Astoria cinema.  When ‘horse fuel’ got more expensive, the need for electric trams, first proposed in 1896, prompted the council to make a public takeover of the tram company and fund the installation of the necessary equipment for the princely sum of £103,785.  The private enterprise had already carried over 60 million passengers in the 24 years of its existence.


The Corporation Tramways increased the routes, added more cars, and started operating on Sundays – a popular decision with the citizens!  Sadly the glory days of the trams were already over by the 1920s when motor buses were seen as the economic alternative which could more easily serve the city’s transport needs.

In 1958 the council finally decided trams were ‘at the back o’ a day’ and sold the lot for scrap to Bird’s of Stratford-upon-Avon.  After an earlier gala procession, the trams’ very last journey was a greater spectacle to behold.  Like the Viking galley of Shetland’s Up-Helly-Aa, the entire rolling stock blazed up into the spring night, leaving a mangled heap of blackened metal in the cold light of the following day.

The tram lines are all that remain.  Stand there sometime; maybe you will hear those wheels rumbling on their ghostly way down the track as they did 54 years ago.

clack...clack...clack...

The Bones of St Nicholas Part II

In October I stood on the oldest known floor in Aberdeen, a true ‘hidden’ gem as the above image shows.  It belongs to the Kirk of St Nicholas. How old?  Around a thousand years according to the carbon dating of the graves discovered in the recent dig.  The fish-rich diet of our forebears skews the results of the dating, changing the mineral content of those old bones, but certainly some time during the 11th century.

So why build a stone church in a small, Scottish coastal settlement in 1000AD?

David I's seal

By the 1100s, Aberdeen had the status of a royal burgh, granted by David I.  David also invited Bishop Nechtan of Mortlach to settle here and make it the centre of the new bishopric in 1124.  The fact Nechtan and his successors concentrated their efforts on building a cathedral in Old Aberdeen, then Villa Aberdon, rather than in the centre of the burgh, suggests there was a considerable church here already.   The 1157 ‘bull’ or charter from Pope Adrian IV to succeeding bishop, Edward, refers to churches in both burgh and ‘villa’.

But why was the bishopric not founded there in the first place? What was the significance of Mortlach?  Despite the romantic notion it was founded in 1012 after the Danes were defeated there by Malcolm II, modern historian, Alex Woolf believes that the actual founder was the former’s great-grandson, Malcolm Canmore, in 1065.

Malcolm Canmore

This Malcolm is better known to us as the hero of Shakespeare’s infamous ‘Scottish Play’, when he returns to slay the murderous Macbeth.  However, the English playwright’s grasp of Scottish history was practically zero.  Macbeth had a perfectly legitimate claim to the Scottish throne; whereas Malcolm’s family had spent the last three generations bumping off their enemies to gain the prize.

Mortlach, located near modern-day Dufftown, was in the ancient Pictish state of Moray, Macbeth’s territory.  Malcolm founded the bishopric here out of political necessity rather than religious fervour, so the churchmen could keep order amongst Macbeth’s supporters and allies, natural enemies of the new king.

Perhaps Malcolm felt a little guilty after all and decided to fund the building of a new church as a means of atonement for his bloody deeds.  Aberdeen profited.  Whatever the case, the bishopric of Mortlach was instituted just at the time Alexander Gammie suggested that the kirk of St Nicholas was begun.  Only time … and archaeology will tell!

The Bones of St Nicholas Part I

No, no, not the relics of the Bishop of Myra who became the most famous patron saint of children … no, it is the mortal remains of our Celtic forebears who named their settlement Aber Da Abhainn, ‘At the mouth of two rivers’, the Dee and the Denburn, to which I refer in my title.

These bones were discovered by local archaeologist Alison Cameron back in 2008; the burial of twenty-three skeletons of infants and children were revealed outside the curved wall or apse of the earliest known stone church in Aberdeen.

Received wisdom stated that the ‘Great Church’ dedicated to St Nicholas which appears prominently on Parson Gordon’s 1661 map was founded in the twelfth century. Imagine Alison’s surprise at the ‘extraordinary’ result of the carbon dating on the children’s graves which placed them in the period between 890 and 1020AD!  This was history in the making – confounding centuries of previously accepted knowledge.

The burials apparently could not have predated the church building as they are laid out to follow the curved wall in a fan-shape, and they were undamaged unlike later burials above.  Therefore that Celtic community on the upper slopes of the Denburn Valley was in existence more than a century before chieftain, Gillecoaim, who gave his name to Gilcomston, witnessed the royal charter granted to the monks of Deer in 1152.

Aberdeen Civic Seal from 1150-1424
showing Nicholas with nautical symbols

These Celts, who spoke a tongue closer to Welsh than Gaelic, were fisherfolk who exploited the rich harvests of salmon in the rivers and white fish in the North Sea.  It is no surprise then that they should choose ‘Blessed Nicholas’ in his aspect as patron saint of seafarers as their spiritual protector.

The Christian faith of these fishers would have been rooted in the mission work of early wandering preachers like Saints Machar, Ternan and Molaug who came to NE Scotland in the 5th and 6th centuries.  Aberdeen did not become a bishopric until 1124AD, but was moved from Mortlach in Banffshire, a religious centre from the 1060s.

Oddly enough, the only person to ever suggest an earlier date for the building of St Nicholas’ kirk was historian Alexander Gammie, who gives the date 1060AD in his Churches of Aberdeen, published in 1909.  Those little graves of the ‘Mither Kirk’, hidden for so long, now tell us that he and those medieval chroniclers, dismissed by modern historians, might have been closer to the truth all along.

St Nicholas, Bishop of Myra

The Wandering Wallace Tower

“The name’s Keith, not Wallace!” the indignant Robert Keith might have bellowed had he known his carved likeness had been mistaken for the Guardian of Scotland. It was indeed the brother of George, the 4th Earl Marischal, who commissioned the building of the Z-plan towerhouse in 1588 in the Netherkirkgate.

Jealous of his brother’s new university, Robert Keith, Lord of Benholm, deliberately sited his new home within sight of Marischal College. Such was their sibling rivalry that Sir Robert took a group of miscreants to occupy the Abbey of Deer which also belonged to his brother. This resulted in an armed standoff which thankfully ended without bloodshed. 

By 1595 the two brothers were reconciled without further incident. Robert died in 1616, and ‘Benholm’s Lodging’ as it was known, then passed through a number of owners, including Patrick Dun, principal of Marischal College, and James Pirie, spirit dealer, turned the basement of Benholm’s Lodging into “The Wallace Tower Bar”, while the other floors were let out. The council continued to use it as housing from 1918, as they were desperate to fill the shortage after the Great War, and the pub remained a well-known drinking establishment.

Fast forward to 1964 and retail giant Marks & Spencers, having bought over ‘Raggie Morrisons’ drapery store next door, wanted to expand, right onto the site where the tower currently stood. It looked like the Wallace Tower would be destroyed for the sake of ‘development’! Enter Dr Simpson, historian, who headed the campaign to protect the B-listed property; thankfully he prevailed, and ‘Markies’ offered to foot the bill to move it brick by brick to its new home in Seaton Park.

Sketch of Netherkirkgate with the Wellhead by Benholm's Lodging

The Wallace Tower now sits empty and forlorn on the edge of Tillydrone, having lost all historic context. But why Wallace? Benholm was soon forgotten, and the effigy of a knight was thought to be William Wallace, mainly because the old site developed the nickname ‘Waal Hoose Close’, after a public well which stood on Carnegie’s Brae nearby. 

Confusion reigned as the Doric tongue was dismissed as uncouth, and some proper Victorian thought it must mean Wallace, and thus refer to the Scots hero. The tower has not only lost its name, but its true identity as a nobleman’s townhouse – perhaps it is time to bring it back to life rather than allowing it to disintegrate and disappear forever?