Showing posts with label John Redpath-Benefactor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Redpath-Benefactor. Show all posts

Sunday 1 October 2023

From Punk Rock to Moon Buggies

Earlston's contribution to world history (or let's take a light-hearted, time travelling culture tour)


In 2015, there was a TV show called 'Six Degrees of Separation'. The show centred on finding a connection between six unlikely objects.


So, for a change this month, we'll look at the connections between six unlikely topics - punk rock, Caribbean sugar plantations, BAFTA TV Awards, New York book publishing, Bonnie Prince Charlie and Moon buggies - which are all linked to Earlston.


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Tom Davidson (https://tomdavidson.co.uk), the Earlston-based artist, has his gallery on Earlston High Street. The gallery is where his grandfather, Willie Alchin, had the village baker's shop.


The shop now doubles as Tom's studio and gallery, where he creates stunning lino-cut prints of local landscapes. His ability to capture light reflecting off the Leader river or sunshine piercing through the trees of Cowdenknowes Woods is a joy to behold.


But Tom also gained fame in another of the arts - music.


Tom studied at Carlisle University and joined The Limps, a punk rock band. The band released several singles and appeared on the John Peel Show in 1979.


The Limps(1)


The band eventually broke up, and members drifted off to do their own thing.


Their music lives on, though. They appear on a recently released compilation album with bands like The Jam, The Stranglers, Siouxsie and the Banshees.


Gary Crowleys Punk and New Wave(2)


There's a whole new audience that appreciates their music.


A film studio recently contacted the band asking to feature their track 'Someone I Can Talk To' on the closing credits of a new movie still in production. Its release date has not been announced, but look out for its title - 'The Snack Shack'.


Sugary snacks, like music, can hit the right note or, as they call it in the food industry, the bliss point. This is where the snack has just the right amount of sweetness. Any sweeter and it would be too sickly; any less, it wouldn't be sweet enough.


The bliss point makes you come back for more, which is great news for dentists and sugar producers alike.


John Redpath was an Earlston man who made his fortune through sugar refining in Canada.


John was the son of farm servants working on farms in the Earlston area. His father had the foresight to see the changes in store for farm workers due to the 'improvements' between 1760 and 1830.


The 'improvements' centred around better fertilisers, drainage, and more selective crops. As a result, farms became more productive and larger. The downside was that the farms needed a smaller workforce. Thousands of families left farming during this period in what became known as the lowland clearances.


John was fortunate in that he managed to get an apprenticeship with his uncle, a stone mason in Edinburgh. However, by the time John became a master mason, the Napoleonic Wars had just finished releasing thousands of soldiers, including stone masons from the engineering regiments, into the job market. Consequently, John decided to emigrate to Canada.


Within a few years, John had established a successful construction business. Seeing an opportunity and with enough spare capital, he constructed a sugar refinery in Montreal importing raw sugar from Caribbean sugar plantations.


John made his fortune from sugar. He returned to Scotland just once, but he took the time to visit Earlston when the Corn Exchange was being built. He presented the villagers with the clock in the Corn Exchange tower that chimes the hours as his lasting legacy.

In Canada, you can buy Redpath sugar in almost any grocery store or supermarket to satisfy your bliss point. Of course, not just humans enjoy sugar; horses also have a notoriously sweet tooth.


Redpath Sugar(3)


Satisfying your sugar tooth and eating too much sugar will likely result in putting on weight, which in turn will slow you down. Presumably, the same is true for horses as well as humans.


Slow Horses was the name of a TV series starring Earlston High School former pupil Jack Lowden. Jack graduated from the prestigious Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 2011. He was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award (2023) for Best Supporting Actor in his role of River Cartwright. The series follows a team of intelligence agents who serve as a dumping ground department of MI5 due to their career-ending mistakes.


Jack Lowden(4)


The series is based on the book 'Slow Horses' by Mike Heron and published by Baskerville.


Slow Horses(5)


And talking of publishers, Robert Carter was an Earlstonian who established a publishing company in New York.


Robert was born in Earlston in 1807 with an apparent unquenchable thirst for knowledge. At an early age, Robert showed his love for books when he watched an auctioneer dispose of the household effects of a neighbour.


Robert Carter(6)


Included in the sale was a copy of Josephu's works, complete in one thick volume. When the auctioneer asked, 'How much am I offered for this?' Robert replied in a faint voice, 'Fourpence'. The auctioneer immediately handed the book to Robert, saying, "You shall have it, for you are the smallest customer I have had today'.


By age fifteen, Robert was holding night classes for local boys. Robert went on to attend university.


Years later, he gave up his teaching job in New York and opened a bookstore on the corner of Canal and Laurens Street in 1834. From selling books, he began to publish books at his New York book publishing company, Robert Carter and Brothers.


That first book no doubt changed Robert's life just as some of the books he published and sold would change the lives of others.


No wonder they say that the pen is mightier than the sword.


Of course, the most famous type of Scottish sword is the claymore, the weapon of choice for hundreds of years.


In 1745, when Bonnie Prince Charlie led his Jacobite army south towards London, the army camped at Fans, a few miles from Earlston. When the army marched southward again, it was discovered that a soldier had left his claymore behind.


Bonnie Prince Charlie(7)


When news of the army's imminent arrival in Earlston, locals feared the Jacobites' notorious reputation for looting. Valuables were hidden wherever possible. Horses were hidden in a hollow below Caldies Hill known as 'Howe of Hope'. The exact spot had provided Covenanters a meeting place one hundred years before.


Caldies Hill is part of the old Earlston Golf Club. 


On August 8th 1906, a meeting was held in the Smaller Exchange Hall to discuss the formation of an Earlston Golf Club. Twenty men attended, and the site chosen for the proposed course was Caldies Hill, owned by Lord Binning. The Chairman of the meeting, Rev N C Keith, advised the group that he had already gained permission from Lord Binning and his tenants.


On August 30th, Willie Park, a professional golfer and course designer, visited the site to draw up the plan for a nine-hole course.


The course was officially opened on Wednesday, November 7th 1907. However, the first competition occurred in October 1907 for the Silver Challenge Cup, presented by Issac Wallace, an Earlstonian who had emigrated to Australia. The Cup was won by Robert Lountain with a score of 79.


The game prospered in the village with both ladies and gentlemen sections. Two businesses, John McDonal, Saddler, and John Weatherston, Watchmaker, stocked clubs and balls.


Despite the best intentions, the Club was forced to close by the end of World War 2 due to a lack of members and funds.


However, the Club members were undeterred and boldly decided to open a golf course on the Moon.


To quote the Club's website (https://www.earlstongolfclub.com/):


With the purchase and restoration of the original golf course being unattainable at an Earlston Golf Club Committee Meeting in 2000, it was agreed to pursue the purchase of land to build a course on the Moon. This transaction was completed on November 3rd 2000, and initial planning was soon under way.

 

 There are 18 Seas on the surface of the Moon, each of which has a Latin name which has been translated and given a Scottish Borders flavour to reflect the origins of the Club.

 

The holes on the Earlston Golf Club Moon Course were named to keep the authenticity of the course location whilst ensuring that the history and traditions of the Club are echoed in each hole.


One can assume that Moon buggies will be substituted for golf buggies.


Moon Buggy(8)



Credit links

Do you know of any unlikely topics or objects that are connected and linked with Earlston? Let us know in the Comments section below.

Sunday 21 July 2019

A History of Earlston's Clock


How often have you looked up  to check the time on  the clock above the Corn Exchange in the Market Square?   

Have you ever wondered how the clock came to be there? 

Its history stems back to Earlston-born John Redpath (1796-1869)  who emigrated to Canada, became a noted industrialist and philanthropist,  but never forgot his birthplace. 

Jeff Price of the Auld Earlston Group has looked  at the background to  John Redpath's early life in a story that spanned: The Lowland Clearances, The Battle of Waterloo and Sugar.
                       
Scotland's Agricultural Revolution
The Scottish agricultural revolution started in the early 1700s. In 1723 a group of landowners,  300 strong,  formed the Society of Improvers. The aim was to modernise farming techniques thereby improving productivity. It is undoubted that the improvements were successful, with Scottish agriculture progressing from one of the least to the most modern and productive in Europe. 

But this advance was at a terrible human cost. Thousands of tenant farmers, farm servants and cottars and their families were driven from the land to be replaced by sheep. Many would seek work in cities, while others would migrate to the Americas. Small wonder then that the “Improvements” were to become known as the Lowland Clearances.


It was into this state of affairs that Peter Redpath was born in 1741. His parents, John Redpath and Mary (nee Johnston) lived in Duns. Peter was employed as a farm servant when he met and married Helen Melros(s). We know that the couple had three children (it was not until 1855 that births, marriages and deaths were required to be registered). Their eldest son, Robert, was baptised in 1775, his brother James in 1784 and daughter, Elspeth was baptised on June 5, 1789. Their mother, Helen, died on September 29, 1786, and it is possible that she died in childbirth or as a result of complications arising from the birth of Elspeth.

Peter remarried in 1791 to Elizabeth Pringle. Together they had three children, George (his baptism was unregistered), John (baptised in 1796) and sister Ellen (1801). 


Like his father Peter, John faced an uncertain future in farming until his mother intervened. From the available information, Elizabeth had a relative, Margaret, who, in 1810, married George Drummond, an Edinburgh building contractor.

Elizabeth persuaded her relative and her husband to offer John an apprenticeship as a stone mason. John left his home near Earlston and went to live with his new family in Jamaica Street in Edinburgh.


The opportunity provided John with the possibility of a more secure future than agriculture could offer.


The Return of Demobbed Soldiers after the Battle of Waterloo
However, in 1815, as John finished his apprenticeship, the Battle of Waterloo signalled the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Tens of thousands of demobilised soldiers returned to Great Britain, driving unemployment up and wages down. By 1816, faced with further uncertainty, John elected to migrate to Canada in the hope of a better future. He was to be richly rewarded. 

Life in Canada
In 1818 John married Janet McPhee a native of Glengarry in Ontario. By the early 1820s John, now living in Montreal and with business partner Thomas McKay, won a significant contract to supply stone for the new Notre-Dame Church and the Lachine Canal. These and other contracts established John’s reputation.

In 1834 Janet Redpath died from cholera. John remarried the following year, to Jane Drummond, George and Margaret Drummond’s second eldest daughter, whom he knew from his apprentice days at the family home.

The Impact of a Move into Sugar 

John would have remained one of Montreal’s successful building contractors,  had he not decided to construct the first sugar refinery in the Province of Canada. Sugar refining went on to  establish him as a major businessman and philanthropist. 



                                          John Redpath's Sugar Refinery

By 1854, John invited his brother-in-law, George Alexander Drummond, to Montreal to manage the technical side of the sugar refinery. George would go on to become an industrialist, financier and senator.




Back in Earlston - the Building of the Corn Exchange.

 In 1868, it was announced in "The Southern Reporter":28th May 1868, that a new building which  became known as the Corn Exchange,   was to be erected in Earlston on the north side of the Market Place adjoining the Reading Room.  It  would consist of shops along the front elevation with rooms above. The rooms could be used for apartments or business rooms. Behind the Corn Exchange, a Public Hall would be built. The hall would be sixty feet long, thirty-two feet wide and twenty-two feet high.  

 The masonry work was let to Messers Rodger's & Son,  the joinery work to Mr John Wallace and the slating and plumbing work to Mr Murdison -  all Earlston firms. The plasterwork was let to Mr John Johnstone of Gattonside, and the overall inspector of the works was Mr Herbertson, a Galashiels-based builder.

The newspaper noted "The Directors go forward in the expectation that the building will be finished for a sum not exceeding the share capital of the company which is fixed at £1400."  [equivalent to £87,652.60 today]


Work commenced in June 1868 and was completed by December of the same year


Earlston Market Square with the clock and tower on the Corn Exchange. On  the right of the photograph is the Waterloo Memorial (a drinking trough for horses), to be replaced by the War Memorial in 1921.

John Redpath's Visit to his Birthplace  
The following year, John Redpath returned to Earlston on  his last visit to Scotland.  He offered to finance the building of a spire complete with a clock to be installed on the new Corn Exchange.  A plaque, mounted on the chassis of the clock mechanism, reads:


“The gift of John Redpath Esq. Montreal
To his Native Town of Earlstoun. A.D. 1869” 


 The Plaque mounted on the clock mechanism

John Redpath did an immense amount of philanthropic work in Canada, but it is only in Earlston that there is an hourly reminder of that good work



Sources: 
  • The Lowland Clearances, by Peter Aitchison and Andrew Cassell. 
  • Gentleman of Substance:  The Life and Legacy of John Redpath (1796-1869) by Richard Feltoe.   Natural Heritage, Toronto. 
  • Redpath:  The History of a Sugar House.  Natural Heritage, Toronto. 1991.
  • Dictionary of Canadian Biography Volume I.
  • Dictionary of Canadian Biography Volume XIII.
  • Scottish Agriculture Revolution - Wikipedia. 
  • The Southern Reporter newspaper.
  • National Archives Currency Converter. 

In Case You Missed:
An earlier blog post from 2016 focused on the life in Canada of John Redpath. 
Read it HERE.

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Tuesday 9 August 2016

John Redpath - Earlston Benefactor

        

              The clock above the pharmacy (formerly the Corn Exchange) in the Square 
                                                          is inscribed 

                                    Gift of John Redpath Esq., Montreal
                                 to his native town of Earlston AD1869"



Who was John Redpath?

He was born in Earlston in 1796, and apprenticed as a builder/stonemason to George Drummond in Edinburgh. In 1816 aged 20, he emigrated to Canada, landing in Quebec and walking the 160 miles to Montreal.
John soon gained employment in the construction industry, witnessing the first installation of oil street lamps in the city. Within a few years he was able to set up his own company and became involved in prestigious projects that included:


  • The construction of the Lachine Canal and locks scheme that proved key to the future commercial development of the city of Montreal, for it allowed large vessels to sail up the St. Lawrence River, and hastened the development of Upper Canada. 
  • The building  of the Rideau Canal system (running from Kingston to Ottawa) and which today is classed as a world heritage site.
  • The building of the Notre Dame Church,  and McGill University where he was benefactor of the first endowment fund established there.   He is remembered in the university's Redpath Museum and Redpath Library, built by his son.
  • He made substantial investments in the Montreal Telegraph company and several insurance companies and  in Canadian mining ventures.
  • In 1854 the began the construction of the first sugar refinery in Canada. His seven-storey factory, whose towering smokestack became one of the city’s landmarks, represented an immense investment for John Redpath, the sole owner. Within a year, he had more than 100 employees and was producing 3,000 barrels of refined sugar per month for the Canadian market.
John  built up a  reputation in the Montreal business community and was elected to the board of directors of the Bank of Montreal, the city’s leading financial institution; becoming vice-president, and a large shareholder.

Charitable concerns were at the forefront of his life.
He supported Montreal General Hospital, the Montreal Presbyterian College, and the Mechanics’ Institute, all of which he served as a director. He campaigned to fight Montreal’s white slavery traffic and, working through the local Magdalene Asylum, to redeem “unfortunate females, many of whom are poor immigrants who have been decoyed into the abodes of infamy and shame which abound in this city.”

He 
was principal founder of the Presbyterian Church of Canada helped establish the Protestant House of Industry and Refuge, Presbyterian Foreign Missions, the Labrador Mission, the Sabbath Observance Society, and the French Canadian Missionary Society to which he left a substantial legacy. 

But John Redpath did not forget his place of birth. 

"The Southern Reporter" of 3rd September 1868 reported on a public meeting in  Earlston Reading Room:
 
To formally receive a town clock presented by Mr John Redpath, Esquire of Montreal and to approve a plan of a spire to be added to the Corn Exchange to contain it.



Mr William Shiel was called upon to give a brief outline of Mr Redpath's career, noting that:
"By talent, industry and perseverance a he succeeded in amassing a colossal fortune. He had not forgotten his youthful joys and toils and was anxious to do something for Earlston as a token of remembrance".
The offer of the clock was graciously accepted and It was agreed that a spire or belfry, be constructed above the Corn Exchange to hold the clock, at a cost of £70.

John Redpath died in March 1869.    He had seven children by his first wife, Janet McPhee, whom he married in 1818. Following her death in a cholera epidemic in 1834,  he married Jane Drummond, and they had ten children. 


Berwickshire News:  Death Announcment


The clock given  to Earlston remains a significant landmark in the village today, thanks to the generosity of  John Redpath,
business man, philanthropist and industrial pioneer.

Sources:  

Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online 
British Newspapers Online 1710-1953
Wikipedia 



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Postscript 
 The Berwickshire News and General Advertiser of 7th February 1939 reported that The spire crashed to the ground just before the final curtain was rung down on the pantomime "Simple Simon" presented in Earlston on Friday night. Spire Crashed to Ground Just befo-e the final curtain was rung down on pantomime Simple Simon,” presented Earlston Friday night,  The spire  smashed the wind screen of one of the many motor cars in waiting, but the car was fortunately unoccupied and no body was near at the time.

                      

In Case You Missed - Read About Other Earlston Worthies:  
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