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Luckenbooths
The Luckenbooths were a range of tenements which formerly stood immediately to the north of St. Giles' Kirk in the High Street of Edinburgh from the reign of King James II in the 15th century to the early years of the 19th century. They were demolished in 1802, apart from the east end of the block which was removed in 1817. History and description The building which housed them originated as a two storey, timber-fronted tenement built in 1440 and known as the "Buith Raw" ( Scots for booth row). Over the years, the row was extended and heightened until it consisted of seven tenement buildings of varying height, date and form, stretching the full length of St. Giles' from which it was separated by a narrow alleyway. At some point, the row of tenements took on the name of "Luckenbuiths" from the lockable booths situated at street level. The earliest reference to the name ''Luckenbooths'' is in a sasine of 1521 where it is said (in Latin) to be commonly known as the ''Lukkynbuthis'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
St Giles' Cathedral
St Giles' Cathedral ( gd, Cathair-eaglais Naomh Giles), or the High Kirk of Edinburgh, is a parish church of the Church of Scotland in the Old Town, Edinburgh, Old Town of Edinburgh. The current building was begun in the 14th century and extended until the early 16th century; significant alterations were undertaken in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the addition of the Thistle Chapel. St Giles' is closely associated with many events and figures in Scottish history, including John Knox, who served as the church's minister after the Scottish Reformation.Gordon 1958, p. 31. Likely founded in the 12th centuryMcIlwain 1994, p. 4. and dedicated to Saint Giles, the church was elevated to collegiate church, collegiate status by Pope Paul II in 1467. In 1559, the church became Protestant with John Knox, the foremost figure of the Scottish Reformation, as its minister. After the Reformation, St Giles' was internally partitioned to serve multiple congregations as well as secular purpo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allan Ramsay (poet)
Allan Ramsay (15 October 16867 January 1758) was a Scottish poet (or ''makar''), playwright, publisher, librarian, and impresario of early Enlightenment Edinburgh. Life and career Allan Ramsay was born at Leadhills, Lanarkshire, to John Ramsay, superintendent of Lord Hopetoun's lead-mines and his wife, Alice Bower, a native of Derbyshire. Allan Ramsay and his elder brother Robert probably attended the parish school at Crawfordjohn. In 1701 Allan was apprenticed to a wig-maker in Edinburgh and received his indentures back by 1709. He married Christian Ross in 1712; a few years after he had established himself as a wig-maker (not as a barber, as has been often said) in the High Street, and soon found himself in comfortable circumstances. They had six children. His eldest child was Allan Ramsay, the portrait painter. Ramsay's first efforts in verse-making were inspired by the meetings of the Easy Club (founded in 1712), of which he was an original member; and in 1715 he becam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh
The Old Tolbooth was an important municipal building in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland for more than 400 years. The medieval structure, which was located at the northwest corner of St Giles' Cathedral and was attached to the west end of the Luckenbooths on the High Street in the Old Town, was first established in the 14th century by royal charter. Over the years it served a variety of purposes such as housing the Burgh Council, early meetings of the Parliament of Scotland and the Court of Session. The Tolbooth was also the burgh's main jail where, in addition to incarceration, physical punishment and torture were routinely conducted. From 1785 public executions were carried out. In 1817 the buildings, which had been rebuilt and renovated several times, were demolished. History A deed in the chartulary of St Giles' Cathedral indicates there was already a pretorium (an earlier Latin term for a tolbooth) in Edinburgh as early as 1368. Following the burnings of Edinburgh by Edw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Creech
William Creech FRSE (12 May 1745 – 14 January 1815) was a Scottish publisher, printer, bookseller and politician. For 40 years Creech was the chief publisher in Edinburgh. He published the first Edinburgh edition of Robert Burns' poems, and Sir John Sinclair's influential " Statistical Accounts of Scotland". In publishing Creech often went under the pseudonym of Theophrastus. Life William was the son of Rev William Creech, a minister in Newbattle, Midlothian and his wife, Mary Buley. His father died when he was four months old and William spent time with his mother in both Perth and Dalkeith. He was educated at Dalkeith Grammar School then studied medicine at Edinburgh University. For two years (1766 to 1768) he travelled with William Strahan and Thomas Cadell to London and the continent, both France and Holland. After some time back in Edinburgh he went on a Grand Tour with Lord Kilmaurs in 1770, visiting France, Germany, Switzerland and Holland. His mother struck up a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tenement
A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, in Edinburgh, tenements were developed with each apartment treated as a separate house, built on top of each other (such as Gladstone's Land). Over hundreds of years, custom grew to become law concerning maintenance and repairs, as first formally discussed in Stair's 1681 writings on Scots property law. In Scotland, these are now governed by the Tenements Act, which replaced the old Law of the Tenement and created a new system of common ownership and procedures concerning repairs and maintenance of tenements. Tenements with one or two room flats provided popular rented accommodation for workers, but in some inner-city areas, overcrowding and maintenance problems led to shanty towns, which have been cleared and redeveloped. In more affluen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tobias Smollett
Tobias George Smollett (baptised 19 March 1721 – 17 September 1771) was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for picaresque novels such as ''The Adventures of Roderick Random'' (1748), ''The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle'' (1751) and ''The Expedition of Humphry Clinker'' (1771), which influenced later novelists, including Charles Dickens. His novels were liberally altered by contemporary printers; an authoritative edition of each was edited by Dr O. M. Brack Jr and others. Early life and family Smollett was born at Dalquhurn, now part of Renton in present-day West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, and baptised on 19 March 1721 (his birth date is estimated as 3 days previously). He was the fourth son of Archibald Smollett of Bonhill, a judge and landowner, laird of Bonhill, living at Dalquhurn on the River Leven, who died about 1726, when Smollett was just five years old. His mother Barbara Smollett née Cunningham brought the family up there, until she died about 1766. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Beggar's Opera
''The Beggar's Opera'' is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today. Ballad operas were satiric musical plays that used some of the conventions of opera, but without recitative. The lyrics of the airs in the piece are set to popular broadsheet ballads, opera arias, church hymns and folk tunes of the time. ''The Beggar's Opera'' premiered at the Lisle's Tennis Court, Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre on 29 January 1728 and ran for 62 consecutive performances, the second-longest run in theatre history up to that time (after 146 performances of Robert Cambert's ''Pomone (opera), Pomone'' in Paris in 1671). The work became Gay's greatest success and has been played ever since; it has been called "the most popular play of the eighteenth century". In 1920, ''The Beggar's Opera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gay
John Gay (30 June 1685 – 4 December 1732) was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for ''The Beggar's Opera'' (1728), a ballad opera. The characters, including Captain Macheath and Polly Peachum, became household names.. Early life Gay was born in Barnstaple, England, last of five children of William Gay (died 1695) and Katherine (died 1694), daughter of Jonathan Hanmer, "the leading Nonconformist divine of the town" as founder of the Independent Dissenting congregation in Barnstaple. The Gay family- "fairly comfortable... though far from rich"- lived in "a large house, called the Red Cross, on the corner of Joy Street". The Gay family was "of respectable antiquity" in North Devon, associated with the manor of Goldsworthy at Parkham and with the parish of Frithelstock (where the senior line remained, resident at the priory Cloister Hall with its lands, until 1823) and became "powerful and numerous" in the town, "established a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cross At Edinburgh, 1791
A cross is a geometrical figure consisting of two intersecting lines or bars, usually perpendicular to each other. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally. A cross of oblique lines, in the shape of the Latin letter X, is termed a saltire in heraldic terminology. The cross has been widely recognized as a symbol of Christianity from an early period.''Christianity: an introduction'' by Alister E. McGrath 2006 pages 321-323 However, the use of the cross as a religious symbol predates Christianity; in the ancient times it was a pagan religious symbol throughout Europe and western Asia. The effigy of a man hanging on a cross was set up in the fields to protect the crops. It often appeared in conjunction with the female-genital circle or oval, to signify the sacred marriage, as in Egyptian amule ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haberdasher
In British English, a haberdasher is a business or person who sells small articles for sewing, dressmaking and knitting, such as buttons, ribbons, and zippers; in the United States, the term refers instead to a retailer who sells men's clothing, including suits, shirts, and neckties. The sewing articles are called "haberdashery" in British English. The corresponding term is " notions" in American English where haberdashery is the name for the shop itself, though it's largely an archaicism now. In Britain, haberdashery shops, or "haberdashers", were a mainstay of high street retail until recent decades, but are now uncommon, due to the decline in home dressmaking, knitting and other textile skills and hobbies, and the rise of internet shopping. They were very often drapers as well, the term for sellers of cloth. __NOTOC__ Origin and use The word ''haberdasher'' appears in Chaucer's ''Canterbury Tales''. It is derived from the Anglo-French word ''hapertas'' meaning "small w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hatmaking
Hat-making or millinery is the design, manufacture and sale of hats and other headwear. A person engaged in this trade is called a milliner or hatter. Historically, milliners, typically women shopkeepers, produced or imported an inventory of garments for men, women, and children and sold these garments in their millinery shop. Many milliners worked as both milliner and fashion designer, such as Rose Bertin, Jeanne Lanvin, and Coco Chanel. The millinery industry benefited from industrialization during the nineteenth century. In 1889 in London and Paris, over 8,000 women were employed in millinery, and in 1900 in New York, some 83,000 people, mostly women, were employed in millinery. Though the improvements in technology provided benefits to milliners and the whole industry, essential skills, craftsmanship, and creativity are still required. Since the mass-manufacturing of hats began, the term milliner is usually used to describe a person who applies traditional hand-craftsmanshi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mercery
Mercery (from French , meaning "habderdashery" (goods) or "haberdashery" (a shop trading in textiles and notions) initially referred to silk, linen and fustian textiles among various other piece goods imported to England in the 12th century. Eventually, the term evolved to refer to a merchant or trader of textile goods, especially imported textile goods, particularly in England. A merchant would be known as a ''mercer'', and the profession as ''mercery''. The occupation of mercery has a rich and complex history dating back over 1,000 years in what is now the United Kingdom. London was the major trade centre in England for silk during the Middle Ages, and the trade enjoyed a special position in the economy amongst the wealthy. A typical mercery business was family-run, consisting of a mercer, wife, their family, servants, and apprentices. The husband would be tasked with the marketing and sale of the business' wares to the public in places such as a small storefront, at market ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
