Bouncing back from the Great Fire of Glasgow
THE Cromwellian occupation of Scotland in 1650- 51 did not take very long to consolidate and as we mentioned last week, General George Monck’s horrifying assault on Dundee seems to have scared the population of the country into submission.
It’s worth stating what happened in Dundee. Wealthy people from Edinburgh, Glasgow and elsewhere had taken refuge in Dundee perhaps thinking that the walls of the city would protect them from the English army. Monck sent a written demand that the city surrender in late August, 1651, and when the military governor Robert Lumsden refused, Monck, pictured, turned his massive artillery on the city walls and gates and blew them to smithereens.
Outnumber at least five to one, the 1000 Scottish troops and militia men were either killed or captured and 200- 300 citizens including women and children were killed as the English forces rampaged through the city, having been told that much of Scotland’s gold had been hidden there.
Some reports say 200,000 gold coins were plundered, but there probably was not that sort of money in the whole of the country.
What is true is that the sacking of Dundee was soon known about across Scotland, and to cap it all the Estates, the supposed Government of Scotland were captured en masse and taken south. Cromwell fetched up at Dalkeith and proceeded to incorporate Scotland into his new ‘ Commonwealth’.
In early 1652, Cromwell took especial care to alter things in Glasgow.
He deposed the Covenanters who ran the city and imposed people who were more to his Puritanical liking.
They soon found out that Glasgow was effectively broke, and inquiries took place into where the money in the public coffers had gone – mostly loaned to landowners who could not now repay their loans. The city had only just recovered from a three- year outbreak of bubonic plague and was in no state to build up its finances rapidly when into the midst of the confusion and concern came a disaster the like of which Glasgow had never seen.
On June 17, 1652, a fire started in the house of James Hamilton in the High Street, the theory being that a candle had been knocked over and set the house’s store of candles alight with disastrous consequences.
Fanned by an unseasonal wind, the flames took hold in the mainly wooden buildings and spread along the Saltmarket to the south and along the Trongate and Gallowgate to the west and east of the High Street.
By the time it reached the Bridgegate or Briggait, most of central Glasgow was ablaze.
A frantic effort to fight the fire started with people forming a bucket chain taking water from the Clyde up to the city centre, but their efforts were useless.
Instead the fire had to be allowed to die out and that took around 18 hours according to contemporary reports.
One later chronicler wrote: “There followed a great heat that summer, and in July ( he was wrong about the date) of that yeir was Glasgow brunt, the whole Salt- Mercat, and a great part of the town; the fire on the one syde of the street fyred the other syde; I observed myself the wind to have changed the tyme of the burning five or six tymes, which occasioned the burning of severall parts of the city.”
In those few short hours, most of the centre of Glasgow was reduced to ashes and rubble.
We do not know how many people were killed, if any, but the number of those rendered homeless was put at 1000 by the council which added that all but four closes ( tenement blocks) had been burned to the ground.
The city’s councillors were extremely pessimistic about the outcome.
They concluded: “Vnles spidie ( speedy) remidie be vseit and help soght out fra such as hes power and whois hartis God sail move, it is lyklie the towne sail come
In those few short hours, most of the centre of Glasgow was reduced to ashes and rubble
to outer ( utter) ruein.” They put the damage at £ 100,000 sterling – about £ 50 million or more in today’s money.
Then the unquenchable spirit of Glasgow’s people kicked in. The homeless were accommodated in churches and in huts set up in nearby fields, and the work of rebuilding began almost immediately.
The council appealed to fellow councils across Scotland and large sums were donated towards the recovery programme. Cromwell sent a derisory £ 1000 up from Parliament, while the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland contributed far more.
The council imposed wage rates so that nobody could profiteer from the rebuilding.
Baillies also insisted on wider streets and no overhanging buildings, while candles were barred from being stored in houses.
Instead they were kept at an area which is known as Candleriggs to this day.
It took a few years, but they also imported a vital facility, copying that which existed in Edinburgh – a primitive fire engine.
In a remarkable feat of renewal, within four years the city had recovered so much that Cromwell’s Commissioner Tucker described
Glasgow in very favourable terms after his visit in 1656.
He wrote: “This town seated in a pleasant and fruitful soil, and consisting of four streets handsomely built in form of a cross, is one of the most considerable burghs in Scotland, as well for the structure as trade of it.
“The inhabitants, all but the students of the college which is here, are traders and dealers— some for Ireland with small smiddy coals in open boats from four to 10 tons, from whence they bring hoops, barrel staves, meal, oats, and butter; some for France with plaiding, coals, and herring, of which there is a great fishing yearly in the western sea, for which they return salt, paper, rosin, and prunes; some to Norway for timber, and every one with their neighbours the Highlanders, who come hither from the isles and western parts.
“Here hath likewise been some who have ventured as far as Barbadoes; but the loses they have sustained by reason of their going out and coming home late every year have made them discontinue going there any more.”
Trade was the making of Glasgow, and next week we shall see how the city prospered until 1677, and another conflagration.