Ordnance Survey large scale Scottish town plans, 1847-1895
CAMPBELTON OR
CAMPBELTOWN
(surveyed in 1865)
Introduction
Campbeltown
lies at the head of Campbeltown Loch, on the east coast of the Kintyre
peninsula. Apparently built on the seat of the ancient kings of Dalriada, the
modern town was founded by the 7th Earl of Argyll around 1607-9, and
was named after his family. With fishing as its staple industry, Campbeltown
grew quickly. The town was chartered as a burgh of barony in 1667, and in 1700
was made a royal burgh, giving it improved trading rights and civic
entitlements. The burgh population in 1851 was measured at 6,880.
Campbeltown's early
streetscape follows the most common model in Scottish town planning. Its long
main thoroughfare runs from an elevated castle and parish church, down to a
broad marketplace bordered by the town hall and commercial properties.
Secondary streets and vennels run perpendicular to the main street, and a
network of later streets surrounds the original centre.
The 7th
Earl of Argyll licensed a distillery in Campbeltown on its foundation, and by
the mid 1850s the whisky industry was one of the biggest employers in the area,
with 25 distilleries operating in Campbeltown alone. Campbeltown is the
principal market town in Kintyre, and in the mid-nineteenth century a weekly
market operated in the town for the sale of grain and farm produce. Fishing
generated significant associated employment in Campbeltown, with the population
including fish curers, coopers and net makers. The town also contained various
tradespersons vital to a thriving nineteenth-century burgh, including
blacksmiths, cartwrights, masons, joiners and colliers.
Farming and fishing
dominated the hinterland of Campbeltown. The Statistical Account of 1845 records that the number of agricultural
workers in the parish, including farmers, cottars and servants, was 390.
Fishing in the area had suffered briefly after 1830 when the British government
ended the system that saw every fisherman paid a bounty for his catch, but with
the boom in the herring industry that coincided with the removal of the bounty,
Campbeltown, like the rest of Scotland, saw a reversal in the decline of its
fleet. Again in the Statistical Account,
it is noted: 'During the months of June, July and August last, 150 boats, with
crews of four men in each, were employed fishing herrings'. The bulk of the
catch, while processed and packed in Campeltown, was either sent to the Glasgow
markets, or partially dried and exported.
In the 1840s Campbeltown had two parish churches, one in which sermons were preached in Gaelic, the other (the Castle Church) where English was the spoken medium. In addition to these, the town contained a Relief church, a Secession church, a small Independent meeting house, and an even smaller Roman Catholic chapel.
In the mid-nineteenth
century there were more than a dozen schools in the parish of Campbeltown, of
which six were within the burgh. In the fee-paying burgh and parochial school,
English reading, writing and grammar, mathematics, arithmetic and book-keeping,
geography, navigation, Latin, Greek and French were taught. The suburb of
Dalintober contained two charitable schools, founded by a Miss Campbell,
intended for the education of poor boys and girls, and several other schools in
the parish were church-run. The town
also contained branches of the Commercial Bank and the Clydesdale Bank, ten
insurance offices, a customs house, and a jail.
Cultural and social institutions in 1850s Campbeltown included two circulating libraries, four friendly societies and a total abstinence society. The principal social events of the year were the seven agricultural fairs, although a regatta was also held in September.
Groome, Francis H. (ed.), 1894-5. The Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland; a survey of Scottish topography, statistical, biographical, and historical, 2nd ed., (London: William Mackenzie)
Mackay, George, 2000. Scottish Place Names (New Lanark: Lomond)
Smith, Robert, 2001. The Making of Scotland: a comprehensive guide to the growth of its cities, towns and villages (Edinburgh: Canongate)
Wilson, Rev. John Marius (ed.), 1857. The Imperial Gazetteer of Scotland or Dictionary of Scottish Topography (Edinburgh: A. Fullarton & Co.)
Edina Website – Online Statistical Accounts of Scotland - http://edina.ac.uk/statacc/