Changing of the Guard

Introduction

This weeks blog comes from Jim Herbert of Berwick Time Lines. Jim describes himself thus:

"I love the history of Berwick upon Tweed, Northumberland and the Borders, Historian, designer, actor, technician and siege engineer!" 

He can often be found walking the medieval Walls imparting his knowledge to visitors to the town, or digging around in the Archives to get to the bottom of his latest find.  In this article Jim looks at the importance of paleography and how it has proved invaluable in his research, in this case the history of the "Main Guard".  The fruits of nearly two years hard labour is about to be realised with the publication of his new book revealing the 'true' history of Berwick Town Hall.  He admits this would not have been possible without his ability to read and understand old texts.  Jim's passion may be the history of old buildings but the same principle applies equally to family history.

Blog

“One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises.”

So said the 3rd century BC Indian philosopher, Chanakya.  I wouldn’t know about the wealth but he was bang on about the knowledge thing. 

Any recording of information depends on two things for the idea to work.  Obviously there has to be a way of recording the information.  This used to be by oral tradition but over the centuries, writing has taken over.  Stories were often told in picture form, allegedly at an exchange rate of one picture for every thousand words!

The less obvious part of the process is the reading of the information.  It’s a bit like having the most amazing text on an old 3½” floppy disk but only having a CD drive on your computer, or possessing the funniest film ever made on VHS tape but being limited to a DVD player.  It doesn’t matter how brilliant the piece of writing or film is.  The would be reader or viewer is limited by the modern technology.  The information stored on the old technology cannot be read and so may be lost unless someone is able to convert the old format to a more contemporary one using a VHS to DVD or MPEG4 (or whatever the latest tech is) converter.

Alphabet in Secretary Hand

Paleography is a bit like this.  Many documents written before the 19th century are not easily read.  The language tends to be long-winded by comparison to today’s English.  Why use one word when ten will do?  The spelling is variable.  Words are contracted (but not in the same way even within the same sentence).  As you delve back into older documents, you find these problems get worse; the phonetic basis of spelling becomes more pronounced and words that have long ago fallen out of use are employed.

But the researcher’s biggest problem is the letterforms.  Most people are familiar with the “long s”, often looking like a lower case “f” in printed works.  Because it’s decline is relatively recent, we can get our heads around a word that looks like “poſseſsion” relatively easily.  Incidentally, there is a remaining use for it:  the oblique slash stroke in the symbol for shillings “-/-”, is a corruption of the long s.

But how about a Scottish name like Menȝies or Dalȝiel?  Here, the middle-English yogh is used.  The names should be pronounced “Ming-eez” and “Die-yel”, but because the yogh looked a bit like the “tailed z”(ƺ), printers tended to use a “z” which led to the less correct pronunciations, “Men-zies” and “Dal-zeel”

One example of very old letter form still in use is the thorn (þ), pronounced “th”.  This will be more familiar as the form it corrupted into which looks indistinguishable from a “y”.  Hence “Ye Olde Tea Shoppe” should be pronounced “the”, not “yee”.  Oddly, we now favour “you” instead of “thou”.  

More commonly in old texts, the thorn may be used in abbreviations (another favourite trick of ye scribes of olde to confuse the 21st century mind). Thus:

But it is worth getting your head around these things because once you do, a wealth of knowledge is opened up to you.  I remember one of the first things I wanted to research was a ditch to the north of Berwick-upon-Tweed, called Spade’s Mire.  The one piece of archaeological research references a couple of 17th century entries in the Berwick Guild of Freemen minute books. 

Naively, I went along to the record office and asked to see the book in question.  Like some ceremony, the foam wedges were placed on the table to support the ancient tome and I was given a magnifying glass, the better to study the text.  The volume was produced and opened to the relevant date.  And I was confronted by a load of faded script that may as well have been written in ancient Martian for all the good it did me!  Luckily, the lovely archivist at Berwick Record Office, Linda Bankier, read out the relevant passages as I frantically tried to keep up with her dictation.

Recently, as part of the Flodden 500 project, Linda was offering crash courses in paleography and transcription for volunteers to transcribe documents pertinent to this famous battle.  Over the course of six sessions, Linda took a band of volunteers back in time, exploring the changes in the written word until I too was able to decipher the hieroglyphs that had once stumped me.  

And what a world is opened up!

Many people reading this will be interested in their family history.  My passion is for old buildings and it is only because I spent the time learning the rudiments of paleography that I had the confidence to tackle the research into two well-known buildings in Berwick:  the Main Guard and the Town Hall. 

Something I have realised over time is that you should never believe what you are told. Not necessarily.  The trouble with the “official” versions of events and buildings, such as those written by Nikolaus Pevsner or English Heritage, is that, usually through lack of time and local knowledge, these academics will read an established history of the subject and regurgitate it.  Subsequently, everybody copies what they’ve written because “these are the people that will know about these things”.  But if that original source is wrong or is misinterpreted, then everybody else subsequently, unwittingly, trots out the same mistake.

And so the problem begins: where to find new information?  Like some TV pathologist able to spot clues and read the signs, so a researcher of any history must be able to read the story that may be there, in clear sight, yet a mystery to the untrained eye.  While I would never suggest that the official record should be dismissed out of hand--everyone’s opinion is valid--sometimes the only course of action is to go back to any original documents that may have been written about your chosen topic.

Main Guard in it's Current Position in Palace Street

By way of example, The Main Guard is a small 18th century guardhouse in Palace Street in Berwick.  The official version of events is that it was originally on Marygate, the main street in Berwick, dismantled stone by stone and rebuilt on the Palace Street site in 1815.  Below the building’s portico is a plaque with the legend:

“This eighteenth century guardhouse was removed from Marygate in 1815 and rebuilt here.”  What could be clearer?

In Dr Fuller’s History of Berwick (1799), there is an illustration of Marygate showing the Main Guard in Marygate.  Fuller describes the building thus:

“It is most incommodiously placed in the High Street, 100 yards distant from the Scotch Gate, the spot where it should have stood.  It measures 65 feet in length.  It consists of a room for the officer of the guard, a large apartment in the middle of the house for the soldiers, with benches for them to lye upon it. There is likewise a large fire place in it. Besides it has an apartment called the black-hole.”

That sounds like the Main Guard we know and love, so this confirms the information on the plaque.

Or does it?  There’s only one problem.  The architectural design of our Main Guard is totally different to that shown in Fuller.  Details like the portico with square pillars and arches (in Fuller) as opposed to Tuscan pillars on ours.  The window design and other details are all different too.

Main Guard (on the left) in circa 1799 - As depicted by Alexander Carse

This might be attributed to inaccuracy by the artist, Alexander Carse.  However, all the other details of this illustration and of others in the book are accurate and he was a respected Edinburgh artist.  So that leads to only two other possibilities; that the building was altered between 1799 and 1815 or that its a completely different building.

I decided to investigate and hidden in the Guild books in Berwick Record Office are a couple of references that explain what happened.  In September 1813, the Guild wrote to the Board of Ordnance:

”… in consequence of a Wish expressed to the Barracks Department by the Inhabitants of Berwick that the Guard House in the high Street should be removed to a less inconvenient Situation the Board had consented the Guard House being provided the New Scite of the Building is upon an open Space near the Saluting Battery; but that the Board cannot permit the present Guard House being pulled down until the Mayor and Corporation in their Official Capacities shall engage to build the new one of the same dimensions, of the same Elevation, and equally servicable in every respect, upon the spot pointed out.”

In July 1814, the Guild agreed to the site in Palace Street being used for the purpose.  Work on the new building must have progressed quickly as by March 1815, the Guild was discussing paving the site of the “Old Main Guard”

So there we have it; our Main Guard was a completely new building – not the old one recycled.  It was built to the same layout and dimensions of the old one, hence why it matches Fuller’s description.  Who knows when the plaque was added – possibly not until 100 years later.  It’s probable that something had been lost in translation as the Chinese Whispers of history are repeated through the years, the original message being the location of the Main Guard had moved – not the building itself.

Now comparatively, early 19th century text is not that hard to read, but this mystery might never have been resolved had I not spent one morning looking at the Guild books, something I would not have contemplated had I not taken the time to learn a bit of paleography.

Links

You can follow Jim and keep up to date with his latest discoveries at:

www.berwicktimelines.com
berwicktimelines.tumblr.com
Twitter @berwicktimeline
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/berwicktimelines

For those of you interested in learning more about paleography there are numerous courses available for all levels from beginner through to advanced.  If you fancy a bit of fun there is a good introduction to the subject on the National Archives website, and when you think you have mastered the basics you can always pit your wits against the "ducking stool"! at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/tutorial/