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Old Lerwick 2017: People and Places
An exploration of the development and experience of Lerwick, Shetland.
188 pages, Paperback
Published December 21, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 26, 2018
Douglas Sinclair has researched Lerwick for many years, accumulating knowledge, publishing many articles, collecting images, and making many notes. He has long been a go-to person for the history o da toon. A few years ago he produced a beautiful volume on the Lerwick waterfront.
This is a denser affair, still well-illustrated, about individual buildings and topics. Lerwick isn’t a straightforward place to research. True, the town is recent, with the oldest building (the Old Manse) often being given a start date of circa 1685, but record-keeping and planning were not priorities for most of Lerwick’s life. Shetland wasn’t a rich society, and the reader isn’t long into the book before realising that value for money was a goal of many of the town builders. Foundation work was often cursory. Odd little sites like the Half-Nyepkin were put into use. The Roost imperilled passage on the Street for decades. There’s a little bit of the late Terry Pratchett’s urban vision about the Lerwick of the past.
Researching this means reading between a thicket of lines -- the census (only 1841 plus), the valuation rolls (1855 onwards), a wide range of Sheriff Court documents, and the work of other writers. In the latter case Thomas Manson and E.S. Reid-Tait loved their town, and wrote about it. We are all in their debt. Unlike them, Douglas has been in a position to clearly reference sources used. Ordinary readers can easily go back to original material here. That said, written records don’t always help a lot -- Lerwick merchants’ mail was often addressed “Mr So-and-So”, Lerwick! It worked at the time, but not so well now.
Some well-known issues are addressed – the lodberries, Lerwick’s unique selling point, being an instance. Picturesque now, but a utilitarian response to a problem originally. I was impressed to hear so much about the House of Charity, less kent aboot than the lodberries, but another response to a problem. Nice to know that it originally had stained glass windows by Sir Ninian Comper, whose work also features in Westminster Abbey! The House of Charity is now much changed and the windows can be seen in St Magnus Church.
The section of the smuggling cellars and tunnels under Commercial Street may be the resting place for many a legend. And who knew that whalebone was so plentiful in ancient Lerwick that it could be used as shoring? Suddenly the past enters the imagination. The Greenland whalers brought in the bone, and merchants brought out what was stored underneath – “drunken riotous sailors from the whale-vessels,” as Sir Walter Scott pointed out. This same chapter makes good use of Fred Irvine’s evocative illustrations from his “Believe it or Not” series of some decades ago.
Another evocative chapter is one on Christmas shopping in the 1950s. The reader enters into the texture of Commercial Street, and the view of a small child among the wonders of Stove and Smith, Goudies the ironmongers, and quite a few other shops. Hit’ll tak dee back, I guess, for anybody who was young before the 1980s. The chapter on 59 Commercial Street has a similar function, being the Hygenic Café. It had an important social function for young people – a jukebox. Admittedly we’re now in an era where it might be necessary to explain what a jukebox was, but is a good example of a building whose most interesting time was the recent past, not the distant past. There’s a fine colour illustration of the advert the Hygenic used in the North Star cinema.
Important buildings don’t have to look important, or have architectural merit, and they don’t have to be around long either. The Church of Scotland Canteen gets a couple of pages. Built in 1939, it was gone by 1992, the site being used for King Erik House. A 1940s forces institution, it became the County Library in 1947. A writer with a less comprehensive view of heritage could easily have missed it out, in favour of grand buildings, public and private. It is greatly to the credit of the author that this approach has been avoided
I’d be a bit surprised if this book is read fae brod ta brod by many people. It lends itself to dipping in, leafing through until an illustration urges further reading. The useful index will be a great help to those seeking specifics. The local pub quiz circuit will benefit from the efforts there. In some ways that kind of utility is a pity, as it fragments the experience of the book. Take my advice -- start at the beginning and read through to the end, and get a fine sense of da toon, how it developed, and the personalities who developed it.
This is a denser affair, still well-illustrated, about individual buildings and topics. Lerwick isn’t a straightforward place to research. True, the town is recent, with the oldest building (the Old Manse) often being given a start date of circa 1685, but record-keeping and planning were not priorities for most of Lerwick’s life. Shetland wasn’t a rich society, and the reader isn’t long into the book before realising that value for money was a goal of many of the town builders. Foundation work was often cursory. Odd little sites like the Half-Nyepkin were put into use. The Roost imperilled passage on the Street for decades. There’s a little bit of the late Terry Pratchett’s urban vision about the Lerwick of the past.
Researching this means reading between a thicket of lines -- the census (only 1841 plus), the valuation rolls (1855 onwards), a wide range of Sheriff Court documents, and the work of other writers. In the latter case Thomas Manson and E.S. Reid-Tait loved their town, and wrote about it. We are all in their debt. Unlike them, Douglas has been in a position to clearly reference sources used. Ordinary readers can easily go back to original material here. That said, written records don’t always help a lot -- Lerwick merchants’ mail was often addressed “Mr So-and-So”, Lerwick! It worked at the time, but not so well now.
Some well-known issues are addressed – the lodberries, Lerwick’s unique selling point, being an instance. Picturesque now, but a utilitarian response to a problem originally. I was impressed to hear so much about the House of Charity, less kent aboot than the lodberries, but another response to a problem. Nice to know that it originally had stained glass windows by Sir Ninian Comper, whose work also features in Westminster Abbey! The House of Charity is now much changed and the windows can be seen in St Magnus Church.
The section of the smuggling cellars and tunnels under Commercial Street may be the resting place for many a legend. And who knew that whalebone was so plentiful in ancient Lerwick that it could be used as shoring? Suddenly the past enters the imagination. The Greenland whalers brought in the bone, and merchants brought out what was stored underneath – “drunken riotous sailors from the whale-vessels,” as Sir Walter Scott pointed out. This same chapter makes good use of Fred Irvine’s evocative illustrations from his “Believe it or Not” series of some decades ago.
Another evocative chapter is one on Christmas shopping in the 1950s. The reader enters into the texture of Commercial Street, and the view of a small child among the wonders of Stove and Smith, Goudies the ironmongers, and quite a few other shops. Hit’ll tak dee back, I guess, for anybody who was young before the 1980s. The chapter on 59 Commercial Street has a similar function, being the Hygenic Café. It had an important social function for young people – a jukebox. Admittedly we’re now in an era where it might be necessary to explain what a jukebox was, but is a good example of a building whose most interesting time was the recent past, not the distant past. There’s a fine colour illustration of the advert the Hygenic used in the North Star cinema.
Important buildings don’t have to look important, or have architectural merit, and they don’t have to be around long either. The Church of Scotland Canteen gets a couple of pages. Built in 1939, it was gone by 1992, the site being used for King Erik House. A 1940s forces institution, it became the County Library in 1947. A writer with a less comprehensive view of heritage could easily have missed it out, in favour of grand buildings, public and private. It is greatly to the credit of the author that this approach has been avoided
I’d be a bit surprised if this book is read fae brod ta brod by many people. It lends itself to dipping in, leafing through until an illustration urges further reading. The useful index will be a great help to those seeking specifics. The local pub quiz circuit will benefit from the efforts there. In some ways that kind of utility is a pity, as it fragments the experience of the book. Take my advice -- start at the beginning and read through to the end, and get a fine sense of da toon, how it developed, and the personalities who developed it.
May 16, 2021
Absolutely loved it. Fascinating to read up on the history of Lerwick and see it in a different light.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews