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Scotland (Counties as in 1851-1901) => Scotland => Dunbartonshire => Topic started by: charlotteuk on Thursday 10 March 05 14:43 GMT (UK)
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An address on a 1908 marriage record in Old Kilpatrick is given as Robb's Land, and (hard to make out) Yoker?
I was curious to know what this was as it is down for both parties. The groom, a shipyard labourer would have been recently arrived from Ireland, his bride's occupation is domestic servant.
Would this be a road name or some sort of lodging house? Just wondered if anyone familiar with the area today could help please
Charlotte.
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I'm from the other side of the river, in Renfrew, but I'm not familiar with Robb's Land. However it sounds like the name of a tenement, like some of the old tenements named 'something' Land off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.
Land , n.
8. a. A holding of burgage land (normally built up) in a burgh. b. A building or group of buildings erected on such a holding. c. Freq. land and tenement, tenement and land , tenement of land , in the same applications.
(from a very comprehensive online Scots dictionary, http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/ )
I had a look at The Scotsman's online archive ( http://archive.scotsman.com )
and searching for
"Robb's Land" Yoker
it found 1 result - a news item from The Scotsman, on 5th Jan 1909, under the heading
"Electric Cars and Motor Van in Collision"
You have to pay to read the article, £7.95 for 24 hours access, but maybe you could find it on microfilm at a library.
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Hi,
I have family in Duntocher, Old Kilpatrick. And have come across the same thing on several certificates and census - Newlands Land, McKays Land - which became Main Street, McLaughlins Land, which also formed part of Main Street, Donalds Land, Yates Land... and more!
I always thought it had something to do with the farms and the owners of the land in the area before it was subdivided up into houses by the Council.
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I have Munn's Land on one of my census, and my family were called MUNN.
I would like to know more about it too.
Was it there land?
Pettsy
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Hi Charlotte
I just had a look at oldmaps.co.uk and on the 1846 map of the area it doesn't show at all. Yoker wouldn't merit the description of a hamlet at that point so Robb's Land must have grown up out of the building soon after of the various shipyard and associated works along that part of the Clyde.
Some of the buildings were named after Foremen and managers in a particular part of the Yard and they rented the bigger flats in the building. Lesser workers had the usual two room flats or single-ends.
David's description fits what happened in the village I live in where someone bought a plot of land and built their house on it and it was called Barr's Land or Lyle's Land and that was effectively their address.
Look for information about the development of the shipyards for clues. There is one book about the Bairds yards but I cannot remember its title - sorry
Russell
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on the 1846 map of the area it doesn't show at all. Yoker wouldn't merit the description of a hamlet
Thanks Russell.
I looked at http://www.theclydebankstory.com/ and it seems the area grew up around the developing industry in the last half of the nineteenth century. I would assume that employees new to the area, were offered basic rented accommodation.
Charlotte
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the 'land' refers to people working land belonging to..ie munn's land is land belonging to the munn estate/family - you'll find most have and address of main street/xxx land - there are a few in and around duntocher where there have never been tennements (even not) so it is def not that.
is it possible your yoker is actually duntocher (often classed as part of/together with old kilmatrick) there's a few different spellings around but anything that sounds like dun-toe-ker is a good guide
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I just checked the 1881 Cencus and there's no sign of a Robb's Land.
Have you tried the 1891 Cencus? If it's there, that would give you a better ideas of when the building was built.
I tend to agree with the 'lands' as names for tenement buildings or the like. I may be wrong of course but I've never come across the theory of 'lands' being part of an estate or a farm.
The 1881 has 172 entries of individuals being born in Yoker so it must have been recognised at least as a village but there are only 2 single entries for Duntocher. (This is from the Lowlands area only and doesn't include the Highlands)
Have you though about enquiring through local Libraries to see if they hold any maps from around this time? This could perhaps give you an exact location although I've just had a look at www.nls.uk/digitallibrary/map/townplans/townplans.html and this exact area seems not to have been done.
Anne
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sorry maybe i wasn't clear when i said it was not a tennament.
I lived in duntocher for years, and still visit regularly - there is nothing now or in the past that could ever be considered a tennament, that makes me 100% certain anything called xxx land does not refer to a tenament building.
The area was originally farming, then became used for mills and similar (most immigration can be explained by reading the clydebank story) therefor the 'sub-districts' were known by the land name, munn's land, smith's land etc.
i should also mention - be carefull of anything that says Duntocher, in the parish of Old Kilpatrick - this can be deceptive as duntocher and old kilpatrick are a good few miles apart - in my searching i've found it always refers to duntocher, not old kilpatrick.
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Hi Littlejaffa,
I realise that your post is a few years old, but with the new Scotlands Census 2011 having recently been published, and to help anyone tracing their family tree,I feel I should say that Duntocher did have tenements. This is why you could have different families living under the same address.
Old Street had three storey flats, two storey plus the Attics.
New street was the same.
Chapel Road had three storey flats on one side accessed by the tenement close,Two storeys on the other, the upstairs flats of the two were accessed from the back via stone staircase with outside toilets at the top of the stairs,downstairs had toilets under the stone staircase. There is one building still standing,next to that was the Police station which was also two storey.
Bremmners Cottages were again two storey which stretched from The Village Tavern (filshies,Westend bar) and joined the main house where the Bremner family lived,which still stands today,and can give you an idea of how the other houses looked. The upstairs flats were accessed through an entrance called the Penn and again by stone staircase.
Also most of the districts of long ago came under the parish of Old Kilpatrick, some came under New Kilpatrick. Duntocher and Faifley by far the oldest .
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....oops..forgot about Main Street ,which had two storeys on both sides the duntocher Post office building is how they would have looked (google earth). Then there was Veitches court another two storey L shaped building ,accessed by the tenement closes.
All along the Main Street were the' Land's' Walkers,Bremner's,Connolly's etc.
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In an urban context, and specifically the late 19th and early 20th century industrial and shipbuilding towns, a land is exactly what would be called a tenement or a block of flats these days. Usually with a single entrance close and a stair or stairs giving access to one or more flats/apartments/dwellings on each floor. The name might be that of the owner, from whom all the occupants rented their homes, or it might be the name of a prominent or important citizen who lived in it. This does mean that in some cases, even though the actual building is still in existence, its name may have changed.
The word 'tenement' has undergone change; in the 18th and early 19th century it also meant a small, usually rented, piece of ground. So, for instance, during the Enlightenment between 1750 and 1850, when it was fashionable for landowners to establish new planned towns to replace the huddled old villages, the ground for the new town or village would be divided into tenements and then rented to the tenants. Some landowners might build houses on each tenement; more often they would simply rent the tenements and expect the tenants (or tenementers) to build their own houses on their tenements. In many cases the landlord specified the sort of house that was to be built, for example they might specify that it was to be 2 storeys high, and with its long elevation on the street frontage.
In towns and cities there was obviously much more demand for housing, so what would be called a tenement now is a development of this idea, where the building on a tenement was much larger and intended to accommodate many households, not just one as in more rural tenements. A tenement building did not need to be umpteen storeys high - it might only be a ground floor and say two storeys in places where the pressure on building space was less intense than in the big cities.
The lands in Edinburgh (and several other towns and cities) are a stage further than the more general land because not only are there tenements built on the street frontages, but what would originally have been garden ground in the closes behind has all been built up, so that the close doesn't give access to one tenement, but also to several more tenement buildings and houses built on the original tenement of ground.
The (former) village of Duntocher is indeed a couple of from the (former) village of Old Kilpatrick (if you can really call either of them villages these days) but both are in the parish of Old Kilpatrick. So 'Duntocher in the parish of Old Kilpatrick' is an exact and 100% correct description. New Kilpatrick is the next parish to the east.
The parish boundaries have little or no relevance these days, but they are very important for finding older records, because these were arranged by parish. According to Fullarton's Gazetteer (1842) Old or West Kilpatrick is "bounded on the north by Stirlingshire; on the east by East Kilpatrick and Lanarkshire; on the south or south-west by the Clyde, which divides it from Renfrewshire; and on the north-west by the parish of Dumbarton". East or New Kilpatrick is "partly in Dumbartonshire and partly in Stirlingshire; bounded on the north by Killearn and Strathblane; on the east by Strathblane and Baldernock; on the south by Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire; and on the west by Old Kilpatrick".
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Robbs Land was an area of ground adjacent to the pub (THE LOVAT) which current sits near the Glasgow Clydebank Boundary on Dumbarton Road
Robb is the surname of the publican Colin Robb, who ran an older hostellry on this site - if the Original Poster wishes to contact me I can provide more details (i have some photos of the area from the early 1900s)
The older pub COLIN ROBBS INN - was an old staging post - and was a white washed thatched cottage.
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Interesting! Thanks for posting the info yokerbrian. :)
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Land may be ground named after the current owner on which there are tenanted properties. As distinct from a tenement, if considered as a multi-occupation building, a land might contain small houses in a yard accessed from the street. In England it would be called a court. Often these were one up/one down or otherwise small with shared privvies and outbuildings and sometimes small factories or industrial undertakings.
The problem with such names is they are transient. Such tenanted property was sold on as speculative investment, so a few years later it would be Smith's Land or McGrogan's Land. The way to track these down is to look at valuation rolls and rate books around that year, that would show the owner as well as the tenant (the weakness of the census is that it seldom distinguishes owner occupier and tenant). The other source is the seisins in Edinburgh Records Office.
Some Scottish villages were made up of lands whereby groups of tenanted cottages were built on owned land that provided a means of distinguishing them from other groups of cottages.