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The Dean Tavern - A Gothenburg Experiment

Chapter 2

Newton Grange Village - The Beginning

The Newbattle Collieries had expanded enormously since the late 1700s but with the railway to Edinburgh under construction, the Marquis of Lothian invested heavily to increase the output even further. Bryans Pit was deepened and steam-powered winding gear erected. The valley of the South Esk was bridged by a substantial viaduct of wood and stone and private branch lines made to the pits at Bryans and Linger-wood. More men were needed to dig the coal and they had to be housed. Easthouses and Westhouses had always been the main colliery villages but the houses there were old, insanitary and ruinous. In fact, dozens of houses were demolished in these two villages in th* 1840s and 1850s and by 1860 Westhouses was derelict and deserted.

Some new houses were built at West Bryans, some at Lingerwood and some at Easthouses, but the majority of new houses were to be constructed on a site opposite Newton Grange Farm. In 1870, during a court case over a right of way dispute, William Romans said, "I remember some collier houses being built at Newton Grange. The second row from Newbattle Road were opposite our old house at Newton Grange. I think the collier houses were built about 1835 and they have been going on increasing ever since."

At the same trial, an old Easthouses residenter, Jane Wilson recalled the place in her early days. "There were few folks at Newton Grange. It was just a farm steading then. Newton Grange was not then built. Easthouses consisted of a good many houses - some 30 or 40."

Between 1835 and 1842, seven parallel rown of sandstone cottages with pantiled roofs were built at Newton Grange on the north side of the colliery railway from Bryans to Dalhousie and at right angles to it. There were 67 houses altogether, costing £34 to £35 each. They were thought to be considerably better than the older collier houses which had only one room, had earth floors and were damp and squalid. Robert Noble, the Newbattle Colliery schoolmaster, commented in 1840, "It is common practice for colliers to keep dung-heaps and dust near the cottage doors and several keep pigs, ducks and poultry in their houses."

Most of the house-building materials were supplied from enterprises belonging to the Marquis of Lothian. Stone came from the sandstone quarry at Masterton and lime was supplied from the limeworks about Westhouses. A brick and tile works was established in 1840 at Newton Grange. The tiles roofed the houses but houses were seldom brick-built until the 1890s.

The Parliamentary Commissioner of 1840, Mr Franks, conducted a further inquiry in 1849 and commented favourably on the houses provided by the Marquis of Lothian, the Duke of Buccleuch and Mr. Ramsay of Whitehall. "The houses are occasionally inspected and those families who neglect the opportunity of living in decency and cleanliness are threatened with dismissal from the works. Excellent gardens are attached to the cottages and also ground for recreation."

Between 1846 and 1851, another 50 houses were built at Newton Grange in five parallel rows to the south of the railway. In 1848 the streets of the village were cleared and drained. Cess pools were put in at every other door. Water was piped into the village and there was a well at the end of each row of houses.

David Bremner, a Scotsman journalist wrote in 1869, "The Marquis of Lothian owns two hundred and sixty miners' houses, among which are to be found some of the best of the kind in Scotland, together with some of the worst. The Newbattle Colliery, with which they are connected, is one of the oldest in the county, and has never been leased, the successive Marquises keeping the working of it in their own hands. The earlier houses of the miners were miserable thatched hovels; but all the houses built within the past thirty or forty years are of a superior description. The present Marquis, who takes much interest in the welfare of his work-people, commenced a few years ago to work extensive reform in the houses. Only a few cottages ot the very old type remain, and the dwellings by which they are being superseded are very comfortable and commodious, some of them containing for or five apartments. The rooms, though small, are lofty and well ventilated. The walls are of brick, the floors of glazed tiles, and the roofs of slate. They are well planned, and externally have some architectural pretensions. All things considered, the houses are well furnished; and it is a noteworthy tact that, though most of the people, while living in the old houses, appeared to be careless as to the quality or condition of their furniture, they were no sooner removed into one of those new roomy domiciles than they displayed quite a contrary taste. It is true that some of the new houses appear to be tenanted by people who cannot appreciate the change, yet the foregoing remarks hold good in the majority of cases. The new houses are supplied with water, have flower-gardens in front, and kitchen-gardens and coal houses behind. The rents charged vary from £1 10s. to £3 18s. per annum; and, as elsewhere, the rent is deducted from the fortnightly pay of the men." (Industries of Scotland, David Bremner)

The Marquis of Lothian built a school near the village of New-tongrange in 1849, replacing two others he had earlier established at Gallowdeanhill and Easthouses. In fact, there were three schools at Newton Grange: the boys school taught by Mr Noble with 120 pupils (some at night school); a girl's school taught by Miss Dick with 48 pupils; and an infant school taught by Miss Gardner with 73 pupils. The school subjects were Reading, Writing, Grammar, Arithmetic and Bookkeeping. Sewing was available for girls. The fees charged were Id a month for each subject. A very large number of the collier's children at Newton Grange attended school for at least two or three years. Mr Noble said of those attending evening school that, "their energies being so much exhausted with their daily labour, they all, as soon as they enter school fall into a state of lethergy."

The Marquis of Lothian owned three quarters of the parish of Newbattle but there was one man, John Romans, who owned an isolated seven acres in the midst of the Marquis's property. Jane Wilson of Easthouses recalled, "The farm of Newton Grange belonged to the Marquis but there was one Thomson who owned a bit of it and Johnnie Romans fell heir to Thomson's bit and a two storey house in which they lived."

Johnnie Romans was the joiner and undertaker in Newbattle and his son, also called John, became a successful and prosperous engineer in England. He returned to Scotland in 1863, establishing himself in business in Edinburgh as a gas engineer and coal agent. John Romans was a fervent Scottish Nationalist who later became a J.P. and was elected a County Councillor tor Midlothian. He was determined to capitalise on his little empire of seven acres which lay adjacent to Newton Grange -on the north side of the village. Mr Romans planned to build a block of houses and shops on the southern edge of his property, fronting a road called the Loan, which was, however, on the Marquis of Lothian's land. The Marquis decided to close up this road and others in the parish, and John Romans took him to court. He won his case, built his shops and houses and established himself as the collier's champion and constant critic of the Marquis. The colliers called him 'Cocky Romans'. He was so proud of winning the case against the Marquis of Lothian that he had the whole proceedings printed and published as a book to be presented to his friends. No doubt he sent the Marquis a copy too.

One of the shops, on the corner of the Loan and Newbattle Road, was called the 'Abbey Granary'. It was a three storey building with a large statue of a monk on a pedestal high up on one wall. On another wall was a plaque with the inscription, "Praemuim Virtutis Honor. This Building was erected in 1874 on the site where since 1564 had stood the residence of the Lairds of Newton Grange I.R."

The romantic notion that his ancestors were Lairds of Newton Grange is a typical exaggeration of the flamboyant John Romans. Five or six other people had previously owned different parts of the seven acres he had inherited. He certainly could trace his ancestry, through his mother, to a William Junkison who, in 1683, exchanged a small piece of land he owned in Newbattle village for part of a field called Longshot Acres near Newton Grange. The family eventually bought out the other owners and this became John Roman's small estate.

John Romans also built himself an elaborate twentyfour-roomed mansion house in a neo-baronial style on his land. He called it Newton Grange House.

The shops in 'Romans's Buildings' in the Loan were let to a grocer, a draper, a shoemaker and a tailor. The Abbey Granary was run by the Campbell family from 1874 to 1895 as a grocery shop and a short way down the road to Newbattle, at Hope House, was Mr Stone's grocery. There was a post office in Newton Grange from the 1850s and a county police station from the 1840s. Numerous carts, selling butchers meat, bread and groceries, came regularly to the village from Dalkeith, Bon-n>'rigg and Gorebridge.

A short row of two-storey brick houses was by built the Marquis of Lothian near Newton Grange School in 1871 and more houses were added ten years later under most unusual circumstances. The Scotsman of March 23, 1880, reported as follows: "Cowdenfoot, erected by the Duke of Buccleuch for the miners employed at Dalkeith Colliery, was removed by arrangement with the Marquis of Lothian to a site at the south end of Newton Grange in the parish of Newbattle. When Dalkeith Colliery was dismantled some years ago the miners were employed at Newbattle and have since travelled to work by the train over the colliery's private railway. The houses, of a superior description, are to be re-built as nearly as possible in the same manner, being taken down by sections." This became the village of Cowden Grange until 1898 when Newton Grange was extended and Cowden Grange became part of the new estate of Dean Park. Locals remember it now as the 'Stane Block'.

In 1873, a gasworks had been built by the Marquis of Lothian at New ton Grange and thereafter all the houses had gas lighting, as had New-battle Church, the Abbey, the colliery School and the colliery office. It had been intended, at first, to provide gas lights for the underground workings but this never happened.

Gas lighting was also supplied to the Church at Newton Grange. The congregation had, at first, a corrugated iron church (built 1874) and then a solid stone building erected in 1880 on land belonging to Mr. Romans. Many miners belonged to the Free Church as opposed to the Church of Scotland ('the Auld Kirk') at Newbattle.

There were two industrial works near Newton Grange. The Dean Oil Works was a firm belonging to Charles Handyside employed in the extraction of oil from coal for industrial purposes. The oil works was situated half a mile south of the village between the Edinburgh road and the main railway line from which they had their own sidings.

The other concern was Robert Craig's Newbattle Paper Mill at Lothian Bridge, which employed 300 people, many of them women. Mr. Craig's lease expired in 1890 and he and the Marquis of Lothian could not agree on conditions for an extension to the lease so he transferred the business to other paper mills he owned, at Caldercruix and Moffat near Airdrie. He took 200 employees with him from Lothian Bridge to Caldercruix. Newbattle Paper Mill was demolished in 1894 but Mr. Craig's fine house, Craigesk, still stands. The closure of the paper mill was a heavy blow to the tradesmen of Newton Grange who lost a lot of business.

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Cover - Contents - Foreword - Introduction - Appendices - Photographs & Illustrations

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