#georgian — Public Fediverse posts

https://www.europesays.com/uk/1187266/ We took on the biggest renovation job in Wales and created an epic £5m home #Britain #Cardiff #Georgian #GreatBritain #sonia #UK #UnitedKingdom #Wales #Welsh

Time for forgotten #Georgian #bronzeage #cultures https://phys.org/news/2026-04-hidden-highland-culture-mountains-southern.html?shem=dsdf,sharefoc,agadiscoversdl,,sh/x/discover/m1/4#google_vignette #archaeology

Sunday, October 5, 2025

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/10/sunday-october-5-2025/

Friday, July 25, 2025

Over 23,000 civilians, 113 children trapped in active combat zones in Donetsk Oblast — Russian glide bombs strike Kharkiv residential high-rise building, injuring at least 41 — Marjorie Taylor Greene is spreading lies about Ukraine’s protests. Russia is taking note — Georgian-Ukrainian music festival ICKPA returns to Kyiv amid shared resistance to Russian imperialism … and more

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/07/friday-july-25-2025/

Sunday, May 4, 2025

Ukrainian sea drone downs Russian fighter jet in world-first strike — Russia used thermobaric weapons in drone strike on Kharkiv, Ukrainian prosecutors say — Russian drone attack on Kyiv injures 11 people, including 2 children, damages shopping mall — France to ramp up AASM Hammer smart bomb production for Ukraine … and more

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/05/sunday-may-4-2025/

In 1461 during the #WarsoftheRoses the 2nd Battle of St Albans was partially fought (flight of the Yorkists) on #Nomansland Common & in #C17th gangs of thieves regularly robbed travellers on the Common including the legendary ‘Wicked Lady’ Highwaywoman Katherine Ferrers.

#HarryHolt #Holt #Genealogy #Bareknuckle #Boxing #Pugilist #Regency #Georgian #C18th #C19th #History

Servitude: the thread about why James Craig’s New Town isn’t as regular as he would have liked

Have you ever wondered why at the far western end of Queen Street, where it meets North Charlotte Street, the regular, right-angled Georgian grid of the First New Town does something odd and has a bevelled corner? You have? Great! Lets find out why that is.

No, the Georgians weren’t future-proofing the street corner here for a 20th century traffic engineer’s filter lane. This has to do with something much more predictable than that – land ownership disputes!

You see, when Town Council first had a plan of land ownership drawn up for the planning of the New Town, they didn’t actually yet own all the land on which they intended to build. In fact, they only owned about three quarters of it. Standing in the way to the west was “Allan’s Park“, owned by Dean of Guild Allan (Thomas Allan), and “Barjarg’s Feu” – owned by James Erskine, Lord Barjarg of Drumsheugh House.

Allan’s Park was relatively easy to acquire, and was done so by the time the above plan was released to James Craig and other prospective architects for the design competition in April 1766, but Barjarg’s Feu still formed a salient into it. But planning proceeded on the basis that the Council hoped to acquire the land anyway and James Craig’s winning entry therefore drew the western town blocks over it.

Building commenced at the eastern end within short order and by the late 1760s or early 1770s, the New Town was creeping westwards. By the time it reached the boundary of Barjarg’s Feu in 1785, in the vicinity of Castle Street, the the owner – by now styled Lord Alva having inherited that estate – agreed to sell to the council and the plan could continue uninterrupted (although it took until 1820 to conclude, and was not on entirely favourable terms for the Cityand subsequent proprietors). But if we look closer at the western edge of Craig’s plan, and compare it with what is on the ground, we notice that Queen Street should meet North Charlotte Street on a regular grid (it doesn’t) and both Queen Street and the city grid should extend for another block west from where it does (it doesn’t!). Something else stood in the way. (P.S. Charlotte Square was originally to be St. George’s Square)

So what went wrong? Well, it wasn’t just Lord Alva’s land in the way. In 1782, the Trustees of Heriot’s Hospital (who had sold much of the land for the northern portion of the New Town to the city) had sold a portion of land to Francis Stuart, 9th Earl of Moray and on this he had built for himself a mansion, Moray House, and laid out extensive gardens. And Moray wasn’t for selling, so the New Town plans had to be hurriedly altered to build around his land.

This explains why the north western corner could not be completed as planned, and why Queen Street stopped short at North Charlotte Street, but not why they build that awkward and incongruous bevel on the corner? Well that’s because of a little legal thing called “servitude”. What does servitude mean? “A right that an owner of heritable property has over property owned by another. A servitude runs with the land and not the owner“. The Earl of Moray and Lord Alva had servitude over each other that neither could built within 90 feet of their boundary. When Edinburgh bought the land from Alva, Moray maintained his servitude over it. And can you guess what the distance from the bevelled façade on the corner of Queen Street and North Charlotte Street is from the boundary with the Earl of Moray’s land? Yes, that’s right, it’s *exactly* 90 feet.

This old boundary cut through what is now Glenfinlas Street and explains why the pavement suddenly changes width about 1/3 of the way down – it was built at two different times.

It wasn’t until the intransigent Earl of Moray’s son began to be feu the ground in 1822 that the owners of the properties on the north side of Charlotte Square got the change to buy the rest of “their” gardens. The maps below show 1817 compared with 1849 (slide to compare). You can see at this time, a garden wall still existed on the old boundary at the very west of these gardens, and that the formal portions (marked out by the perimeter paths) also conform to the boundary.

You can find the result of this boundary dispute in other places too. It is the reason for instance that Randolph Lane takes an odd, irregular form if you follow it northwards.

Amazingly, the last of the legal niceties over this portion of land weren’t resolved along this boundary for almost 170 years! Those nicely cleaned and restored “Georgian” townhouses at 1-3 Glenfinlas Street? They were only built in 1990 to finally finish this corner of the New Town (almost) as planned.

There’s actually a few more of these incongruous and awkwardly non-right angles scattered through the New Town – it’s always about old boundaries. This thread details the Gabriel’s Road boundary and the line it still cleaves across the New Town. If you want to understand why any New Town street in Edinburgh isn’t on a right angle – overlay an old land boundary plan on it (in this case, the eastern end of John Laurie’s 1766 plan) and it will probably reveal the answer. Broughton Street and York Lane? Cathedral Lane and the foot of Leith Street? St. James Square and Gabriel’s Road? Truncated southern side of Abercrombie Place? Property boundaries are your answer.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#OnThisDay 8Dec1840 Articles are signed btwn ‘Big Ben’ CAUNT & Nick WARD to fight for the Championship on 2nd Feb 1841 within 60mi of #London

#BigBen the Great Bell (& Clock Tower) at #WestminsterPalace was supposedly named after CAUNT who claimed the Champion of England from 1838-45

#HarryHolt #Genealogy #Pugilist #Holt #Biography #HarryHoltBiography #SportsHistory #Bareknuckle #Boxing #Prizefighter #LondonPrizeRing #Regency #Georgian #C19th #19thCentury #History #Histodons

The thread about Marionville; the house that thread built and home to the unfortunate “Fortunate Duellist”

This thread was originally written and published in November 2019. It has been lightly edited and corrected as applicable for this post.

There’s an old Georgian villa in the east of Edinburgh called Marionville. It lends its name to the district, a few streets and a fire station. It’s your typical regular, 3-storey, 5-bay, 6-over-6 window, sandstone job and although it is quite a rarity in a largely 20th century part of town, at first glance it is otherwise unremarkable for Edinburgh.

Unremarkable that is until you find out a little bit about the place’s history! It was built some time between the 1760s and 1780s by the Misses Ramsay of Old Lyon Close, milliners renowned in the burgh for their ribboned hats. When built it was called Viewfrith (as in a house where one could view the Frith, or Firth of Forth. On account of its occupants trade, it was scornfully nicknamed the Lappet Ha‘, lappet referring to the woven lacework that was common in Georgian women’s hats. Ha’ for ball; the house that lappet built. The misses Ramsay saw out their days in their fine house and its gardens, and in October 1780 it was noted as being for sale:

About 1786 it passed to one James Macrae of Holmains Esq. who liked to be known as Captain Macrae on account of his service in the 6th Dragoon Guards (Irish Carabiniers), a Hanoverian cavalry regiment. By accounts he was both a sophisticated, cultured charmer and an arrogant, pompous “Goth“. It was Macrae who renamed the house, calling it for his wife, Maria Cecile le Maistre.

Captain Macrae had a quick temper and an overinflated sense of his own status. He was nicknamed the “fortunate duellist” on account of his propensity to call for satisfaction and on not being dead as a result. He practised by firing at a barber’s block kept specially for the purpose, or so John Kay caricatured him.

The Macraes soon built up a reputation as a home of the “gayest private theatricals, perhaps in Britain“. Being wealthy and aspirational with tastes “gay and fashionable” they had a 150-seat private theatre built, complete with stage, curtain and scenery in the house where the couple themselves took the starring roles. The great and the good of Edinburgh were invited and the shows were a hot ticket in town, being well reviewed in the papers. The Scots Magazine and Caledonian Mercury were full of gushing praise for them.

Maria Macrae was the daughter of the Swedish ambassador’s wife and had spent time in Paris with her cousins. It was there she got a taste for the private theatricals of the time and it was she who was chiefly responsible for reproducing them at Marionville. The Macrae’s inner circle was a centre of Georgian high fashion in Edinburgh, the women wore head-dresses so tall that they had to “sit on the carriage floor” and the men wore “bright coats with tails to their heels” and “wigs with great side curls“. The innermost of their circle were the Ramsays (no relation to the Misses), Sir George Ramsay of Bamff, 6th Baronet and his wife, Eleanor Fraser. They were “warmly attached and intimate” with the Macraes.

So all was good. Everyone was happy and Marionville was the place to be seen around town. Macrae was highly regarded in the right circles, but his pomposity and temper would be his unravelling. An example of this was when a messenger of the law tried to arrest his cousin, the Reverend John Cunningham, Earl Glencairn, at a private party in Drumsheugh House. Macrae was outraged that a common man would insult a gentleman, and threw the messenger over the stairwell. When it later came to light that Cunningham was a debtor who had refused all chance to settle his obligations and that the messenger had been gravely injured, Macrae made an apology and paid compensation of 300 guineas to settle the matter.

And then we come to the fateful night of April 7th 1790. Captain Macrae had been out at the Theatre Royal, which stood on Shakespeare Square, opposite the General Register Office and where the General Post Office would later be built. Being a gentleman, he was helping a lady to get a chair to convey her home (this meant a sedan chair; at this time were still the principal form of public transport of choice for the moneyed classes around town). He had secured the lady her chair when a liveried footman appeared on the scene and seized one of the poles of the chair to reserve it for his mistress. The outraged Macrae rapped the impertinent servant’s knuckles with his cane.

The footman, not to be cowed, denounced Macrae as a scoundrel and punched him in the chest. Macrae responded by striking him across the head with his cane. An almighty fracas ensued, sucking in passers-by on both sides. Somehow the conflict was defused and the lady was spirited to safety in another chair. And there it might have ended until Macrae was made aware that the footman in question was an employee of his dear friend, Sir George Ramsay.

And so, the following day Macrae sought out Ramsay at his place of business. His friend informed him that the servant in question was recently engaged by his wife and he felt that he had no hand in the matter. Macrae insisted that he would therefore apologise to the lady at once. Hurrying to the Ramsay’s house on St. Andrew Square, he found her sitting for an up and coming your artist, one Henry Raeburn. Theatrically going down on one knee, Macrae begged forgiveness for having chastised her servant. And there it would have ended. But…

A few days later at Marionville, an anonymous letter arrived stating that Macrae had meddled with the “Knights of the Shoulder Knot” (the name given to footmen for their elaborate uniforms) and they would have their revenge for the insult to their brother. The footman in question, James Merry, took the matter further by making it known he would take legal proceedings against his assailant for the injuries he had suffered. Piqued, Macrae wrote to Ramsay and demanded that the man be put in his place and discharged. For whatever reason, Ramsay declined to satisfy his friend and their relationship quickly soured as the two engaged in a protracted series of increasingly intemperate letters. This culminated in Macrae having his messenger inform Ramsay that he was not a gentleman, but a scoundrel!

That was that! Macrae had overstepped the mark for sure, Ramsay was a proper gentleman, with a title, not someone you could go around insulting. The intermediary, one Captain Amory, arranged a meeting of both parties in Bayle’s Tavern at which “rough epithets were exchanged“. The outcome was inevitable and satisfaction was demanded by Macrae. But he let it be known that he considered Ramsay the challenger, for refusing to deal with his servant.

The time and place was set for the shore outside of Musselburgh at noon the next day. What better place to settle your differences than in the cool sea breeze of the Honest Toun? And so it was that the next day the two gentlemen, each with another in tow as second, met at Wards Inn off of the Musselburgh Links. A surgeon, Benjamin Bell, was sensibly arranged for.

A parlay took place to see if things could be settled amicably, without either side losing face. Macrae demanded that if Ramsay dismiss his servant he would apologise profusely for all that had followed and consider it closed. Ramsay demanded an apology first, before any further progress could be made. Both sides were intransigent. The seconds which each side had brought as counsel declined further compromise and the course of action was now set. Each man took a pistol from a pair and made his way to the allotted spot on the Links. Each then walked 14 paces away from the other and the duel commenced. Ramsay shot first and nicked the collar of his late friend, grazing the neck. Macrae did not miss and Ramsay was mortally wounded. Macrae would later claim that he had planned to shoot high and miss on purpose, but was so outraged that Ramsay had not deliberately missed and had drawn blood that he decided to settle the matter once and for all by not missing. For a sure shot like Macrae, the outcome was inevitable.

The deed done, Macrae was suddenly remorseful and had to be convinced to leave his dying friends’ side by Ramsay’s second, Sir William Maxwell. Edinburgh society was outraged and it was Macrae, the lower status gentleman that they squarely blamed for this calamity. Being a proper class scandal, the detail was all printed at the time (then, as now, controversy was good for sales) and Macrae was immortalised as “The Fortunate Duellist” by Edinburgh caricaturist John Kay. By trade Kay was a barber, so the story of the practice target may have appealed to him as much as the chance to satirise events.

Facing a potential murder charge, Macrae abandoned Marionville and his family and fled to Paris accompanied by his second, Captain Amory. They took up lodgings in the Hôtel de la Dauphine. A summons soon arrived from Edinburgh to return and face the law. Ignoring it, both were declared outlaws and consigned themselves to live out their days in exile. To add insult to Macrae’s injury, 2 years later the Sheriffs awarded damages and compensation to the footman for his original injuries, which were paid from Macrae’s estate in his absence. Macrae stayed in Paris until the coming of the French revolution compelled his to flee further, this time to Altona in Italy. He had hoped that the passage of time would allow him to return home to Marionville, but society and the law were resolved against it.

And so it was that the gayest house in town fell into “an air of depression and melancholy such as could barely fail to strike the most unobservant passenger“. It was advertised as being to let in 1793 and the following year it was for sale. Macrae was soon forgotten by the chattering classes of Edinburgh. That is until 1814, when publisher Robert Chambers relates that “a gentleman of my acquaintance was surprised to meet him one day in a Parisian coffee house“. “The wreck or ghost of the handsome, sprightly man he had once been.” “The comfort of his home, his country and his friends, the use of his talents to all these, had been lost, and himself obliged to lead the life of a condemned Cain, all through the one fault of a fiery temper“.

Captain Macrae, late of Marionville, died alone in Paris on the 16th January 1820, 30 years an exile from his home, wife and 2 children. “Captain Macrae was a strange character. To those of his own class a tyrant and bully. To those below him he was kind and obliging”. At this time his old house was in the possession of a Mr and Mrs Dudgeon although it was for sale again shortly after, the new owner being Walter Stirling Glas, esq. The house was repeatedly for sale and let throughout the 19th century. A flick through some old Post Office directories enlightens us that from approximately 1858 to 1869, it was being used by Dr. Guthrie’s “Original Ragged Industrial School” .

In 1932, Marionville was purchased by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Edinburgh and St. Andrews for use as the manse for St. Ninian’s & Triduana’s Church, which was built in the grounds at this time. Its last occupant before the church took it over would appear to be one Miss W. Crawford Brown and the house  was sold back into private use within the past few years. The church, which was never actually completed to the intended design, is surprisingly the work of that most British of British architects, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (of red telephone box and Battersea power station fame).

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.