PROPERTY SPECULATORS AND THE BUILDING OF GLASGOW, 1780–1830
| Published date | 01 November 1961 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1961.tb00166.x |
| Date | 01 November 1961 |
| Author | John R. Kellett |
PROPERTY SPECULATORS AND THE BUILDING
OF
GLASGOW, 1780
-
1830
I
BY
the 1780’s the increase in population associated with the Clyde’s
growing overseas trade was beginning to cause a marked intensifica-
tion of demand for building room in and about the old city of
Glasgow.
It
is well attested by contemporaries that in addition
to
the general hunger
for
business accommodation a more specialised
demand had arisen amongst the mercantile class for larger and more
elegant houses,
of
the type which could be seen in the planned squares
and piazzas
of
London’s newly-built West End. The rise
in
living
standards
in
Glasgow, though less conspicuous than London’s, caused
a parallel discontent with the cramped and modest lodgings which
had satisfied seventeenth century merchants, and created a desire
for
more spacious and impressive town-houses.
In the older, central parts
of
the city the intense subdivision
of
property-every shop and flat being separately owned-made
it
difficult
to
rebuild
or
adapt houses
to
satisfy the new standards or
cater for the growing numbers
of
the commercial middle-class.’ A
familiar token
of
success amongst the Virginia merchants was the
setting up of a country-house outside the old town, ‘brizing yont’,
as
it
was called. When suitable land came onto the market therefore
-as
it
did between 1770 and 1810-unequalled prospects of profit-
able speculation both in the sale, subdivision and resale
of
the land
itself and from building operations were opened up.a
In London the Dukes
of
Westminster and Bedford, Lord St.
Albans, Sir Thomas Bond and other aristocratic owners
of
urban
property had been possessed not merely of sufficient land but
also
of
sufficient capital and credit to exploit this great entrepreneurial
opportunity, to their lasting profit. What had been low-priced agri-
cultural land on the outskirts
of
London was irrigated, not by channels
of
water but by boldly-cut streets and new buildings; and the
replacement
of
crops
by
people brought as reward rent-rolls many
times greater than any equivalent effort
of
agricultural improvement.
a
Estimates
of
Glasgow’s rental suggest a thirty-fold increase over
the
Glasgow,
Past and Present,
I
(Glasgow, 1884), XVII.
period
1712-1815, a seven-fold increase over
the
period
1773-1815.
1712 f7,840
1773 f36,706
1803 f81,484
1815 f240,000
J.
Cleland,
Annals
of
Glasgow,
I
(Glasgow, 1816), 342-3;
J.
K.
McDowall,
The
People’s History
of
Glasgow
(Glasgow, 1899),
p.
109.
211
212
JOHN
R.
KELLETT
In
Glasgow, by contrast, the history of urban expansion during
the most rapid period
of
population growth
is
coloured both by the
absence
of
a class of wealthy speculative proprietors and the presence
of
a
number
of
factors not operative in London, which were
to
leave
lasting differences between the development of Britain’s first and
second cities.
Prominent amongst the factors influencing the shape
of
building
development in Scotland must
be
accounted the particular conditions
of
landownership under Scottish Law, and the universality of the
tradition
of
feuing.
In
the expanding English towns the patterns of
land use, with very few exceptions, were governed by freehold
purchase
or
the granting
of
a
lease which could be revised on expiry:
in Scotland the most common system was that
of
feuing the land.
The usual procedure was that a purchase price
per
acre or
per
square
yard would be agreed upon, part
of
this would be paid over in a
lump sum, the rest translated into
a
feu in perpetuity, a species
of
nominal rent attached permanently
to
the parcel of land.3 According
to the terms
of
the individual feu-contract latitude could be allowed
for this feu duty to
be
extinguishable at a later date upon payment
of
a
lump sum, usually equal
to
21 times the annual feu.4 But more
often than not the feu remained as
a
perpetual instalment, the incidence
of
which was affected only by gradual inflationary price movements
over the years. Because the sum
of
the feu was specified in the original
documents of sale it could not
be
reviewed again realistically and
the feus therefore tended to be stiff in relation
to
the initial, though
not,
of
course, the potential value
of
the
property.
In
the view
of
many contemporaries this initially heavy burden was the reason
why the inhabitants
were
lodged
‘
in immense piles of masonry, raised
tier upon tier
’
on each acre.5 More recent legal opinion has likewise
commented upon the impetus towards denser exploitation of urban
estates given
by
this characteristic
of
Scottish Law.‘
3
Encyclopaedia
of
Scottish Legal Styles,
V
(Edinburgh, 1937), 143-219.
4The section on the procedure for purchasing land from the Hospital
in
The Constitution,
Rules
and History
of
Hutcheson’s Hospital
(Glasgow,
1850), p.
84,
explains specifically
‘The
price offered
per
square yard
is
always
understood as being convertible into a? annual feu duty, at .the rate of
5:&
(with duplication every nineteenth year).
5
Glasgow,
Past
and
Present,
I.
148.
The
Report,
of
the Scottish
Land
Enquiry Committee
(1914), pp. 292-342,
347-56, 376-95. Under the feu system
.
. .
the superior’s natural endeavour
is to
fix
his
original conditions
of
feuing
so
as to
get
as large a return as
possible, once and for all.
It
is
very probable also that the preponderance
of tenements
of
three and four storeys in height in Scotland
as
compared with
England is attributable in part at least to these high ground rents.’ Ibid.,
p. 293.
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