@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide Thats a BIG question that really deserves a thesis to give a proper answer. The primary factor in why Scotland has tenements & England less so is down to the difference in legal definitions of property ownership. Scots law follows Roman law in that ownership is an absolute right
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide That is, you either own it or you don’t. In England you don’t have to prove absolute ownership, just that your case is better than anyone else’s. How that translates into tenements over terraces is a result of who owned what land and to what extent they developed it.
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide Wherever a landowner, whether aristocrat or merchant, thought they could turn a profit by building then they would. So the high streets of Scottish towns ended up with various stages of tenement development. Edinburgh’s Royal Mile and Glasgow’s High St developed in this manner.
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide Initially burghal riggs were set out running perpendicular to the main street, these were long strips of land several hundred yards in length but with small frontages to the street, like Medieval villages all over Europe.
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide Over time the street fronting building would develop from a one or two storey building housing a shop on the ground with the owners apartments above into what we would recognise as a tenement by either adding new floors on top of existing or rebuilding higher.
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide The backlands would develop too, being home to workshops, industries & poorer housing. Some riggs would develop pends & wynds which over time would formalise into lanes & streets. This pattern carried on pretty much unchanged until the Georgian era & development of ‘new towns’
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide Before I get onto them though its useful to mention the devastating effect of fire in these tight medieval urban centres. London’s Great Fire is well known, but Glasgow was nearly destroyed more than once in that period. That led to tighter building regulations.
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide New towns - again both Edinburgh & Glasgow are obvious examples (Glasgow’s first new town was between Buchanan St & Candleriggs, incl. George Sq). These new towns, as the name suggests, were planned & built from scratch & represent a whole new concept of urban living.
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide Streets were planned wide, building lines & heights formalised, it was all very new, light, airy, sanitary, stately, safe - a stark change from the old town. Its from this point the archetypal Scottish tenement begins to develop, as new ideas, new tech, & new wealth take effect
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide Its at this point, as the industrial revolution starts to get into full swing, that Scotland and England diverge in their building practices. This comes back to the initial point of ownership– land in Scotland is still in few peoples hands who dictate the terms of its development
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide We all know how urban population explosions were driven by the opportunities of the industrial revolution. How that played out in bricks, stone and mortar came down to the landowner.
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide In Scotland a landowner would commission a feueing plan laying out streets and stipulating what type and size of building can go where. They would sell the feueing rights in small plots or in their entirety to a developer/builder, or simply do the developing themselves.
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide Either way they would retain ultimate ownership & anyone who bought a property on their feue would pay them an annual feue duty. Picture a city block in your head, imagine how many villas you could fit into it versus how many tenement closes (at 6-8 flats per close) you could fit
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide You can see how tenement building would be attractive. The difference in England is that it was just as profitable, because of historic differences in the legalities of ownership and how that translated into who owned what over the course of the centuries.
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide There were simply more land owners in England than Scotland, so land was cheaper meaning it was cheaper just to build rows of terraces. Municipal factors would also play a big role in the urban developments of the industrial age,but the groundwork was all laid a millenium earlier
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide Thats an extremely abridged version of the story, there are obviously many more nuances and factors at play in it all, but I cant do it justice with this world limit! The development of the emblematic Victorian and Edwardian tenements is a whole story in itself – maybe one day :)
@dickebuerste53 @GdTenementGuide P.S. Apologies for any undecipherable typos, nothing too embarrassing I hope!
