Stirling 900 – The Dean of Guild Court and Building Regulations
As discussed in a previous blog post, the Stirling Guildry had its own court, overseen by the Dean of the Guildry, as a forum in which grievances between Guildry members could be addressed as well as somewhere that outsiders could be tried for illegal trading within the Burgh.
The Court books held at the Council Archives begin their proper series in 1592, although there are some surviving fragments from the late fifteenth century and earlier in the sixteenth. Many of the entries show the names of those ‘strangers’ (i.e. people from outside the Burgh) or ‘unfreemen’ (people who were not Burgesses) caught trading within the Burgh boundaries. Alongside these are cases where Guildry members are asking the court to decide on matters of contention that have arisen between individual burgesses. In these cases, many of the issues related to building work either planned or having been carried out. The Ancient Royalty, as it was known, that is, the original Burgh, sited within the city walls, was quite a small place. The townsfolk lived in tenements, unless they were very rich and could afford to build stone houses like John Cowane’s or Robert Spittal’s. In either case, the buildings tended to be situated very close together, and, as custom dictated that people were to have access to natural light and air, any infringement upon this was treated very seriously. As a consequence of this, a fair proportion of the cases that came up before the Dean of Guild Court related to building work taking place within the Burgh.
In order to avoid lengthy legal cases, that could prove both cripplingly expensive and extremely time consuming, it became customary for those planning building work to lodge plans of their proposals in the form of a description and drawings of the work with the Dean of Guild Court so as to avoid costly litigation once the work was underway. This was happening long before any formal strictures analogous with what we know as Planning and Building Regulations were developed by central government. By the time of the Victorian era, the Dean of Guild Court had become almost exclusively concerned with the regulation of local building activity.
Unfortunately, no very early set of records survive for the Burgh of Stirling. It is known that the submission of plans and paperwork to the court was happening, as records that relate to this activity survive from as early as the sixteenth century in the Burgh collections of Edinburgh and Aberdeen.
The Dean of the Guildry was considered an official of the Burgh, indicating how intertwined the Burgh Council was with the Merchant Guildry up until the early nineteenth century. He would enforce the Burgh’s regulations that related to trade and ensure that the various buildings publicly owned by the Burgh were kept in good order as well as dealing with access issues and nuisances.
The function of the Dean of Guild as an arbiter in town planning matters was recognised when, under the provisions of the Burgh Reform Act of 1833, the office of Dean of the Guildry was separated from that of the local government official who decided on local building matters. From that date, each Scottish local authority employed an officer known as the Dean of Guild who presided over the Dean of Guild Court, while the Stirling Merchant Guildry continued to elect their own Dean of the Guildry from amongst their number as they had in times gone by.
The Stirling Dean of Guild Court was overseen from 1892 by the Police Commissioners Committee. The reason behind this move was the decision to have Stirling adopt the status of Police Burgh alongside its existing Royal Burgh status. In July 1857, the Burgh Council adopted the provisions of the General Police (Scotland) Act 1850 and created a Police Burgh in Stirling. The aim of this action was to ensure that the Town Council retained administrative control of the Burgh Police and various other functions and to prevent them being taken over by the Commissioners of Supply for Stirling County. The Police Commissioners were responsible for the Police Constabulary, cleansing, paving and lighting. The Commissioners were comprised of a number of Councillors, and the Commission and its Committee sat alongside the Burgh Council. In 1893, the Police Commissioners became responsible for the oversight of building standards within the Burgh with the implementation of the Burgh Police (Scotland) Act of 1892. Consequently, from 1893, applications to build and alter buildings in Stirling were discussed in the minutes of the Police Commissioners’ Committee. The Town Council (Scotland) Act of 1900 replaced the Police Commissioners and Burgh Council with a new Town Council. After this, the decisions concerning building matters within the Burgh continue to be dealt with by the Police Committee and the Town Council and recorded in the main series of Council minutes, but the records are still described as pertaining to the Dean of Guild Court.
Scotland was the first country in the United Kingdom to implement national building regulations. The Building (Scotland) Act, 1959 provided for the compilation of such strictures, and the first set of Regulations was published in 1963 and came into force in 1964. Unlike Planning restrictions, which deal with how buildings appear in the built environment, building regulations relate to the construction and layout of buildings, ensuring that they are fit for the purpose for which they are intended.
From 1893 to 1975, when the Dean of Guild Court was abolished along with the Royal Burgh, drawings of proposed building works in the Burgh were deposited with the Burgh Council as part of the application for permission to undertake those works. Many of these files still survive in the Council Archives, comprising a wonderful visual record of some of the City’s most iconic buildings. The series of records continues for the successor bodies Stirling District Council and the current Council. The Archives also holds Building Standards records for Stirling County Council, the Western District of Perthshire County and the Burghs of Bridge of Allan, Callander, Doune and Dunblane from around 1900 to 1975.