The blacksmith's shop at Gretna Green - a Regency History guide

Anvil in the main marriage room of the blacksmith's shop, Gretna Green (2015)

Where is Gretna Green?

Gretna Green is a village in the Scottish county of Dumfries and Galloway, just over the border from England.

What is so special about Gretna Green?

Gretna Green is famous for the huge number of couples who eloped there to get married. After Hardwicke’s Marriage Act came into force in 1754, couples under the age of 21 needed parental consent to get married. As this law did not apply in Scotland, couples who wanted to wed without this consent fled to the border and were married before their parents could stop them. As the first village in Scotland on the main post road from London, Gretna Green became a popular destination for eloping couples.

You can read more about why people ran away to Gretna in my earlier post: Why did Regency lovers elope to Gretna Green?

The blacksmith's shop, Gretna Green (2015)

The blacksmith’s shop

Many of the runaway couples were married over the anvil in the blacksmith’s shop. The handfasting (1) ceremony was conducted by one of the self-appointed ‘anvil priests’ who would bring his hammer down on the anvil as he completed the marriage ceremony. It was a very lucrative business. The eloping couples were typically well off and in such a hurry to get married that the anvil priest could charge a substantial fee for obliging them. Once the ceremony had taken place, the marriage was legally binding.

The main marriage room in the blacksmith's shop, Gretna Green (2015)

The anvil priests

The most famous anvil priests during the Georgian period were:

Joseph Paisley (anvil priest 1754-1814)

Joseph Paisley was an ex-tobacconist and smuggler, renowned for his strength. He became a blacksmith, but quickly recognised that it was more lucrative to marry eloping couples and became one of the first blacksmith priests in 1754. Despite becoming immensely fat and addicted to drink, he continued to conduct marriage ceremonies until his death in 1814.

David Lang (anvil priest 1792-1827)

David Lang was Paisley’s nephew. He was pressganged into the British Navy as a young man and then captured by the American pirate John Paul Jones and made part of his crew. He escaped from Jones’ ship when it was near the Solway coast, swimming to the shore near Gretna.

In 1792, he became a rival blacksmith priest and was known as Bishop Lang because of the clerical style of dress he adopted. Like his uncle, he had a reputation for drinking too much. He was the anvil priest responsible for marrying Ellen Turner to her abductor, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, in the notorious Shrigley abduction and gave evidence at the trial in 1827. He died the same year.

David Lang - picture from the blacksmith's
museum, Gretna Green (2015)

Simon Lang (anvil priest 1827-1872)

Simon Lang was David Lang’s son and took over from his father in 1827. When the number of marriages started decreasing, he supplemented his income from the wedding business with weaving and smuggling, but he continued as an anvil priest until his death in 1872.

Robert Elliot (anvil priest 1814-1840)

Robert Elliot was a farmer’s son who worked for a stagecoach company. In 1811, he married Paisley’s granddaughter, Ann Graham, in the parish church at Gretna Green. He became Paisley’s assistant in the marriage business and took over from him on his death in 1814. 

In his memoirs, Elliot claimed to have performed between 4,000 and 8,000 marriage ceremonies before he retired from the business in 1840. However, some of the other facts in his memoirs were clearly wrong, so it is hard to know how accurate this figure is and impossible to confirm one way or the other as his registers, and those of Paisley, were destroyed in a fire.

The end of runaway marriages

Travelling chariot in the museum at the blacksmith's shop, Gretna Green (2015)

In 1856, the Marriage (Scotland) Act was passed which changed the law in Scotland. At least one of the people getting married now had to live in Scotland for a minimum of 21 days before they could get married. There was still no need of parental consent for underage couples, but the residency requirement made runaway matches much less appealing as parents had plenty of time to catch their errant offspring. 

The number of eloping couples dwindled and Gretna Green’s once thriving marriage industry petered away.

The blacksmith’s shop gets a new lease of life

Sign on blacksmith's shop, Gretna Green (2015)

It is unlikely that we would be so familiar with the Gretna Green story if it wasn’t for Hugh Mackie. Back in the 1880s, he bought the Gretna estate, including the famous blacksmith’s shop, and founded the family business which still runs Gretna Green today, promoting it as a romantic tourist spot. 

The blacksmith’s shop remained a popular wedding venue until 1940 when an Act of Parliament made handfasting (1) ceremonies illegal, though some couples still liked to have a blessing over the anvil. 

Today, the blacksmith’s shop at Gretna Green is once again in high demand as a romantic place to get married with over 1000 weddings taking place there every year. Scottish law now allows couples to get married over the anvil in either a religious or civil ceremony and, since the residency requirement no longer applies (2), Gretna Green is the obvious romantic destination for eloping couples.

Arch outside the blacksmith's shop, Gretna Green (2015)

What can you see today?

The blacksmith’s shop is part museum, part wedding venue. The museum is not expensive, but when I walked into the room initially, I was somewhat disappointed. There are a number of signboards telling the Gretna Green story, together with a couple of room sets (including one with a spinning wheel set up some years ago by my mother-in-law), a few costumes and various documents displayed on the walls.

The museum at the blacksmith's shop, Gretna Green (2015)

A room depicting a household scene with a spinning wheel set up by
my mother-in-law in the blacksmith's shop museum, Gretna Green (2015)

At the end of the room is the way through to the anvil room. While we were parking our car, we saw one couple who had just been married, but by the time we were in the museum, another ceremony was already in progress. We were told that people were only allocated half hour slots!

Between weddings (there was another wedding group waiting to come in!), we had a few brief moments in the anvil room, enabling us to grab a few pictures. At this stage, I decided that the few pounds I had paid were probably worth it. After all, I had managed to see where the famous runaway weddings had taken place.

With my hand on the anvil
at the blacksmith's shop, Gretna Green (2015)

But there was more to come. Beyond the entrance to the anvil room, there were more marriage rooms, each with their own anvil. There are a lot of anvils in Gretna, both inside and out!

Another marriage room in the
blacksmith's shop, Gretna Green (2015)

And the museum continued. There was a collection of horse-drawn vehicles, including a travelling chariot (shown above), a barouche, a Brougham and a stagecoach. I was not expecting this and it was a lovely surprise.

Barouche, blacksmith's shop museum, Gretna Green (2015)

Brougham, blacksmith's shop museum, Gretna Green (2015)

Stagecoach, blacksmith's shop museum, Gretna Green (2015)

Outside, there are various shops and the newest attraction—the Courtship Maze. Not much to look at yet, but I expect it will prove to be a nice addition to the complex when the hedges are fully grown.

Entrance to Courtship Maze, Gretna Green (2015)

If you are looking for a romantic and historic venue for a wedding, what better place than Gretna Green!

Rear entrance into courtyard outside
the blacksmith's shop, Gretna Green (2015)

Rachel Knowles writes clean/Christian Regency era romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage me and help me to keep making my research freely available, please buy me a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

 

Notes

(1) A handfasting ceremony simply required a couple to declare their intention to marry in front of witnesses and was a legal form of marriage in Scotland until 1940.

(2) The residency requirement established by the 1856 Marriage (Scotland) Act requiring at least one party to a marriage to live in Scotland for 21 days before the wedding could take place was abolished in 1977.

Sources used include:

Glasgow University website
Gretna Green website
Parliament website

All photographs © regencyhistory.net

Travelling chariots

Travelling chariots

One of the subjects I had to research for A Perfect Match was travel. Right at the start of my book, I needed to move Mrs Westlake and her daughter from Oxfordshire to London. Obviously they would travel by horse-drawn vehicle, but what type of carriage would they have used and how would this have been accomplished?

To help me with my research, I visited the National Trust Carriage Museum at Arlington Court in Devon and the Red House Stables in the Peak District in Derbyshire. I soon decided that the wealthy Mrs Westlake would undoubtedly have travelled by private chaise or travelling chariot:

She [Mrs Westlake] was very proud of her brand new travelling chariot which had been built to the latest design and offered the most comfortable ride that money could buy.1

What was a travelling chariot?

A travelling chariot was a privately owned post-chaise used for long journeys.

Travelling chariot, National Trust Carriage Museum, Arlington Court (2014)

Why was it called a chariot rather than a coach?

It was called a chariot because it was designed to transport two people on a single, forward-facing internal seat, set behind the doors. A coach, on the other hand, was designed to transport four people on two internal seats—a forward-facing seat behind the doors like in a chariot, but with a backward-facing seat opposite, set ahead of the doors.

View inside a travelling chariot from the front window,
National Trust Carriage Museum, Arlington Court (2014)

How was it driven?

A travelling chariot was designed to be driven by postilions or post-boys. This meant that the carriage was directed by one or more postilions—men riding the horses pulling the carriage—rather than by a coachman sitting on a coach box which would obscure the travellers’ view. The postilions usually rode the horses on the left or near side. The pair of horses nearest the carriage was called the wheelers and the pair in front was called the leaders.

Step up into a travelling chariot extended
at Red House Stables (2014)

How did the post system work?

The post system enabled people to travel more quickly by refreshing their horses at different stages along the way. A traveller could hire horses and post-boys at a posting house to convey their carriage to a posting house further along the post road. This journey was known as a stage and was usually eight to ten miles long. At the end of the stage, the traveller paid off the post-boys who then stayed with the horses until they were hired by someone travelling in the opposite direction, back to the inn where they were hired.

An ostler at the second posting inn would harness a fresh team of horses to the carriage accompanied by a new set of post-boys, which would take the traveller on the second stage of their journey. 

It was possible to hire a carriage as well as horses and these public travelling chariots were called post-chaises and were often painted yellow.

Travelling chariot, Red House Stables (2014)

Travelling with your own horses

Travellers frequently covered the first stage of their journey with their own horses and postilions. These postilions would ensure that the owner’s horses were returned to their stables or wait with them for the owner’s return journey.

The very wealthy sometimes travelled with their own horses along the whole length of the journey by having horses stabled at every stage along the route.

Travelling chariot with box seat fitted for town travel, Red House Stables (2014)

Adapted for travelling

Because a travelling chariot only had one seat and a window in front, it was ideal for sightseeing en route.

It sometimes had a dormouse boot—a system of folding panels inside the coach that allowed the passengers to stretch out their legs fully into the boot of the carriage.

Travellers could stow their belongings in the chariot’s imperials—light wooden cases covered with leather which could be carried on the roof and in the front boot.

In addition, the chariot might have a sword case which could only be accessed from the inside.

Travelling chariot with imperials mounted on the roof,
National Trust Carriage Museum, Arlington Court (2014)

A versatile vehicle

A travelling chariot was not just used for travelling long distances. After arriving in town, the chariot could have a box seat added so that it could be driven around town by a coachman.

Behind the main body of the carriage, above the boot, was an outside seat called a rumble seat which could be used for transporting servants. This could be removed so that footmen could stand on the footboard behind the carriage when it was used around town.

Rumble seat on a travelling chariot, Red House Stables (2014)

Windows

The windows could be covered over with screens or shutters in order to shut out the light and allow the passengers to sleep and maintain their privacy. The different screens could be lowered and raised as required.

Inside a travelling chariot, showing the window screens,
Red House Stables (2014)

Rachel Knowles writes clean/Christian Regency era romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage me and help me to keep making my research freely available, please buy me a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

 

Note
(1) Excerpt from A Perfect Match by Rachel Knowles.

Sources used include:
Badcock, Marigold, Gibbons, David and Parker-Williams, Demelza, Arlington Court and the National Trust Carriage Museum, National Trust Guide (2009)

National Trust carriage listing

Photos © RegencyHistory.net