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| 1827 Commercial Bank of Scotland "tartan manufacture" |  |
The letter reads as follows.
To: Messrs. William Wilson & Son, Manufacturers, Bannockburn. From: John Sinclair Cunningham, Commercial Bank Office, Dated:
Gentlemen, Colin Grant’s acceptance to you due 30th Ult. for £29 amounting with charges to £29 6/- has been sent here for payment. I am, Gentlemen, Your Most Ob. Ser’t J S Cunningham. There is nothing particularly interesting in respect of the letter content with this being a routine style of letter and in this case sent from the Commercial Bank of Scotland in Stirling to one of the Bank’s customers, - namely Messrs. William Wilson & Son. The advice is that a payment of £29 6/- is due.
The parties to the letter, as usual, add greater interest. Firstly we have the flamboyant signature of John Sinclair Cunningham who is signing on behalf of the Commercial Bank of
John Sinclair Cunningham - I suspect towards the end of his career.
Turning now to Messrs. William Wilson & Son I am aware that this Tartan has been a mode of Scottish dress for centuries and the term is probably derived from the French “tiretaine” which was a wool / linen mixture. The first positive proof of the existence of what we now call tartan, was in a German woodcut of about 1631, thought to show Albeit tartan has been popular for many years its popularity both rose and fell as a consequence of a number of events throughout history. It is suggested that one of the main increases in popularity came about as a consequence of the Jacobite army being organised into Clan regiments and each clan using its tartan as a clan “uniform” for the purposes of identification. It would appear logical that if the majority of Scots wore tartan, and the manual weaving of the cloth was in the hands of local weavers, these weavers would have their favourite patterns and colours and these would probably be used for the majority of garments produced. If, as I believe was the case, dyes were produced by access to local materials this would in some way explain the varied use of colour. It seems ironic that I am to mention the disastrous Battle of Culloden on the same pages as the much celebrated Bannockburn although it is important to remember that Bannockburn (1314) was primarily a battle between the Scots and the English whilst Culloden (1745) was a battle between the French supported Jacobite Scots and the Hanoverian Army which comprised a great number of lowland Scots, in addition to Government troops, and was led by the Duke of Cumberland on behalf of his Father, King George 11. The relevance of the defeat at Culloden is that this led to the Act of Proscription of the In 1727, William Wilson was born at Craigforth in the parish of St Ninians, Stirlingshire. He became a weaver and started his family business south of the Returning to the popularity of tartan, the next increase in popularity came about as a consequence of the visit of King George IV to The manufacturers soon realised that the demand – which was to be further increased as a consequence of Queen
The 4 storey Royal George mills were opened in 1822, when William Wilson installed 14 new looms to meet the demands for tartan cloth caused by the visit of George IV, the first Hanoverian monarch audacious enough to visit Scotland.
The 1851 Scottish Census suggests that the business was then being run by John Wilson, aged about 49, who lived at 67 Hill Park, Bannockburn where he was a Woollen Manufacturer employing 400 hands. In 1869 William Wilson & Sons employed about 550 workers spinning, dyeing and weaving wool into carpets, tweeds and tartans. The last
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