The Great British Story: Dundee

'I'm Ricky Ross.

'You may know me better as the singer of Deacon Blue.'

# And I'm telling this story

# In a faraway scene

# Sipping down raki

# And reading Maynard Keynes

# And I'm thinking about home... #

I grew up in Dundee and left when I was 24.

And now I'm back, aged 54,

to try my hand at both family and local history research.

This is my home city of Dundee.

It's situated right on the east coast of Scotland.

This is the Tay Estuary, here, and, of course, the two mighty bridges,

the rail bridge and the road bridge over here,

which I remember being opened. I remember it being built

as I grew up here in the city.

I was born just down here below this hill

at the Dundee Royal Infirmary.

I grew up, really, in the Ferry over there

and I went to school there and eventually to the centre of town

to secondary school at Dundee High School.

I suppose what we all want to know is where do we come from

and what's our relationship with that place?

I'm going to explore that need starting today.

But I'm not doing it alone. I've got help.

And it's the kind of help that's available throughout Britain.

This is my Dundee team.

So, why don't you join me as I try and find out more about my family and my place?

Wouldn't it be great if you could time travel?

Well, with access to film archive, you sort of can.

'Jute, jam and journalism - that spells Dundee.'

That's the headlines, but ask any Dundonian

and you'll get that and a lot more.

Well, Dundee has a lot of good history, the Discovery,

the jute mills, the jam, the journalism,

DC Thomson's, with the newspapers.

Dundee's got a tremendous history.

Very, very rich history of song and story telling.

The working class voice, the Scots dialect of Dundee,

is a wonderful part of the tapestry of Scotland

and it should be something that's celebrated.

Dundee's had a very chequered history.

For many years, it was a very rich city.

It lost a lot of its money in the 17th century.

Um, Cromwell sent his men up to Scotland and sacked Dundee

and I believe it took a long time to recover, if it ever has, from that.

Dundee was a great place.

Dundee's lost a lot of its memories during the years I've been here.

And so have I, but I'm hoping to find them again.

The Dundee Family History Centre, based in the Wellgate,

offers a unique one-stop facility for family history research.

'I'm told that, for an hourly fee, you can even hire the registrar,

'Grant Law, to get you started.'

Now, you're here to do some research into your family tree?

Well, I am, but I don't know anything.

-I haven't got anything with me. I don't know much.

-That's OK.

-Literally all we need is your name and your date of birth.

-Really?

-Yeah.

I imagine I might need to come in with a birth certificate or...

-I'm sure you'll know your date of birth!

-I do. 22/12/57.

-And what was your full name at birth?

-Richard Alexander Ross.

What I'm going to do now is search the database for Scotland

and, if you give me a couple of hours, we should be able to trace

your family tree back on every branch pretty much to the late 1700s.

That's amazing! If I come back here in a couple of hours,

-you'll have something to show me?

-Yeah. We should be able

to take you back about five or six generations on every branch.

-I'm going Dundee scoping. I'll be back.

-OK.

I'll see you shortly in that case.

'Just about wherever you look, there are signs of time past.'

The reason it's called Castle Street is because

we erected a castle here in the 12th century.

It was fought over between the Scottish and the English for years and years,

back and forwards, so we got fed up and we decided to knock it all down.

In 1832, Dundee were celebrating the Reform Act.

There was a hill situated behind me which they blew up

and they made it into a street and they called it Reform Street.

There's a guy called Samuel Bell

who designed the church tower you can see behind me

and that's the reason the street is called Bell Street.

It's true what they say - every name tells a story.

But sometimes you have to go deeper.

'Just off Shore Terrace is the old Exchange Building, where I met

'Professor Charles McKean from the University of Dundee

'who took me underground.'

Wow!

Now, Charles, I've just come into this from what I used to call

the bus station, where I used to catch the bus home from school,

and across from that, a big building, where we are now,

which I thought of as the stationers, where I used to get my stationery when I was at school.

And you've brought me into a whole other level, so where are we now?

Well, we're actually in 1644

and we're in a thing that was built then called Packhouse Square.

-If you look down here, you can see there's the sea.

-Mm-hm.

Before iron, they had a stone drain and there it is.

We're at harbour level of 1644.

This was built as a whole complex of warehouses.

Why did it all change?

Why do we no longer have this as... as the shore level?

Well, we're 14 feet underground,

because of the tidal wave that hit Dundee in 1755.

This was the tidal wave that came from the Lisbon earthquake.

-The tide wave?

-The tidal wave.

What are we talking about in terms of impact?

Well, it looks as though it might've come into the Tay about 50 feet high.

-That's incredible!

-And what we do know is

it took out most of the harbour, just wiped it out.

We haven't managed to find too much else

but what we know is what happened next.

They were busy trying to repair the packhouses

because they were 100-years-old. But they stopped.

They raised the entire harbour level up by 14 feet,

so this became underground instead of being the shore level

and that's why it's still here.

But luckily, we've got some original storm doors

so you can see how they're designed to keep the sea out.

You can see these are storm doors with a lip coming out, like that.

And a big metal plate behind. So they've been there for some time.

As you come in, you've got to imagine that's the harbour out there.

Because over there is a window.

You don't have a window from one cellar to another

but you do have a window from a storehouse out into the harbour.

-That's amazing.

-So you can see, Ricky,

-that this is of a different age from where we've been...

-Yes.

..and I think this would be right back to the first packhouse...

-Of 1644.

-..of 1644.

-Yeah.

Now, if you want to find part of your story

and you want to come to a place like this,

how do you get yourself down here?

Well, it's owned by a charity at the moment

so the best way of getting down here is either by arrangement with them

or by going on one of the walks,

cos there's a series of walks around medieval Dundee.

-And, as a rule, you can get down on that.

-With you?

-Sometimes, yes.

'After a glimpse of medieval Dundee,

'it's time to get back to the library at the Wellgate Centre.

'Here I find members of the Lochee History Group hard at work.

'Currently, they're researching the old shops of Lochee.'

You come down here, what, once...

Well, actually, we meet every Tuesday in Lochee Library at 10 o'clock.

-And it's known as the Lochee History Group.

-Yeah.

And when we can't get enough information in the Lochee Library,

-we come down to the central library.

-What about your own stories?

-Have you gone back to find out who your grandparents...?

-Oh, yes.

-How far does it go back?

-Well, that's...

-Oh, wow! This is amazing.

-You've got pictures and everything.

-Well, this is a family tree.

-Yeah.

This is my grandfather and this is his oldest boy, George,

and, when they went to register him,

either, A, the registrar was deaf or, B, my grandfather was drunk

and he was meant to be John

and, on his birth certificate, it's actually George.

'It's clear from the ladies, there's a lot of fun

'and a great sense of satisfaction

'to be had in researching your own family tree.

'They've really whetted my appetite and I'm now very keen to see

'how Grant has got on with my tailor-made order.'

-So, Grant, have you got any good news for me?

-Yes, sure.

I've concentrated on the Ross side,

although I've taken every branch back five generations.

But the Ross side we've traced back seven generations.

-Seven generations?

-Yeah, we've taken you back to about 1770

and they were living in Forfar just outside Dundee at that time.

You can see a couple of reports, one taking the family back from yourself,

and the one coming forward from the furthest back Ross we found,

who's Peter Ross.

'So, in just two hours,

'Grant has traced my family tree all the way back to a marriage in 1794,

'uncovering a long line of Rosses that all connect to me and Dundee.'

What we can also do for you, if you are interested,

we can trace the Ross line forward from the earliest Peter Ross

and find out what family you might have living in the area as well.

As far as I know, no-one that I have...

There's no-one in Dundee that I know of.

Well, I mean, if you take the generations back seven generations,

-there's a lot of family members you don't know anything about.

-True!

It's quite a common part of our work, actually.

-We get requests from America, Canada, Australia...

-To find people.

..asking for a family living in Scotland.

Listen, if I owe any of them any money just...

THEY CHUCKLE

'Grant has pulled out all the stops and has even called up

'some of my family's documents held in his local archives.

'There is something so special about handling the originals.

'Seeing them, names and home addresses,

'along with places and trades, catch my eye.

'More links to the past - my past, and I'm off to investigate.'

So, what I've found is that my family lived for a while

at 229 Overgate, Dundee, which is kind of news to me, really.

Cos the Overgate, when I was a kid, was getting knocked down

and a brand-new shopping centre was built there.

I don't really remember the Overgate

but it seems, when I asked the folk here to locate this place,

it's some brilliant buildings. So it seems that the family house,

at 229 Overgate, was here on this block here,

but that house was probably not the one that they lived in.

It may be looked more like this one here.

It's a really good-looking street

and it was all pulled down round about the time that I was young boy.

And, you know, it's a...

Well, it's a very, very attractive looking street,

row of houses, cobbled road

and it kind of surprises me, really, that it's no longer there.

So, I really probably want to find out the history of what's gone on here.

And there's one man who can help me with that.

And it's Iain, the city archivist, so I'm going to catch him.

There are council archives throughout the length and breadth of Scotland,

all looked after by people like Iain Flett.

'These archive staff are ready and waiting

'to share their knowledge with you.'

-Iain, I presume.

-Yes. Good to see you, Ricky.

-Lovely to meet you.

Listen, I am a bit confused,

because I thought I was going to meet you on the Overgate

and my understanding of the Overgate is it stopped somewhere over there.

-And I'm on the top of Tay Street, so what's going on?

-You're on Overgate.

Overgate is the over road. Remember it's spelt G-A-I-T in Scotland,

-so it means you're gaiting...

-Yes.

and you're travelling from the 15th-century old steeple

in a straight line to the Westport and that's the Westport Bar,

which was where you'd have gone out towards the country.

So, you are on the Overgate,

but the 1960s inner road means that this has all been destroyed.

Yes, and the Overgate now just refers to somewhere over there,

but in actual fact it came all this way.

My family lived at 229 Overgate

which must be somewhere around here.

It's right in the middle of this dual carriageway.

We have a photograph of what it would have looked like.

There's a fairly run-down hotel called the Strathmore Arms Hotel.

That's quite a posh tenement built in the 1870s or 1880s.

-It's a double lam, so you'd have been behind that.

-Behind that in some way?

In the back lands of the Overgate you have, by the 1870s,

mill-working families there and artisans,

people who tease out the jutes, who are working at the hard end...

But really, it's very dense housing. A dense population.

One of the other interesting bits of information that I've discovered

is that my great-great-grandfather, whoever he was, ran an eating house.

-What's an eating house?

-An eating house where you didn't drink...

-Right.

-..because drink, as today in Scotland, is associated with alcohol.

So the Strathmore Arms Hotel,

you'd have bought alcohol as a travelling salesman or whatever,

but in the eating house, it would have been no alcohol.

-It's very important, the temperance movement in Victorian Dundee.

-Yes.

That's certainly something that I can remember in my family still

going back, so that was obviously something that started

in the last century, moved into the 20th century.

The temperance movement, then,

the fact that they were next door to this place, was that significant?

It is because you can imagine people with clapperboards outside saying,

-"Come in here for no alcohol."

-Avoid this.

There are important...there are big temperance hotels in Dundee.

-There's Lamb's Hotel.

-Now, that's interesting.

Because Lamb's Hotel's come up twice in the records of where my family...

I think my grandparents or great-grandparents

on both sides of the family were married in Lamb's Hotel,

so what's Lamb's Hotel about?

Lamb's Hotel is at the top of Reform Street.

It is a high-class establishment

where you know you're going to get clean linen.

You won't be seduced by alcohol or anything else. It's a statement.

You didn't drink in those days. The Overgate was a great place.

On a Sunday night, you went to the Pally, no drink involved.

I met the best ever folk I've met at the Overgate.

It had a marvellous feeling to it.

It had wonderful character, the Overgate.

Um, it had some wonderful old shops in it.

I remember going for sarsaparilla in the Overgate.

You run down the Nethergate and walked up the Overgate

and you met as many friends and you stayed and spoke to them

-and it was called the Monkey Parade.

-SHE LAUGHS

You just went around in a circle, the Monkey Parade.

It was a shame, because the old Overgate had a lot of history.

But the council, in their wisdom, decided they wanted to modernise it

so it was all taken down. It was sad.

It wasn't just the Overgate, I think the heart was ripped out of Dundee

in the '60s and '70s by people

who didn't have the good of the town at heart, in my opinion.

It was all about money.

It was sad for Dundee because there was lots of good things

in the Overgate and people had stayed there all their lives.

'So the Overgate was lost. 'Some might say sacrificed.

'I'm meeting up with Charles McKean again

'to visit the oldest building in Dundee.

'One that has managed to survive the bulldozers.'

So now, you're in, effectively, a medieval landscape.

A sort of Baltic landscape, six storeys tall.

You'll find this only in Edinburgh or Dundee.

-This enormous building is called Gardyne's Land.

-Yeah.

And there was a time it was going to be demolished,

like the buildings in the Overgate.

Why do you think this wasn't seen in the other Overgate?

Why do you think they knocked down the other one?

Possibly, Dundee tended to knock down what was in the way

and leave what wasn't in the way.

-This survived, because it was on the back land, really.

-OK.

And nobody ever wanted to demolish the foreland until the 1960s.

Whereas, for the last 60 years or whatever,

they just wanted to take the Overgate out,

-cos they'd had a thing about the Overgate.

-Why was that?

-What was it standing in the way of?

-It wasn't grand enough for Dundee.

-OK.

-By the late 19th century, Dundee was really booming.

-And they wanted a city that reflected a really smart modern town.

-Mmm.

Frankly, the Overgate may have been a magnificent medieval street,

but it wasn't a smart modern town.

-And it had already fallen into some disrepair?

-Well...

They had encouraged that by emptying it.

It's what later they would call planning buying.

You would buy it and you would let it just decay.

'Thankfully, Gardyne's Land still stands to tell its story.

'In the McManus Museum, there is a haunting model

'that traps and holds the spirit of what Dundee once was.'

'It was a live place. Everybody knew everybody.'

'The Overgate was the first place ever to have

'an electric lit stairway.'

'We walked down the Overgate all the time. There was some beautiful shops

'and they took them all away. It was awful.'

It was the march of progress

and the quest for modernity that changed the face of Dundee.

It was the city fathers who allowed the buildings

to slide into disrepair, allowing the slums to thrive

and infect the health and wellbeing of their people

so, when the town planners arrived to save them,

the soon-to-be homeless followed.

'I want to find out just how bad things got for the poor of Dundee.

'So I'm on my way to the University of Dundee to meet

'the head of archives, Patricia Whatley,

'to get some answers.' OK, Patricia, where are we now?

Well, this is the main store of the university archives.

-Here, you can see it's different from a library.

-What's in all these boxes?

All of these will contain information about family history as well as

other material that family historians and other historians and researchers

might want to use. Online, you can look at the census

-and various other records...

-Right.

-..for the basics of your family tree.

Then you need the archives to fill in the gaps.

It does seem a bit intimidating to the outsider, someone who maybe

hasn't been to university, someone who doesn't go and study.

Can you really honestly walk off the street

-and come into a place like this and access it?

-Absolutely.

-We want people to be engaged, use the records.

-Uh-huh.

It doesn't matter if they're university staff or students, we want people from the community.

-We want people from Dundee.

-Does that happen? Does it get infectious?

-Yes!

'Patricia leads me to meet Caroline who wants to show me some records

'that help tell the story of the health of Old Dundee.'

-We hold the archives of NHS Tayside.

-Yes.

And this is an absolutely fantastic resource

-for anyone with connections with Dundee.

-Yeah.

In fact, with Perth and Angus as well, because we have records

from the whole of the Tayside area. One thing I spotted, actually,

-when I was looking at this before...

-Get my glasses on.

This is an admission record from Dundee Royal Infirmary.

-And we noticed that this man here, William Ross...

-Aged 25.

This must be my great-great- great-grandfather's brother.

And you can see that he was admitted to Dundee Royal Infirmary

on the 26th of November. He was a boilermaker

and he lived in Blackness Road. He had an accident

and it must have been a pretty nasty accident,

because he had tetanus injection and, um, it says here that

his forefinger was amputated and he had gangrene of his hand.

And, unfortunately, he died because of that.

-So what year is it?

-It's 1864.

-1864.

-Yeah.

-And he was a boilermaker?

-Yes.

I've got out here a register of accidents.

This is a really good one, because you can see the range of ages.

-We've got people in their seventies.

-1840, 71?

-Here is a 13-year-old boy.

He fell. The injury was slight,

but his left arm was dislocated at the elbow.

So who was keeping that? Was that the factory?

-It was, in law, they had to register.

-Would that be one factory?

-Yes.

-So that's just the accidents of...?

-Of one factory.

-Wow.

-I know.

We have some very early registers and you'll see here

the number of Irish people who are, er,

indicated in these columns is amazing, because there were

a lot of people who came from Ireland to work in Dundee.

And you basically, from that, get a picture

of the health of a city at that time, do you?

You get a really clear picture of the occupations of people

and which particular occupations were living in particular areas.

And you can connect again the occupation with the disease,

like did a lot of mill workers get typhus

or were all the people living in the Overgate?

Here's somebody who was living in the Overgate who actually had typhus.

-So you can trace...

-Very common, wasn't it?

-It was.

Where particular occupations were living, what diseases they had.

So it's fascinating - you can just build up such a picture.

'Doctors began research on the diseases the slums had caused.

'Since 1893, the deaths from consumption

'have been reduced to a fifth of what they were.

'Most of all, they worked for the children.

'Dundee demanded room to breathe.

'That the diseases might not occur again.'

'Of the six Ross children born in and around the Overgate,

'only two survived beyond 15 months.

'One of them was my great-grandfather, who lived to be

'a baker then a tailor before flourishing as a salesman.

'By the 1911 census, he's living here in Park Avenue.

'Time to pick Iain's brain again.'

So here we have Park Avenue, as in Baxter Park behind us.

-You've really made it...

-Really?

-..because you're in with watchmakers

and travellers and engineers of the steam variety.

So Park Avenue now, and in the 1930s, was a success story.

So the family move here from the Overgate,

which is right in the centre of town and this is suburbia, really.

It's suburbia. All this area is built around Baxter Park

which originally was free-standing and, still today,

these addresses are much sought after to have a view of the park.

What was significantly better about the lifestyle here, Iain?

It's more airy, um, you'd have corner shops.

There used to be a church halfway up there.

And the fact that you're in one of the first people's parks

that people could go and have a walk in on a Saturday and Sunday.

You weren't in the middle of the smoke of the city.

-What about the house itself?

-The house itself would probably have either two or three bedrooms,

apart from the single end, that they might have lived in the front.

You'd have an indoor bathroom and an indoor toilet.

Well, Iain, thanks so much for showing me all this.

I've learned an incredible amount. I've learned all about my family,

where they moved, how far they've come

-and I'm off to find out some more, so thank you so much.

-Pleasure.

Amazing. Thank you very much.

See you. Bye-bye.

That's interesting. Grant from the Family History Centre

tells me I've got family members in Dundee.

I'm going to meet them tomorrow at Balgay Cemetery at 11.

I'm here at the right time. This is Balgay Cemetery.

I'm intrigued and I think I'm quite excited.

I'm about to meet some people I think are related to me

and, apparently, they're waiting for me just round here.

Interesting how well the grave's preserved, wasn't it?

-That's what I'm saying, it's obviously been added on.

-Yeah.

-Hi.

-Hello, hi. Colin Pringle's my name, how do you do?

-Nice to meet you. Alison Strachan.

-Nice to meet you.

-A surprise part of your family.

-Yes.

-Wow.

That you possibly don't know about. I don't know if you are aware.

-Not at all.

-Colin's Betty Ross's son.

-Your grandfather...

-Yeah.

-..and our grandfather were brothers.

-Yeah.

-Alexander Ross. Sandy Ross?

-Sandy Ross, yes!

-Who had the shop at the top of the Hilltown.

-Yeah.

-The newsagent's.

-And the dog, Cheeky.

-That's right!

-You remember Cheeky? Lovely!

-I forgot all about that.

And so it turns out that my grandfather William McLean Ross

is the older brother of Colin and Alison's grandfather,

Alexander Robertson Ross. And both the boys grew up together

in the Park Avenue address I visited yesterday.

We have them here, some photographs

-that'll maybe better explain.

-Really?

-Yes.

'To be able to see these faces

'with newly-discovered family members standing beside me, amazing.

'And the family likeness is quite uncanny.'

-So, I think he's got a look of my little boy.

-Right.

-And how old is your son now?

-Well, he's 11 now.

-11.

But that's him being Winston Churchill.

-You know what I mean?

-Oh, yeah. Gosh.

-Very, very similar.

-Isn't that strange?

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

So what were two complete strangers have now become Colin and Alison

who share both a connection and history with me.

That history is part of Dundee's story

and the help I've had to find out about it has led me

to meet some great characters and really reconnect with Dundee.

This has been a brilliant experience for me.

I've discovered lots about my family from my father's side

way back to great-grandfathers and grandfathers before them,

and, in the process, I discovered an awful lot about Dundee.

Now that I've started, I'm not sure I want to stop.

# Back here in Beanoland

# Some things get builded

# Old ladies write letters

# Old men dream memories

# Back here in Beanoland

# All things are real. #

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