Greenock's Ghost Closes

A walk along Cathcart Street in Greenock gives glimpses of the many closes, or narrow lanes, that once led down to the River Clyde from Greenock's main street.

You can see where these closes once stood by the signs on the walls of the present day buildings. Once the busy, noisy, thronging heart of the town, many were also dirty, overcrowded and crime-ridden places.  However they do add a colourful side to Greenock's history and were where many ordinary people lived and worked. 

Sign showing where Broad Close once stood.

Broad Close was once one of the main lanes down to the River and, for its time, was considered wide!  The local gaol was situated here thus the depiction of the jougs (iron collar used as form of punishment).  You can read more about it here.

Another "ghost close" was the notorious Longwell Close - so called because it houses one of the town's main wells.  There's still a stone on the ground marking where the well once was.  You can read more about it on this blog here.

Drummer's Close still exists in part.  It once ran south from Dalrymple Street (at the Municipal Buildings) and has a very interesting history which you can read here.

Then there's the interestingly named Mince Collop Close - which once stood just off William Street.  Learn more here.

Many of these closes were destroyed during improvements to the town in the 1880s.  It is good to know that the ghost of their presence still remains in the street signs along Cathcart Street a reminder of an important aspect of Greenock's history and heritage.

Greenock town drum

I recently visited the McLean Museum, part of the Watt Institution in Greenock.  One of my favourite objects in the Museum is the Greenock town drum.  It it beautifully illustrated with a picture of a sailing ship and men with barrels on the quayside.

This was an important item in Greenock's history.  Throughout Scotland many towns had their own drummer who would be employed by the town council to rally the inhabitants to a particular place to hear national proclamations and important news which the local council felt that everyone should hear.  The drummer could also be used to advertise travelling merchants coming to the town and other less important events.

From the town directory we know that in 1805 Greenock's Drummer was James Skinner who lived at Taylor's Close in Greenock.  Taylor's Close ran from Dalrymple Street south to Hamilton Street, very near where the Central Library is today.  The drummer was paid by the council and they also provided a uniform and paid when the town drum needed repaired.

The drummer would also alert townsfolk if there was to be a hanging or if a criminal was to receive a public punishment.  No doubt the sound of the drum would stir up great excitement in the town.  In the past there was a form of punishment called banishment, where wrong-doers were "drummed out of town" and banished from the area for their crimes.  

A man named John Smith was found guilty of stealing some candles.  His punishment was "to be taken from the court and be put into the jougs there to stand bareheaded for half an hour with some of the candles hung around his neck and a libel upon his breast with the following words upon it:- "Here I stand for stealing candles."  After his stance in the jougs he was to be drummed out of the town, and thereafter banished from the same for life."  (Dugald Campbell, Historical Sketched of the Town and Harbours of Greenock, 1879.)

Here in Greenock we have another link with the town drum - Drummer's Close.  It can still be seen today and runs south from Dalrymple Street at the side of the Municipal Buildings.  Anyone who was sentenced to banishment would be taken from the square with the drummer leading the way and from then on that person was no longer allowed to live in the local area.

Source - Watt Institution, Greenock

There's a curious incident related in Daniel Weir's The History of Greenock in which he states that when the Flesh Market and slaughter-house (situated funnily enough in Market Street) was rebuilt in 1815 the first cow to be slaughtered there (by James Bartlemore) was "paraded through the town dressed in ribbons with the town drum beating before it".

Being the Town Drummer must have been quite an interesting job!

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Greenock Jougs

Once upon a time, at the bottom of Broad Close in Shaw Street in Greenock there was a thatched house that served as the town gaol.  Daniel Weir in his "History of the Town of Greenock" (1829) describes it as "an ill-looking thatched house of one story, and consequently one apartment".  From the walls of the building hung the jougs (or jugs) - an iron collar attached to the wall by a stout iron chain.  This representation of the jougs can be seen on a wall off Cathcart Street (east end) in Greenock where the Broad Close once ran down to Shaw Street which (neither still exist).

In Scotland, the jougs were used both for detention of wrongdoers and also as a punishment.  Offenders would be secured in the collar and left to the mercies of the local population who hurled abuse, and heaven only knows what else, at the miscreants.  Jougs were often attached to churches and town tollbooths. They acted as deterrent as well as a punishment.  Another set of jougs could be found at the West Quay head in Greenock - handy for errant sailors!

In the Ayrshire town of Kilmaurs, the jougs can still be seen attached to the Tollbooth in the centre of the town.