This is the final post looking at the story of John Muir’s Dunbar homes. This account focuses on the development of Dunbar’s rediscovery of John Muir and the creation of a fitting tribute within the shell of his birthplace.

So far in the process of uncovering the history of these buildings we’ve touched on stories of war and empire, of tensions between generations, and, in particular, the story of one wee Dunbar laddie whose tale now strides continents. But fifty years ago, you’d have been hard put to find anyone in Dunbar who had heard of John Muir!

Muir Rediscovered

We left our tale of John’s Birthplace in the 1920s. With the passing of years, and the passing of his last relatives and friends in Dunbar, local awareness of John’s career and significance was lost from common knowledge. It took a trickle of American visitors to begin the process of rediscovery!

The first arrivals came on the back of an initiative in Martinez, California. There, a group had formed to ensure a fitting memorial to California’s greatest son and to preserve his marital home as a monument for future generations. Harriet Kelly of Martinez is still remembered in Dunbar. She visited twice in the early 1960s and enlisted the help of Dunbar’s town clerk and other locals to uncover some of the forgotten story, linking John’s writing and photographs to the places that they belonged.

John Muir’s Birthplace c1997 (© Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk)

Bill and Maimie Kimes, Muir biographers, made more connections when they visited in 1967. They made a disciple in Frank Tindall, then the County Planning Officer, who helped them ensure that the Birthplace was marked with a fitting plaque. A few years later Frank was able to convince the Hawryluk family, the proprietors of the building, to abandon plans to convert much of it from a dry-cleaning facility into a fish restaurant. Frank and another local official, Ian Fullarton, were able then to lease the top floor of the building for a small ‘tribute’ to Muir – some re-imagined rooms and an audio-visual presentation. This opened in the early 1980s managed by East Lothian Tourist Board, who staffed it seasonally. And so it remained into the early 1990s. Then a new proposal surfaced.

John Muir was becoming much more widely known in his homeland. Connections between Dunbar and Martinez had been forged. The John Muir Trust had begun its work ‘to defend wild land, enhance habitats and encourage people of all ages and backgrounds to connect with wild places’. And East Lothian District Council floated an idea to build a ‘John Muir Centre’ within John Muir Country Park to pick up that theme.

This idea came to nothing but it stimulated local discussion and a new beginning.

John Muir’s Birthplace today

There had been enough knowledge, as we have seen, to establish the first ‘Muir Museum’ on the top floor of his renovated birthplace. The baton was picked up by Dunbar’s John Muir Association in the 1990s. To realize their ambitious plans a lot more groundwork was done. Not least, in exploring John Muir’s Dunbar and finding the hidden paths that John surely trod – to school, to church, on excursions with Grandfather Gilrye. This process, aided greatly by John’s own written accounts, began to uncover other facets of both buildings. The Association’s efforts culminated in success. A new multi-partner trust was formed to purchase the building and seek funds for its development and a ‘new’ Birthplace Museum opened in 2003. It incorporates all of the building’s structure that had survived the impulses of multiple owners since the Muirs left and it addresses Muir’s story for a contemporary audience. Over 200,000 visitors have passed through the doors since it opened.

Our Work Continues

Meanwhile, discovery has proceeded apace. One of the driving forces has been our visitors themselves. We are often asked about the buildings; we are sometimes told of family associations relating to other occupants; we are sometimes told of a snippet about the buildings we didn’t know. But the main thing is that we don’t like to be stumped!

The creation of East Lothian’s new Archive & Local History Centre above Haddington Library in the John Gray Centre was another stimulus to research. All at once there were untouched sources readily available! In fact, one of us used a secondment there to provide the bare bones of a house history:

https://www.johngraycentre.org/learning/resources/how-to-research-your/a-house-history-a-case-study-part-1/

These pages formed the framework to this series of blogs – although we’ve gone into much more detail here. They take you through the steps of unearthing any urban Scottish house history, although resources available differ from place to place. Of course, since the pages were written, the Internet has grown apace. It is relatively straightforward today to access digital copies of primary sources that were simply not available ten years ago. We are fortunate because many of the inhabitants of the two Dunbar house associated with the Muir family had unusual surnames – Fall, Delisle, Wightman – and, as it turns out, include some significant characters – Philip Delisle of Calcutta, Dr Charles Wightman of Newcastle.

However, it is harder to say much about the people that lived in the Birthplace and its neighbour in the Victorian period. Where did Mrs Fish the teacher come from? And who attended her school? For this kind of detail we’re much more reliant on other family historians and people that pop though the door.

So, if you have made a connection through our blogs, or have a story to tell us – please do! We’ll be opening again on 18 August and we’d love to see you, to chat, and to share stories.

This is the second post looking at the story of John Muir’s Dunbar homes after the Muirs left for America. The amount of detail available grows – as does the pace of change in both ownership and occupancy. This post focuses solely on John Muir’s childhood home, next door to his birthplace, now 130-134 High Street.

The Muirs Move On

 We left John Muir’s childhood home at the beginning of February 1849 after Daniel Muir sold the house to Dr John Lorn and the Muir family set off to a new start across the Atlantic.

Dr John Lorn bought the property for himself and his mother; they had been living with relatives in Dunbar for some time. Janet (Jessie) Simpson Lorn had first left Dunbar in 1813 when she married John Lorn senior, a merchant, mariner and shipowner of Grangemouth, a port much further up the Forth than Dunbar. But Jessie was was widowed in 1821 at the age of just 33. She was left with two young children – but a good estate held in trust by her husband’s will. She and the children (John born 1815, and Ann, born 1819) made their home in Dunbar during 1830 – Ann Gilrye Muir was their near contemporary.Young John trained in medicine at nearby Edinburgh, becoming a licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons in September 1836. His sister Ann moved away when she married Dr John Moir a couple of years after, but John never married. Instead, he and his mother made the Dunbar house their home. John never seems to have taken his medical practice too seriously – lawn bowls and the management of the Free Kirk were more his thing. After his mother died in 1866 he spent less time in Dunbar – the house was let to a Dr David James in 1871 and was sold the following year to William Brodie, a Dunbar businessman. Dr John retired to Edinburgh’s new town where he purchased 27 Drummond Place and died there in 1888.

A New Venture – the Lorne Hotel

William Brodie’s purchase of the house was with a specific object in mind. Dunbar was a rising holiday destination and a new kind of venture was all the rage – the Temperance Hotel. Aimed specifically at families rather than the commercial market, temperance hotels were exactly that – alcohol free premises! Astute businessman that he was, Brodie also redeveloped the ground floor of the building to create two shops. This would provide a steady income if the hotel proved unpopular. The one to the south was snapped up by an extremely reliable tenant – Dunbar Post Office under Miss Jane Barclay, moving out from John’s birthplace next door. It remained so until 1904. The other went with the hotel, being variously used as offices or tea-rooms.

The busy Dunbar Post Office, 1889, in John Muir’s Childhood Home

Brodie’s venture was open for the summer of 1872 under the management of Thomas Wilson and then from 1875 by Eliza Hannan. When William Brodie died his trustees then let the upper part of the building to a Mrs Margaret Fish and her daughters who started a private school in their part of the building. Then in 1886 the hotel reopened under John Henderson and his wife for a few years followed by Thomas Thomson. Both Henderson and Thomson ran tearooms and a confectionery outlet from the ground floor of the building.

It was during Thomas Thomson’s tenure that John Muir revisited Dunbar. He wrote to Louie, his wife:

There was no carriage from the Lorne Hotel that used to be our home, so I  took the one from the St. George, which I remember well as Cossar’s Inn that I passed every day on my way to school. But I’m going to the Lorne, if for nothing else to take a look at that dormer window I climbed in my    nightgown, to see what kind of an adventure it really was.

John Muir’s Childhood Home around 1893. Courtesy University of the Pacific. Copyright Muir-Hanna Trust

John found the dormers still there: he was keen to see the site of one of his childhood ‘scootchers’ or dares. After being put to bed one night, he and brother Davie had ventured out the window, onto the roof, each challenging the other to go further!

Shortly after Muir’s only return home, the building was in 1896 purchased from Brodie’s estate by Henry Huntly, formerly of Dunbar’s Jersey Arms Hotel. Huntly ran the hotel himself, although perhaps not successfully: one of his first moves was to apply for a liquor license, which was refused.

John Smith, a Dunbar baker, bought the building in 1902. At first, the Smiths leased out the hotel (interspersed with periods of self-management). Similarly the former post office was taken by Henry Davidson, a shoemaker. In the early days of their tenure only the shop on the northern side was continuously in their own hands, an outlet for their bakery produce and tearooms. As time passed more and more of the Smiths’ business was transferred to their new premises. As before, sometimes they operated the Lorne Hotel ‘in-house’; sometimes it was leased, or under management. By the late 1920s, the next generation built a bakehouse behind the building, in a part of the Muirs’ old garden. When Davidson’s lease expired the southernmost shop became Smith’s bakery, which became a Dunbar institution through into the 21^st century!

 Next Time

 We’ll bring the story to a close in the present day – and explain a bit more about how we dug up the history of John Muir’s houses in Dunbar.