Life on Prieston Road

The previous post traced William and Margaret's marriage and the births of their six children. In this post, we look at where they lived as a family and how William supported them.

William Roy I - lease in perpetuity

In 1848, we can find William I as the proprietor of a house in Prieston Road in Bankfoot via the Perthshire Cess Roll for Auchtergaven in 1848.1 Cess, stent and valuation rolls were variously used to record property details, valuations, rental values and tax. The 1848 roll shows the proprietor and the tenant of each property, describes the property and gives an annual rental value. In the entry for a house on Prieston Road, William Roy is shown as being the proprietor, as well as the tenant. The value is £3 with deductions of six shillings, leading to a net value of £2 14/-. 

In later years' Rolls, the same group of houses are described as 'Feus of Bankfoot'. Feu is a word from Scots law which describes a perpetual lease at a fixed rent. Traditionally in Scotland the feu was the 'most common form of land tenure.' The property was held in perpetuity in return for an annual fee (feu) paid to the landowner - often a noble person or large landowner, who then had a similar obligation up the line, ultimately to the monarch.2

A letter writer to The Courier in 2015 described how James Wylie, who was given the Airleywright Estate in Auchtergaven in 1806 by his mother Grizel Wylie, was an 'agricultural improver' who set about consolidating the many small landholdings on his estate into a large farm structure. Obviously to do so displaced the people who had traditionally lived on and farmed those small pieces of land - so he created feus in the villages of Bankfoot and Waterloo and offered them 'to the dispossessed'.3 

As 'proprietor' of one of those houses, William would have entered into a Feu Charter agreement and paid the annual fee to James's son Thomas Wylie. 

Prieston Road on the Bankfoot map

The map of Bankfoot below (from 1867) shows the outlines of the houses along Prieston Road (inside the blue oval), Airleywright House (orange circle) and the proximity of the parish school and the church (arrows).4 Each of the houses has its own piece of land behind. 

The main road between Perth and Dunkeld is the road the runs northwest from the orange arrow (Dunkeld Road) and that is also where the Bankfoot Inn, Diamond Inn and Athole Tavern and police station were found. This is also the road that Queen Victoria passed along in 1842 as she made her first journey to Scotland. 

Newspaper and contemporary accounts of her trip describe how the road between Perth and Dunkeld was lined with thousands of people, arches had been erected at various points, and houses were bedecked with flowers. We can imagine that  the newly married William and Margaret could have been alongside that road to see Victoria...it wasn't everyday that the monarch passed by!

Later on, the Airleywright linen works would be located near the intersection of Prieston and Dunkeld Roads. 

(If you click on the map, it will open onto a larger screen where it is easier to see the detail.)

Image reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

When I visited Bankfoot in 2019, without any street numbering as a reference, I walked along Prieston Road, trying 'to get a feel' for where William and Margaret may have lived. The village is small, even today, and it is just a short walk between the main locations.  

Prieston Road, Bankfoot, August 2019. Photo by Alison Dennison

By using the Streetview feature of Google Maps, you can do the same:

The Roys in the 1851 Census

As we found out in the previous post, by 1851 William and Margaret had five children who they would have raised in their house in Prieston Road. However, when I checked the 1851 Census for Bankfoot, I could only find Margaret and four children in the household and the address is '6 Laganally Street' (which runs perpendicular to Prieston Road, and is now called Newhall Street):

Head of household is Margaret Roy (aged 37), married, born in Little Dunkeld. Also living the same household are:

• James Roy, son, aged 8, scholar, born in Auchtergaven
• John Roy, son, aged 7, scholar, born in Auchtergaven
• William Roy, son, aged 5, born in Auchtergaven
• George Roy, son, aged 1, born in Auchtergaven 5

Susan, who was born in 1848 is not in the household, leading me to believe that she died as an infant, as I have not been able to find any trace of her elsewhere in the 1851 census, nor in later censuses. A fifth son, Donald is not yet born (b. 1853). The older two children attended school (as indicated by 'scholar') which could have been the parish school you can see on the map above - although there were three schools in Bankfoot at that time. 

But where is William Roy I? (Note that Margaret's census entry says 'married', not 'widowed', so I was pretty sure he was still alive.)

For several years I was unable to find William in 1851 despite lots of creative searching...then, suddenly I spotted a 38 year old William Roy, born in Auchtergaven in the census of Balquidder, which was still in Perthshire, but about 50 miles from Bankfoot.

William was listed in that census at 'Craigruie' in Balquidder, a member of a party of 34 made up of construction workers (and a cook) employed by John Borrie, contractor of drainage from Dunkeld. Among the list of names of workers were several who were born in Auchtergaven. In the enumerators' notes at the beginning of that census volume, he notes that on the night of the census (March 30, 1851) there were a number of temporary residents working on two projects, one of which was the construction of drainage at Craigruie.6 

Was William no longer working as a miller? Or was this an 'off-season' job for some extra income? Milling the grain was a slow process in the 19th century, with the grain harvest milled year-round, so you would expect a miller to be in full-time employment. The fact that William is working on a construction crew as a labourer in March 1851, suggests to me that he was no longer employed as a miller. But maybe it was just a quick job and the census just happened to catch him there? Following this up is one of my future research tasks!

The short life of Donald Roy (1853-1859)

In August 1853, the youngest of William and Margaret's children was born, a son called Donald. However his life was to be a short one, as he died at their Prieston Road home on 27 September 1859, aged six years, from 'scarlatina maligna' - an extreme form of scarlet fever. He had the disease for 3 days and was buried in the churchyard at Bankfoot.7

William Roy I was the informant on Donald's death certificate, and he gives his occupation as 'field labourer', which would indicate that he was no longer working as a miller. Indeed, at the time of the 1861 census, he reports his occupation as agricultural labourer (Ag Lab).8

The 1861 Census

On the night of 7 April 1861, only William Roy I, Margaret and William Roy II were at the house on Prieston Road. James and John were working elsewhere, and I have not been able to locate George so far (although I know he was still alive). William, aged 49, is the reported head of the household which also included:

• Margaret Roy, aged 47
• William Roy, aged 14, Farm Servant

The house is reported to have three rooms with one or more windows.8 

The 1871 Census

Ten years later, in 1871, William, aged 58,  is reportedly back to being a 'meal miller'. They're still in Prieston Road, but the house is now reported to only have two rooms with one or more windows. Included in the household are:

• Margaret Roy, aged 56, meal miller's wife
• George Roy, aged 21, unmarried, joiner
• Margaret Roy, aged 1, granddaughter, born in Auchtergaven.9

Young Margaret Roy is a bit of a mystery, as there are only two Margaret Roys born in Perthshire between 1869-1871 and neither of them seem likely matches. This is one to keep working on! 

So where are the other siblings - James, John and William Roy II at the time of the 1871 census? 

• James has not been found in the 1871 census but is possibly living at Logierait, as he was a ploughman there in the 1861 Census and then married there in 1882.
• John is married, with four children and living at 43 Rosebank St in Dundee where he is working as a railway company carter.11 (see the Dundee branch details on The Family Tree page)
• William Roy II is a lodger at 11 Market Street in the Carlton district of Glasgow and is working as a carter.12 

Just over a year later, Glasgow will play a much more significant role in William Roy I and Margaret's lives...but that's a story for the next post. 

Confused about where these characters fit into the family tree? Or where this action is occurring?  You can always check The Family Tree and Map pages for visual clues.

Footnotes

1. Perth and Kinross Council Archive; Cess Rolls Perthshire, 1848-1848; Roll: SCPERa018_029Cs18481848, 1848.
2. Designing Buildings, 'Feu charter' Designing Buildings - The Construction Wiki website, 1 Dec 2020, https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Feu_charter, accessed 10 August 2022
3. Michael Lawrence, 'Letters to the Editor: The facts about Airleywright', The Courier (Scotland), 9 Jun 2015, p26
4. Ordnance Survey Map, Six-ince 1st edition, 1843-1882, Perthshire, Sheet LXXIII, Surveyed: 1864, Published: 1867, National Library of Scotland, https://maps.nls.uk/ 
5. Census record for Margaret Roy, aged 37, Bankfoot, Auchtergaven, Scotland, 1851 Scotland Census, National Records of Scotland, scotlandspeople.gov.uk.
6. Census record for William Roy, aged 38, Balquhidder, Perthshire, Scotland, 1851 Scotland Census, National Records of Scotland, scotlandspeople.gov.uk.
7. Baptism of Donald Roy, born 5 Aug 1853, Old Parish Registers Births, 330/20 p.270
8. Death registration of Donald Roy, died 27 Sep 1853, Statutory registers - Deaths, National Records of Scotland, 330/ 36, scotlandspeople.gov.uk
9. Census record for William Roy, aged 49, Bankfoot, Auchtergaven, Scotland, 1861 Scotland Census, National Records of Scotland, scotlandspeople.gov.uk
10. Census record for William Roy, aged 58, Bankfoot, Auchtergaven, Scotland, 1871 Scotland Census, National Records of Scotland, scotlandspeople.gov.uk
11. Census record for John Roy, aged 27, Dundee, Scotland, 1871 Census, National Records of Scotland, scotlandspeople.gov.uk
12. Census record for William Roy, aged 25, Calton, Glasgow, Scotland, 1871 Census, National Records of Scotland, scotlandspeople.gov.uk