Notes from the North 12


James Hamilton,. 1st Earl of Abercorn
Look up the definition of undertaker in any modern English dictionary and you will find something like, ‘a person whose job it is to prepare dead bodies that are going to be buried or cremated and to organise funerals’. But there is another, less well-known definition of that word which I came across while researching the origins of the name Abercorn. Portobello and its neighbouring areas have Abercorn Road/Gardens/ Grove/Drive/Avenue and Park, a great many shops, clinics, social clubs and even a large cemetery with Abercorn in their titles.  

Scotland is said to have the most concentrated pattern of land-ownership in Europe, possibly in the developed world). Roughly half the land is still owned by fewer than 500 people, among whom a number of dukes and earls.


Some Scottish dukes have fallen on hard times but a lot, the Dukes of Buccleuch, Argyll and Sutherland for example, are doing quite nicely. I already knew this much so I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that there would be a duke or an earl attached to the name Abercorn. The current Duke of Abercorn, James Hamilton, is number 5 in line. 

 

It was the beginning of the 17th century when the dynastic Hamilton family was gaining power and first-born Hamilton males were granted the title of Earl of Abercorn. Over the following century they acquired a number of other titles until in 1790 the Earl became a Marquess. In 1868 the Abercorns were given a definitive upgrade when Queen Victoria made the marquess a duke.

 

The 8th Earl of Abercorn bought the vast Duddingston Estate from the Duke of Argyll in 1745. This explains why there is such a proliferation of Abercorns on the streets and buildings in the north-east of the city. The 8thEarl of Abercorn also commissioned the design and building of Duddingston House which is now a category A listed building. 


Duddingston House

But the Duke’s main seat, his ancestral home, is Baronscourt Castle and Baronscourt Castle is not here in Edinburgh. It is in Northern Ireland and the other meaning of undertaker is the reason why.


Baronscourt Castle

1606 is an important date in the Hamilton-Abercorn family annals. Three years had passed since James VI of Scotland and 1st of England, had moved his court to London. 

James !V of Scotland, 1st of England

The long war of the Irish chiefs against English rule had come to an end in 1603 and many of the northern lords had fled to Europe, hoping to re-arm and fight again. James was determined capitalise on the defeat of the lords, to civilise and anglicise what he termed ‘the rude and barbarous’ populations of Ulster while at the same time cutting the ties between Gaelic Ulster and the Gaelic Highlands of Scotland. The Plantation of Ulster – ‘plantation’ meaning colonisation - was the method to be used. Wealthy Protestant landowners from southern Scotland and northern England were despatched as planters – settlers - to take over the lands of the Catholic, Irish-speaking chiefs. One of those who agreed to go was James Hamilton, a diplomat at James’s court in London and 1st Earl of Abercorn. James Hamilton was what is called ‘an undertaker’ in the Ulster Plantation.

 

Hamilton and his ilk took on the job of colonising the lands of Ulster by bringing from their own estates in Scotland and northern England English-speaking adults loyal to the king and of the Protestant faith; specifically twenty-four men had to be installed for every thousand acres of Ulster land granted to the rich landowners. These labouring incomers would make possible the other part of James’s bold plan which was to completely clear the land of the native Irish. Any undertaker who got 2,000 acres, was also expected to build a castle on his land. Undertaker James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Abercorn took the right number of men across to get his 2,000 acres, cleared out the locals and built Baronscourt Castle, which remains in the family to this day. 

 

If you have wondered why in the past two weeks the Irish Taoiseach has come out strongly against the Israeli bombardment of Gaza and other voices in Ireland have called for a ceasefire, part at least of the answer must lie in the Ulster Plantation and the wars of resistance that followed, right up to the Troubles of the 20th century and the fragile Good Friday Agreement. The Plantation of Ulster was the beginning of a gradual transformation of Ulster from the most Gaelic-speaking, most ferociously independent province of Ireland ruled over by a confederation of Catholic chieftains to an English-speaking, largely Protestant colony of England. Towns and roads were built but the brutal displacement of the native populations brought a lasting and bloody enmity between conquerors and conquered, between Protestant and Catholic. 

 

On the corner of Abercorn Road there is a very 21st century undertakers. 



There’s no Abercorn in the lettering over the shop front, just ‘Go As You Please’ and a cluster of brightly painted coffins standing upright in the window.











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