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Newton Grange Village - The Beginning
The Newbattle Collieries had expanded enormously since
the late 1700s but with the railway to Edinburgh under construction,
the Marquis of Lothian invested heavily to increase the
output even further. Bryans Pit was deepened and steam-powered
winding gear erected. The valley of the South Esk was bridged
by a substantial viaduct of wood and stone and private branch
lines made to the pits at Bryans and Linger-wood. More men
were needed to dig the coal and they had to be housed. Easthouses
and Westhouses had always been the main colliery villages
but the houses there were old, insanitary and ruinous. In
fact, dozens of houses were demolished in these two villages
in th* 1840s and 1850s and by 1860 Westhouses was derelict
and deserted.
Some new houses were built at West Bryans, some at Lingerwood
and some at Easthouses, but the majority of new houses were
to be constructed on a site opposite Newton Grange Farm.
In 1870, during a court case over a right of way dispute,
William Romans said, "I remember some collier houses
being built at Newton Grange. The second row from Newbattle
Road were opposite our old house at Newton Grange. I think
the collier houses were built about 1835 and they have been
going on increasing ever since."
At the same trial, an old Easthouses residenter, Jane Wilson
recalled the place in her early days. "There were few
folks at Newton Grange. It was just a farm steading then.
Newton Grange was not then built. Easthouses consisted of
a good many houses - some 30 or 40."
Between 1835 and 1842, seven parallel rown of sandstone
cottages with pantiled roofs were built at Newton Grange
on the north side of the colliery railway from Bryans to
Dalhousie and at right angles to it. There were 67 houses
altogether, costing £34 to £35 each. They were
thought to be considerably better than the older collier
houses which had only one room, had earth floors and were
damp and squalid. Robert Noble, the Newbattle Colliery schoolmaster,
commented in 1840, "It is common practice for colliers
to keep dung-heaps and dust near the cottage doors and several
keep pigs, ducks and poultry in their houses."
Most of the house-building materials were supplied from
enterprises belonging to the Marquis of Lothian. Stone came
from the sandstone quarry at Masterton and lime was supplied
from the limeworks about Westhouses. A brick and tile works
was established in 1840 at Newton Grange. The tiles roofed
the houses but houses were seldom brick-built until the
1890s.
The Parliamentary Commissioner of 1840, Mr Franks, conducted
a further inquiry in 1849 and commented favourably on the
houses provided by the Marquis of Lothian, the Duke of Buccleuch
and Mr. Ramsay of Whitehall. "The houses are occasionally
inspected and those families who neglect the opportunity
of living in decency and cleanliness are threatened with
dismissal from the works. Excellent gardens are attached
to the cottages and also ground for recreation."
Between 1846 and 1851, another 50 houses were built at
Newton Grange in five parallel rows to the south of the
railway. In 1848 the streets of the village were cleared
and drained. Cess pools were put in at every other door.
Water was piped into the village and there was a well at
the end of each row of houses.
David Bremner, a Scotsman journalist wrote in 1869, "The
Marquis of Lothian owns two hundred and sixty miners' houses,
among which are to be found some of the best of the kind
in Scotland, together with some of the worst. The Newbattle
Colliery, with which they are connected, is one of the oldest
in the county, and has never been leased, the successive
Marquises keeping the working of it in their own hands.
The earlier houses of the miners were miserable thatched
hovels; but all the houses built within the past thirty
or forty years are of a superior description. The present
Marquis, who takes much interest in the welfare of his work-people,
commenced a few years ago to work extensive reform in the
houses. Only a few cottages ot the very old type remain,
and the dwellings by which they are being superseded are
very comfortable and commodious, some of them containing
for or five apartments. The rooms, though small, are lofty
and well ventilated. The walls are of brick, the floors
of glazed tiles, and the roofs of slate. They are well planned,
and externally have some architectural pretensions. All
things considered, the houses are well furnished; and it
is a noteworthy tact that, though most of the people, while
living in the old houses, appeared to be careless as to
the quality or condition of their furniture, they were no
sooner removed into one of those new roomy domiciles than
they displayed quite a contrary taste. It is true that some
of the new houses appear to be tenanted by people who cannot
appreciate the change, yet the foregoing remarks hold good
in the majority of cases. The new houses are supplied with
water, have flower-gardens in front, and kitchen-gardens
and coal houses behind. The rents charged vary from £1
10s. to £3 18s. per annum; and, as elsewhere, the
rent is deducted from the fortnightly pay of the men."
(Industries of Scotland, David Bremner)
The Marquis of Lothian built a school near the village
of New-tongrange in 1849, replacing two others he had earlier
established at Gallowdeanhill and Easthouses. In fact, there
were three schools at Newton Grange: the boys school taught
by Mr Noble with 120 pupils (some at night school); a girl's
school taught by Miss Dick with 48 pupils; and an infant
school taught by Miss Gardner with 73 pupils. The school
subjects were Reading, Writing, Grammar, Arithmetic and
Bookkeeping. Sewing was available for girls. The fees charged
were Id a month for each subject. A very large number of
the collier's children at Newton Grange attended school
for at least two or three years. Mr Noble said of those
attending evening school that, "their energies being
so much exhausted with their daily labour, they all, as
soon as they enter school fall into a state of lethergy."
The Marquis of Lothian owned three quarters of the parish
of Newbattle but there was one man, John Romans, who owned
an isolated seven acres in the midst of the Marquis's property.
Jane Wilson of Easthouses recalled, "The farm of Newton
Grange belonged to the Marquis but there was one Thomson
who owned a bit of it and Johnnie Romans fell heir to Thomson's
bit and a two storey house in which they lived."
Johnnie Romans was the joiner and undertaker in Newbattle
and his son, also called John, became a successful and prosperous
engineer in England. He returned to Scotland in 1863, establishing
himself in business in Edinburgh as a gas engineer and coal
agent. John Romans was a fervent Scottish Nationalist who
later became a J.P. and was elected a County Councillor
tor Midlothian. He was determined to capitalise on his little
empire of seven acres which lay adjacent to Newton Grange
-on the north side of the village. Mr Romans planned to
build a block of houses and shops on the southern edge of
his property, fronting a road called the Loan, which was,
however, on the Marquis of Lothian's land. The Marquis decided
to close up this road and others in the parish, and John
Romans took him to court. He won his case, built his shops
and houses and established himself as the collier's champion
and constant critic of the Marquis. The colliers called
him 'Cocky Romans'. He was so proud of winning the case
against the Marquis of Lothian that he had the whole proceedings
printed and published as a book to be presented to his friends.
No doubt he sent the Marquis a copy too.
One of the shops, on the corner of the Loan and Newbattle
Road, was called the 'Abbey Granary'. It was a three storey
building with a large statue of a monk on a pedestal high
up on one wall. On another wall was a plaque with the inscription,
"Praemuim Virtutis Honor. This Building was erected
in 1874 on the site where since 1564 had stood the residence
of the Lairds of Newton Grange I.R."
The romantic notion that his ancestors were Lairds of Newton
Grange is a typical exaggeration of the flamboyant John
Romans. Five or six other people had previously owned different
parts of the seven acres he had inherited. He certainly
could trace his ancestry, through his mother, to a William
Junkison who, in 1683, exchanged a small piece of land he
owned in Newbattle village for part of a field called Longshot
Acres near Newton Grange. The family eventually bought out
the other owners and this became John Roman's small estate.
John Romans also built himself an elaborate twentyfour-roomed
mansion house in a neo-baronial style on his land. He called
it Newton Grange House.
The shops in 'Romans's Buildings' in the Loan were let
to a grocer, a draper, a shoemaker and a tailor. The Abbey
Granary was run by the Campbell family from 1874 to 1895
as a grocery shop and a short way down the road to Newbattle,
at Hope House, was Mr Stone's grocery. There was a post
office in Newton Grange from the 1850s and a county police
station from the 1840s. Numerous carts, selling butchers
meat, bread and groceries, came regularly to the village
from Dalkeith, Bon-n>'rigg and Gorebridge.
A short row of two-storey brick houses was by built the
Marquis of Lothian near Newton Grange School in 1871 and
more houses were added ten years later under most unusual
circumstances. The Scotsman of March 23, 1880, reported
as follows: "Cowdenfoot, erected by the Duke of Buccleuch
for the miners employed at Dalkeith Colliery, was removed
by arrangement with the Marquis of Lothian to a site at
the south end of Newton Grange in the parish of Newbattle.
When Dalkeith Colliery was dismantled some years ago the
miners were employed at Newbattle and have since travelled
to work by the train over the colliery's private railway.
The houses, of a superior description, are to be re-built
as nearly as possible in the same manner, being taken down
by sections." This became the village of Cowden Grange
until 1898 when Newton Grange was extended and Cowden Grange
became part of the new estate of Dean Park. Locals remember
it now as the 'Stane Block'.
In 1873, a gasworks had been built by the Marquis of Lothian
at New ton Grange and thereafter all the houses had gas
lighting, as had New-battle Church, the Abbey, the colliery
School and the colliery office. It had been intended, at
first, to provide gas lights for the underground workings
but this never happened.
Gas lighting was also supplied to the Church at Newton
Grange. The congregation had, at first, a corrugated iron
church (built 1874) and then a solid stone building erected
in 1880 on land belonging to Mr. Romans. Many miners belonged
to the Free Church as opposed to the Church of Scotland
('the Auld Kirk') at Newbattle.
There were two industrial works near Newton Grange. The
Dean Oil Works was a firm belonging to Charles Handyside
employed in the extraction of oil from coal for industrial
purposes. The oil works was situated half a mile south of
the village between the Edinburgh road and the main railway
line from which they had their own sidings.
The other concern was Robert Craig's Newbattle Paper Mill
at Lothian Bridge, which employed 300 people, many of them
women. Mr. Craig's lease expired in 1890 and he and the
Marquis of Lothian could not agree on conditions for an
extension to the lease so he transferred the business to
other paper mills he owned, at Caldercruix and Moffat near
Airdrie. He took 200 employees with him from Lothian Bridge
to Caldercruix. Newbattle Paper Mill was demolished in 1894
but Mr. Craig's fine house, Craigesk, still stands. The
closure of the paper mill was a heavy blow to the tradesmen
of Newton Grange who lost a lot of business.
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