Cockburn Association

The Cockburn Association was founded in 1875 to promote and encourage the care and conservation of Edinburgh’s unique architectural and landscape heritage.

The Association is one of the oldest conservation, planning and architectural advocacy organisations in the world. It takes its name from Lord Cockburn (1779-1854), a renown Scottish lawyer, judge and literary figure, who can claim to be one of Scotland’s first conservationists. His 1849 publication A Letter to the Lord Provost on the Best Ways of Spoiling the Beauty of Edinburgh provided the inspiration to establish a popular organisation and it remains as relevant today as when it was first penned.

The Cockburn Association’s objectives are to promote and encourage:

the maintenance, improvement and promotion of the amenity of the City of Edinburgh and its neighbourhood;
the protection, preservation and conservation of the City’s landscape and historic and architectural heritage.

From the outset, the Association’s ambitions have been forward-looking. At its inaugural meeting in 1875, it expressed its initial objectives as creating publicly accessible green spaces for recreation; reducing air and water pollution; regulating and improving building standards and preserving the best of the city’s existing architecture treasures.

Today, its concerns range from conservation of the city’s architectural heritage, to the liberalization of planning and other regulatory systems guiding good development, and to the commodification of civic spaces and overtourism.

Archive Access and Management

The Cockburn Association’s Archive Collections provide a rich resource on heritage, amenity and development issues and history. They include:

The official Archive records of the Association including records of its governing Council and Committees, correspondence, Annual Reports, newsletters and other publications.

A valuable collection of photographs, plans, submissions and other documents relating to specific policy and development casework, ranging from architectural proposals to major public policy initiatives and issues in which the Association has been involved over the years.

Substantial Boxes including collection of pamphlets, reports, publications and other materials relating to planning in Edinburgh.

Cataloguing and partial digitisation of the archives collections is currently in progress. This forms part of the 150th anniversary activities over the course of 2025-26, with the intention of publishing on-line core material such as Annual Reports, Newsletters and Minutes of meetings.

Materials can be accessed by researchers by appointment at the Cockburn’s premises in Edinburgh. Digital or print copies may also be provided for relevant materials, subject to a fee and subject to any copyright or other restrictions.

The Cockburn Association

Trunk’s Close, 55 High Street

Edinburgh EH1 1SR

T: (44)131-557-8686

www.cockburnassociation.org.uk

archives@cockburnassociation.org.uk

: Minute Book containing business meetings, such as this one from 13 July 1896 attended by Chair, Scott Moncrieff and Professor Patrick Geddes

: Publication of University’s development plans from 1962

: Member’s Ticket to first Annual General Meeting 28 June 1876

: Royal High School – in 2017, the Association initiated a campaign against proposals to convert this iconic Greek revival historic building into a hotel. Public inquiry material is held in digital files

For more information, view Cockburn Association repository page

MS 458 The Alexander Low collection

Most of us have some old family photos, letters or documents tucked away in a drawer or in the attic, but how many of us have over 20 boxes relating to eight families, dating back to 1723? Alexander JS Low did and decided to give them to us, University of Dundee Archive Services. The bonus is that Alex was a photojournalist and also donated the slides and prints of assignments that saw him travel across the globe in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Alex’s international career is echoed in his family records. Originating in Kirriemuir and Dundee, descendants married into families from France and Ireland as well as the UK, with members trading in places like Mexico and Singapore. Their letters, journals, sketches, photographs, financial and legal papers not only reflect their cosmopolitan backgrounds and lifestyles, but also detail their personal achievements and difficulties.

The letters are particularly revealing; young Kenneth Low (b 1902) regularly wrote home with news of life at his school, often asking for help with his sums, and for news of his brother Gerald, reported missing at the start of WW1. Their father’s correspondence includes letters of concern and then condolence from relatives and friends when Gerald’s death was confirmed.

Another ancestor, Dr AJ Halley (1823-1875), was bedevilled by financial problems. He writes to his elderly father, the Sardinian consul in Madeira, worrying that ’you do not take exercise enough, you should go about more’, but also about his ‘money difficulties’, a theme which continued throughout his life. The West family correspondence reveal the mental health issues of son George (1875-1951) throughout his army career in England, Africa and Russia, and his eventual death in Holloway Sanatorium. Alex himself wrote to his parents describing his photo assignments in India and across Argentina – which he was keen to leave for the USA.

The families’ artworks are also of special interest. The oldest in the collection is a small, annotated water colour of a battle at Naples, given in 1810 to James Chabot (1779-1850), a merchant in Malta, with a description of the battle.

But the more usual kind of artwork can be found in Eliza Hally’s (fl 1835-1840) scrapbook album which contains handwritten verses and illustrations of flora and fauna mostly done while she was living in Madeira with her husband.

Chabot’s daughter married into the Low family, who were particularly talented and produced watercolours and sketches of scenes around their homes and of their travels.

: Watercolour of a battle at Naples

Gerald Low’s (1895-1914) talent stretched from scenic watercolour sketches to cartoons, recording scenes around his home and while on holiday. He was evidently drawing from an early age and his cartoon suggests Gerald had a sense of humour.

Despite their liking of the pencil and brush, the Low family also embraced photography early, and the collection holds several daguerreotypes and ambrotypes featuring family members. Luckily, most of the photographs in the collection are titled, so we can often trace a life from birth, through school and across adulthood, gaining insights into relationships.

AG Low (1853-1936) was a particularly enthusiastic photographer, and passed his passion to his sons, especially to AH Low (1892-1974), who introduced the basic techniques to his own son, Alex. Unsurprisingly perhaps, Alex grew up to be such a successful photojournalist, the first picture editor and staff photographer of the new colour supplement, the Weekend Telegraph.

Discover mo re about the Alexander Low collection

: Dr AJ Halley (1823-1875)

: Illustration by Eliza Hally (fl 1835-1840)

: Cartoon by Gerald Low (1895-1914)

: Mother and starving children, Bihar (Alex Low, 1967)

Corporation of Glasgow Collection

The core Glasgow archive collections (ref: GB 243 / A-H) are those which document the rise of various public bodies in the city until many united under the banner of Glasgow Corporation (GC), the largest local authority in Scotland and, for a period, the largest city administration under one council in the UK.

From the earliest document of 1180 until GC ceased to exist in 1975, these collections cover nine centuries’ worth of charters, deeds, minutes, registers, plans, photographs, maps and publications among other record types.

In these archives, Glasgow is represented as a burgh, a town council and a city corporation. And, as the city grew, so did its responsibilities. It acquired powers to intervene across a wide range of activities, providing new services to the people of Glasgow. This municipal socialism reflected Glasgow’s position as the second city of the British Empire. Glasgow’s growing sprawl and responsibilities also increased the complexity of the city’s municipal machinery which produced these historic records now in the City Archives collections.

Collection highlights

After the formation of GC in 1895, these public functions were eventually assigned to individual departments (ref: GB 243 D). Overall, there were almost forty, dealing with public health, poor relief, education, roads, transport, gas, electricity, water, sewerage, parks, museums and libraries among others. One of the most unusual was the short-lived Telephone Department, the only Corporation department to face private competition for its services.

Among these records are seminal reports, the names of which will be familiar to students of Glasgow’s history. Life in One Room (1888) by James Burn Russell, Medical Officer of Health which highlighted how the poorest in the city lived and the struggles these conditions caused. The First Planning Report of the Glasgow Corporation, (Mar 1945) by Robert Bruce, Master of Works and City Engineer which envisioned an entirely new city centre and to which the city centre portion of the M8 owes its existence.

Ways in which they’ve been used for research

As the Glasgow Corporation departmental records (ref: GB 243 D) contain some of our most popular sources for family history, they are well used for that purpose. Particularly popular sources include our school admission registers and log books (ref: GB 243 D-ED7), our cemetery and crematoria records (ref: GB 243 D-CEM) and our poor relief applications (ref: GB 243 D-HEW10-17).

Recent academic research has focused on the Glasgow Burgh records (ref: GB 243 B) and the Council Proceedings (ref: GB 243 C). Topics include married women’s property rights in the seventeenth-century and sports during 1500 – 1700. The records were also used in last year’s Glasgow Slavery Audit, a report produced for Glasgow City Council to determine the historic connections and modern legacies derived from the Atlantic slave trade.

Good to know?

Glasgow’s local authority archives are of local, national and international importance. We are delighted that the catalogues of these historic records (which often include item-level descriptions) are now publicly available online for the first time.