Robert Mylne, Thomas Telford and the architecture of improvement: the planned villages of the British Fisheries Society, 1786–1817

Abstract

This article examines the architecture and design of the pioneering planned fishing villages established by the British Fisheries Society across the Highlands of Scotland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Society established a utilitarian planning model which fundamentally influenced the subsequent planned village boom that remains so evident in the historic landscape of the Scottish Highlands today. The British Fisheries Society also made a significant contribution to urban history with Thomas Telford's innovative plan for its last development of Pulteneytown. Pulteneytown remains the most complete example of Telford's work as a town planner.

Review of periodical literature published in 2007

“…Daly focuses on English coastal communities involved in the flow of contraband during the wars and charts the decline of smuggling in the wake of the Royal Navy blockade of 1817 and the establishment of the National Coast Guard in 1822. Maudlin, meanwhile, charts the pioneering activities of the British Fisheries Society in planning fishing villages in northern Scotland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, while Barke compares the surprisingly divergent economies and labour forces of two ostensibly similar north‐east coastal communities in the mid‐nineteenth century, and Revill focuses on the efforts of the engineer William Jessop between 1781 and 1791 to make the Trent River navigable. Finally, McEwen and Werritty gauge the social, economic, and environmental impact of the ‘Muckle Spate’, a catastrophic flood of 1829 in north‐east Scotland which led to eight deaths and the destitution of more than 280 families.…”