Foulis: 300 years ago...
March - April
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Rents were collected from local farms and this picture shows a byre in Bloomiehall farm
For Sir John Foulis of Woodhall, three hundred years ago, March was the month for spring cleaning and repairs. He sent his periwig for mending (and to get new long and short hairs) and treated himself to a new pair of stockings each year. He paid for painting and whitening the house, sweeping the lums, cleaning the windows and major roof repairs for which 200 slates were bought from Leith.
The carriage (or chariot) was also regularly repaired and re-lined by the tailor at Colinton. The horses were pepped up after the winter and alum bought for their eyes! That was until 1707 when in his last illness Sir John paid to be carried in and out of Town in a sedan chair four times in one week.
March was also the month for receiving the rents; from two farms in Bonaly, one in Fairnielaw and from Woodhall Mains, Curriemuir, the mill and the little bank. That parcel of land was held by William Denham and comprised the land on which Juniper Green was to grow. Sir John took his accounts very seriously and every March bought "cut pens" (goose quills, no doubt) sticks of wax and a "quair" of paper to record his transactions.
But, March was not all sober business. Sir John loved the Leith races. For he records after one visit eating oysters at Leith, dinner at Restalrig and taking wine in Town. Clearly, the scenic route home!
In April Sir John Foulis of Woodhall's thoughts turned to his garden. He paid drink money to men mending the dykes and delving the trees and to women (three of them!) for weeding the garden. Servants were despatched to buy two mole traps (for twelve shillings,) a pound of lead to shoot the birds, two hundred sets of asparagus and, a new venture this, five beeskeps.
But, he, himself, wasn't one for getting his hands in the soil: he set off for Pratt's Green and the Potterrrow where he regularly lost small sums at bowls. He consoled himself with two shillings worth of snuff and tobacco and then spent nine shillings on "two sweet oranges" to take home for his wife! He also liked to invest in a big cheese in April. One year he spent £11 on a thirty-two pound chunk of Cheshire cheese and another year he chose fifteen pounds of Irish cheese for his table.
While Sir John was every inch the country gentleman he did not ignore the wider world. In 1699 he rushed to buy the "description of Darien and gazette" bringing the first favourable (untruthful) accounts of the doomed Scottish trading enterprise. Later, in 1703, he paid for a coach and stabling when he went to meet the Commissioner at Dunbar (probably the Duke of Queensberry) in the early stages of negotiations about the Union of Parliaments.
Selected from entries for March and April in Sir John Foulis's Account Books.
A drawing of Sir John Foulis in his sedan chair as illustrated by Alison McLeay from the book on the History of Woodhall House by Fay Cumming