When I was an undergraduate at the University of St Andrews, nobody went to Cupar. They went through it, on interminable bus journeys made worthwhile by the anticipation of consumer heaven in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Lacking the picturesque qualities of the old Fife ports, such as Pittenweem, or the dubious pleasures of Dundee's nightclubs, Cupar held out few attractions for twenty-somethings in search of what passes for adventure in deepest Fife. Having read Dr Martin's study, I cannot say I have discovered a hidden treasure, but Cupar is a more interesting little town than was perhaps apparent from the inside of a bus.
Cupar's heyday was the long eighteenth century. New industries, better transportation, agricultural improvements and the expansion of investment opportunities brought prosperity, both to the shire of Fife and its main market centre. The core of this book, adapted from Paula Martin's doctoral research, gives a densely detailed portrait of a town that acted as a centre for marketing goods, especially linen, which in turn facilitated the growth of financial and legal services. By the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the town boasted two banking offices, the Bank of Scotland and the British Linen Company. The instability of early banking ventures is evidenced by the speedy failure of both the Cupar and Fife Banks in the early decades of the nineteenth century. This minor calamity must have pleased a Fife-born Glasgow banker, who opined that the absence of ‘money or sense’ in his home shire would preclude such enterprises meeting with success (p. 55).
The most interesting part of the book is Martin's detailed depiction of the eighteenth-century world of consumerism and display. Despite problematic evidence gleaned from inventories, Martin is probably right to conclude that Cupar's inhabitants experienced both a ‘consumer revolution’ and ‘a revolution in domestic comfort’ (p. 125) during this period. Her description of household interiors, where designated public rooms were used to display personal possessions, is in accord with work by Roy Porter and Stana Nenadic. Exteriors also underwent dramatic change. Scotland's distinctive vernacular architecture, in all its haphazard asymmetry, was eschewed in favour of the clean, orderly lines of the classical revival. Inconvenient obstructions like the old gaol-house were demolished. New streets, parks, gardens, bowling greens and tree-lined river walks were laid out. Perhaps tellingly, although Martin makes no comment on this, at least one contemporary compared Cupar to ‘a clean and comfortable English town’ (p. 102); ‘English’ being a by-word for ‘civilized’ in the mouths of eighteenth-century Scots professionals.
Dr Martin's expertise lies in the century or so from the Union to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but the book has a broad chronological span that suggests scope for comparisons over time. The pre-Union burgh is sketched only in rough outline, however, while its relatively good records (considering the problem of survival) have not been fully utilized. Scottish early modernists have been drawn to the larger burghs, where international merchant oligarchs adapted ancient institutions to consolidate their power, seemingly without much trouble, during the seventeenth century. Here was an opportunity to assess whether that process applied in a much smaller urban centre and to discuss whether those merchant oligarchs retained power in the age of empire. Politics, presumably, goes on all the time, even in small-town Scotland, but in Martin's Cupar, it is characterized as episodic outbursts of entertainingly bad behaviour, executed by people who apparently spent the rest of their time acquiring teacups and mahogany furniture. Cupar's inhabitants, particularly the female ones, may have become more politically active during the nineteenth century, as a ‘slightly more democratic town council’ (p. 201) and the creation of political associations offered possibilities for wider participation. There are surely questions to ask about political activity in a town that Martin's data suggests was dominated by an expanding professional middle class, yet increasingly struggled with the poverty created by the decline of its manufacturing sector.
In the six pages devoted to the twentieth century, Martin shows that, despite the detrimental effects of de-industrialization and poor economic planning at regional level, Cupar remains a place where people ‘still choose to live’ (p. 218). Its reputation as a sleepy town for pensioners unable to afford a sea view in St Andrews may now be waning, as young professionals find themselves priced out of the Edinburgh housing market. If Cupar loses its historic character as a result, this will be a pity. Martin's work has usefully revealed a surprisingly fine built heritage that has, thus far, been neglected by the vandal element in modern town planning departments. Her work has also illuminated a seemingly quintessential small-town experience, where nothing very dramatic happened from one year to the next. This may be a true reflection of Cupar's historical significance, or it may be the impression left by a book that describes more than it analyses. Cupar, the book, has not shown whether Cupar, the place, is capable of telling historians very much about long-term trends in the economic, social and political development of the British small town.
