About LINEN
-a
display at
part of the Penicuik Community
Development Trust
Open House
programme
Penicuik CD
Trust Open House –a small part of the display on linen
Most of the displays on the technical aspects of linenmaking and its history in the
by Roger Hipkin cannot yet be
posted here. Below is some of the
supplementary material :-
Two hundred years ago,
the British Linen Company
had its headquarters at
Moray House in the
Canongate. Here, as in some medieval Cloth Hall, linens
had been laid out for
inspection, but the main business
of the Company was in
providing finance for investment
and trade -
investment in flax growing, investment in
linen manufacture, and, in due course,
investment in
other businesses like
tea-dealing and papermaking.
The Company provided the finance, and
merchants like
Charles and Marjorie
Cowan conducted the business.
In Penicuik’s early days,
the town’s papermills conducted
their business banking in
Company banked for Cowan mills at
The Linen Company and the Cowans
had a long association.
The Cowans ran their
business from Moray House and took the
building over as their
business headquarters and town house
when the Linen
Company moved elsewhere. The Cowan firm
and the British Linen
Company stood by one another in the
financial panic that swept the
country in 1826 when many banks
and businesses went
under, including Walter Scott’s publishers.
About LINEN
-a
display at
A few of nearly 100 Penicuik Open House weekly displays
PENICUIK RAILWAY and
its designer THOMAS
BOUCH
Penicuik’s Concorde Designer JAMES
ARNOT HAMILTON
Penicuik’s
International Photographer ALBERT WATSON
other Penicuik GREATS
Penicuik Community Development Trust’s year-round CINEMA programme