The Waggonway Project's Annie Rayner tells the story of how a special piece of local art history has arrived back in Cockenzie & Port Seton.
In the autumn of 2022, we found an attractive painting of Cockenzie Harbour online on the ArtUK website and used it in one of the 1722 Waggonway Project’s series of winter lectures. We were particularly intrigued because it featured coal wagons on the route of the updated 1815 iron railway, which delivered coal to tipping mechanisms and chutes at Cadell’s 1833 redevelopment of the harbour by Robert Stevenson. We wondered about the artist and the date of the painting.
We made enquiries and discovered the painting was actually housed in the East Lothian Council Museum Service Store in Haddington. Dr Aaron Allen and I visited by appointment and were allowed to examine and photograph the painting, but there was no sign of a signature or date. However, there was a plaque on the frame which said it had been presented by Robert Tulloch, Esq, in 1933. This narrowed the date to the hundred years between 1833 and 1933! The Museum Service notes referred to an entry in the council minutes of 22nd September 1933 which thanked “Mr Tulloch, Burgh Surveyor for the gift of a picture of the Old Harbour which has been placed in the Council Chambers”.
I made an appointment at the Archive Room of the John Gray Centre to examine the Haddington Council minutes of 1933. There was no reference at all. The ever helpful archivist suggested there might be in the Cockenzie and Port Seton minutes which had not been mentioned in the Museum Service documentation. We found it there immediately. I then searched to see if any other reference had been made to the painting in the months before its presentation.
Nothing...
Nothing about the painting, but lots of interesting information - a closing order on the Pavilion House in early 1932; removal of the disused tramway lines; revenue from the public toilets; flag days, dances and musical performances; the problems of smoky chimneys, barking dogs and sheds erected in backyards without permission; rats in the harbour walls – “Burgh Surveyor to take the usual steps…”
There was lots of other useful information, especially on the development of the
Pond Halls, but nothing on the Cockenzie Harbour painting, which, I believe, was
eventually homed in the Council Chambers within the new Pond Halls. I contacted
art experts at the National Gallery, the National Gallery of Scotland, the Maritime
Museum at Greenwich and the Scottish Fisheries Museum at Anstruther. Art
Detectives at the ArtUK website worked on it in early 2023 – the dialogues there can be read by clicking on the thumbprint of the unknown Cockenzie painting.
Information that ships had to register after 1843 narrowed the date by ten years;
research at the National Library of Scotland on the Aitken Dott framing label
suggested framing around 1890 – 1910, but of course it could have been painted
well before that. A Facebook request for Tulloch family members who might have
remembered the painting yielded no results. We still don’t know the artist and date of the painting.
But the information that it had been presented to Cockenzie and Port Seton Burgh Council prompted the Community Council to request its return. The plan was to hang it in the Community Centre beside a work by famous Cockenzie artist John Bellany and another by well-known local artist and tapestry designer, Andrew Crummy.
Following a careful job to cover it with special anti-glare protective glass by the East Lothian Council Museums Service, it was brought to the Port Seton Centre on 19th August, and it is now available for visitors to the centre to see.
Our huge thanks go to both Cockenzie & Port Seton Community Council and ELC Museum Service for bring this important piece of local history back to where it belongs, and where it can be enjoyed by all.
Reproductions of the painting, along with merchandise depicting it, are available for purchase at the Waggonway Museum on West Harbour Road, Cockenzie. This is conveniently located a short distance from the charming harbour that inspired this captivating artwork.
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