Thursday 16th April, 7.30, Holy Trinity Church, Church St, Haddington – Heather Holmes, Ethnologist
Irish migratory potato workers played an important role in the agricultural and social history of East Lothian for around a century, from the 1880s to the 1980s. As a migratory community, it was one that became well-established in some of the potato growing districts in the county, with farming families witnessing Irish workers harvesting their crops for a number of generations.This talk looks at why these workers employed in the county, how they were employed and their working conditions. It uses evidence from a wide range of sources, including official records, newspapers and archaeological evidence including that from Papple Farm on the Whittingehame Estate.
Dr Heather Holmes
Dr Heather Holmes is an ethnologist with an interest in the material culture of Scottish agriculture. Her research has focused on a number of subject areas including Scottish implement and machine makers, the social history of steam ploughing in Scotland, agricultural books and newspapers, agricultural labour for the potato harvest including the employment conditions of Irish migratory potato workers in Scotland.
She gained her PhD on the social and economic history of the potato harvest in the Lothians from 1870 to 1995 from the University of Edinburgh in1996. This won the Michaelis Jena-Ratcliffe Prize for the most important contribution to folklife in Britain and Ireland in 1996.
She has a farming background, having grown up at Pilmuir Farm, Balerno, Midlothian.
Select publications
Monographs
- Scottish Agricultural Implement and Machine Makers 1843-1914: A Directory (Scottish Record Society, 2020) (a survey of over 1700 Scottish agricultural implement and machine makers). 920pp.
- Tattie Howkers: Irish Potato Workers in Ayrshire, Ayrshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, Ayrshire Monographs 31. Ayr: Ayrshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 2005. 192pp. Available online here
- “As good as a holiday” Potato Harvesting in the Lothians 1870 to the Present. East Linton: Tuckwell Press in association with The European Ethnological Research Centre, 2000.
Articles in journals
- Working into steam preservation: steam ploughing engines in Scotland, ROSC: Review of Scottish Culture (2017), 74-105.
- Selling the steam revolution: the Scottish agricultural press and steam ploughing, 1855-1920, The Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society (2017).
- A neglected innovation: the double furrow plough in Scotland, its early adoption and use, 1867 to 1880, The Agricultural History Review 64:1 (2016), 54-80.
- Agricultural implement makers in Scotland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Folk Life: Journal of Ethnological Studies 51:1 (2013), 44-74.
- Constructing identities of the Irish migratory potato workers in Scotland, Folk Life: Journal of Ethnological Studies 43 (2004-05), 32-55.
- Remembering their history: memories of Irish migratory agricultural workers in Scotland, Human Affairs: A postdisciplinary Journal for Humanities & Social Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences 12:2 (2002), 139-152.
- Irish migratory potato workers in Scotland: Radharc’s The Tattie Howkers and its making, Saothar 26 (2001), 91-99. Patrick MacGill’s early work as a source for Irish migratory potato workers, Ulster Folklife 46 (2000), 24-41.
Introductions to edited collections
Introduction, The letters of Hugh Miller, farmer, West Fortune, East Lothian, 1910-1934, Edinburgh: The European Ethnological Research Centre, 2024
Websites and web resources
Scottish Agricultural Implement Makers
Facebook page for Scottish Agricultural Implement Makers
Research profile