Marjory Fidler (1734-1820) was an enterprising tea dealer
who came to live in Penicuik at Valleyfield. Born in Edinburgh, her father
was a clerk in the Scots Exchequer and joined the Jacobite
rebellion with all the money he could lay his hands on. Just eleven years old, Marjory was taken to
the Ball at Holyrood -and was kissed on the cheek by
Bonnie Prince Charlie. She stayed a keen
Jacobite all her life. Marjory fled to France with her
father after the '45. Returning as a
grown woman she married Charles Cowan, a Fife-born
trader living in Leith, and the
couple began to sell imported tea and paper to Edinburgh
townsfolk. She was known as “a
first-rate man of business” and Moray House became their headquarters in Edinburgh’s Canongate. They
could not grow tea but they could begin to make paper, and took over Valleyfield House and papermill in Penicuik.
Coming to live at Valleyfield, of which she
was very fond, Marjory Cowan paid great attention to her dairy, poultry and
garden, selling with her own hands her spare milk to those who wanted it, and
keeping cans set in order, each labelled for its own customer, and every egg
dated and marked with the hen's name.
Marjory had a keen sense of humour. Her husband Charles liked to be a
gentleman on all occasions, but she had a contempt for
grand ways. One day in the garden at Valleyfield with a lapful
of cabbages she’d been cutting, her husband came home with a strange
gentleman. She walked past them, dropped
a curtsey and said 'your servant, Mr Charles'.
Mr Cowan kept a carriage for travelling to and fro, but Marjory preferred
her white pony. Once when engaged to
dine with Sir John Dunbar at Auchendinny, such a snow
fell that her host could hardly believe she could come, “till he saw her riding
up the avenue looking more like a snowball than anything else".
Marjory Cowan's storerooms at Valleyfield and
Moray House in those days would have been stocked with her own supplies of good
tea, sugar cones wrapped in Penicuik blue paper, barrels of American apples, a
barrel or two of salted beef from Shetland (the delicately flavoured small
cattle were stored each Michaelmas), and huge
American cheeses as big as cartwheels.
Since 1990 a group has revived Marjory Cowan’s two-hundred-year-old
tradition of making produce available at Valleyfield House. Every Saturday from 10 o'clock till noon, organic supplies are set
out by fair trade volunteers. Teas of
all kinds are there from across Asia and Africa. And the water Marjory used from St Mungo’s Well here at Valleyfield still makes a
really good cup.
Jane Kelly’s has been making hand-thrown teapots at Valleyfield House since
1980. You can see her work there on
Saturdays from 10 o'clock till noon, and at other times by
appointment.
Jane
Kelly’s Mariners’ teapots
POTTERY HOME PENICUIK
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