page_title: Montrose, Angus
section_title: Modern history
hierarchical_section_title: Montrose, Angus / History / Modern history
caption_attribution_description: English: Footpath to St. Andrews, Montrose Walking up from Baltic Street.
context_page_description: Montrose is a town and former royal burgh in Angus, Scotland. Situated 38 miles north of Dundee and 42 miles south of Aberdeen, Montrose lies between the mouths of the North and South Esk rivers. It is the northernmost coastal town in Angus and developed as a natural harbour that traded in skins, hides and cured salmon in medieval times.
  With a population of approximately 12,000, the town functions as a port, but the major employer is GlaxoSmithKline, which was saved from closure in 2006. The skyline of Montrose is dominated by the 220-foot steeple of Old and St Andrew's Church, designed by James Gillespie Graham and built between 1832 and 1834.
  Montrose is a town with a wealth of architecture, and is a centre for international trade. It is an important commercial port for the thriving oil and gas industry. It is known for its wide thoroughfare and high street which
  leads to picturesque closes containing secluded gardens. The town has a view of a 2 mi square tidal lagoon, Montrose Basin, which is considered a nature reserve of international importance. It is the largest inland salt water basin in the UK, and an important habitat for the mute swan.
context_section_description: From its early inception as a port Montrose had traded in skins, hides and cured salmon but in the 17th century began to export wheat and barley in regular trading transactions with the Hanseatic League. The town imported flax and timber from the Baltic; salt, fruit and wine from France and Portugal. The wealth this brought to the town is demonstrated in the surviving houses built by landowning and merchant families as well as local street names of "America Street", "California Street", "Baltic Street" and "India Street" evidencing its trading heritage.
  The site of the castle, now known as Castlestead was the birthplace of the famous James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose. Graham signed the National Covenant against Charles I's reorganisation of the Kirk in Scotland, fighting in the ensuing Bishops' Wars, but later switched to the King's side only to be captured and executed in Edinburgh in the year 1650.
  The final chapter of the ill-fated 1715 Jacobite rebellion was also played out in Montrose. Towards the end of the uprising (which had lasted nearly six months, from September 1715 to February 1716) James Francis Edward Stuart (the Old Pretender; formerly James, Prince of Wales) arrived in Montrose, where he spent his last night in Scotland, on 4 February 1716. He sailed from Montrose to exile in France. The town was held for his son, Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie; the Young Pretender), 30 years later and in February 1746 the largest naval battle of the war was fought in Montrose Harbour.
  During the 18th century the town was a major smuggling centre. It profited from the slave trade but only for a brief time. The wealth accrued by trade was substantial. Wealthy merchants in the 18th and 19th centuries dominated the town and built their houses gable to gable. Hence Montrosians have inherited the sobriquet, "gable-enders". A statistical account taken between 1791 and 1799 estimates the population in the 1750s as 4248; in 1776 as 4465; in 1784 as 4866 and in 1790 as 5194. Contemporaries expected that many would emigrate at the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War but those that did leave were few.
  Samuel Johnson made a tour of the town on his visit to Scotland in the 1770s. He said of it:
  "...we travelled on to Montrose, which we surveyed in the morning and found it well-built, airy, and clean. The town house is a handsome fabrick with a portico. We then went to view the English chapel, and found it a small church, clean to a degree unknown in any other part of Scotland, with commodious galleries, and what was yet less expected, with an organ.". 
   Alexander Christie (c. 1721 – 1794) was provost in the town during the 1760s and 1780s and oversaw the establishment of Scotland's first Lunatic Asylum in Montrose in 1781 which eventually became known as Sunnyside Royal Hospital. The Asylum, initially called Montrose Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary and Dispensary was founded by Susan Carnegie of Charleton to treat both paupers and private patients and was originally situated on Montrose Links. It was granted a Royal Charter in 1810. In 1858 it moved to Sunnyside farm at the nearby village of Hillside. Its facilities were expanded several in the next few decades and it underwent various changes in name, finally becoming Sunnyside Royal Hospital in 1962. Sunnyside remained in use for the treatment of people with mental illnesses until its final closure in 2011 when many of its patients and functions moved to the Susan Carnegie Centre at Stracathro Hospital.
  In 1785 a subscription library for learned men was formed.
  Before World War I the Royal Flying Corps established a base at Montrose (later RAF Montrose). On 26 February 1913, it became the first operational military aerodrome to be established in the United Kingdom.
  During World War II Montrose became a hub for a constant stream of international pilots from all over the Commonwealth, Poland, Czechoslovakia, America, Russia, France and other allied nations. As well as a training base Montrose was also an operational airfield for Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine 
caption: The footpath to the high street is known as the Kirky Steps.
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