Toponymy and early history Prehistoric elements are found in the vicinity of Montrose, including the
Stone of Morphie located to the north. One ancient name for Montrose was Celurca. The place-name is formed from the
Scottish Gaelic Moine (meaning moor or peat moss) and Ros (meaning peninsula or promontory), perhaps ultimately of
Pictish origin. The first documentary evidence of the existence of Montrose is the burgh charter issued by
David I who founded the town around 1140 as
Sallorch or
Sallork. By 1178 the name had taken the form
Munross before becoming
Montrose.
Folk etymology attributes the origin of the town's name as "Mount of Roses". This is reflected by the motto on the town's seal:
Mare ditat, rosa decorat. (
English:
The sea enriches, the rose adorns)
Medieval history Montrose was visited and plundered in numerous instances by
Danes. In the year 980 it was sacked and razed to the ground. It was once believed that a castle existed in Montrose in the 10th century and was destroyed by
Kenneth III. However the historicity of this account has been disputed. In the two proceeding centuries there are no precise dates in its history. During the 1140s it was an important trading town. The trading revenues received from Montrose as well as
Forfar and
Dundee were acquired by
Malcolm IV and contributed to
Restenneth Priory. A
convent dedicated to the
Virgin Mary is said to have been founded in 1230 by
Alan Durward but the precise location is unknown. during the Wars of Independence,
Edward I of England visited the town with 30,000 of his men and stayed at Munros castle for three nights. Some accounts state that it was there that he humiliated Scottish King
John de Balliol by publicly stripping him of his royal insignia and status; other accounts claim that this occurred in
Brechin. It was destroyed shortly after in a storm. One of the most vocal objectors to the scheme was the elderly Meggie Cowie, who was said to have made blasphemous comments to those who were involved. She was tried, found guilty of
witchcraft, and was
burnt at the stake on 14 January 1679. 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: , 1888 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. Between the wars, Montrose was a focus for key figures of the
Scottish Renaissance. In 1920, a young Christopher Murray Grieve (later
Hugh MacDiarmid) was employed as a reporter on the
Montrose Review. By 1922 he had been elected as an
Independent Labour Party councillor. The poet and novelist
Violet Jacob was brought up at the nearby
House of Dun and spent time in Angus during the 'twenties. The sculptor
William Lamb was born in Montrose and returned to the town in 1924. Another native of Montrose, the writer Tom MacDonald (
Fionn MacColla) returned to Montrose in 1929, as did his friend the painter
Edward Baird.
Willa and
Edwin Muir lived at her mother's house in Montrose at various times during the 1920s. The poet
Helen Cruickshank attended
Montrose Academy, though she had moved to
Edinburgh by the 1920s. She was a key figure in maintaining the network of contacts between writers and artists of Scotland's inter-war cultural renaissance. 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
RAF Montrose was also an operational airfield for
Hawker Hurricane and
Supermarine Spitfire squadrons, which flew sorties over
Norway and were a part of the air defences for
Edinburgh. Of course, this also made the town a target for German aircraft and it was bombed on more than one occasion. Despite its coastal location presenting a danger however, large numbers of children and young mothers from
Dundee were evacuated there during the period of the
Phoney War. Initially numbers totalled around 2,000 but in a second wave around 1,200 more were sent. As was the case in many other receiving areas, the local population was concerned by the condition of the urban poor and
impetigo and
vermin were found on some of those evacuated. By June 1940 Montrose could no longer provide shelter.
Bamse Bamse (meaning 'teddybear' in Norwegian), a
St Bernard dog famed for his exploits and popular in local imagination, is buried in the town. Bamse the Norwegian Sea Dog arrived in Montrose on the
Royal Norwegian Navy minesweeper Thorodd during World War II with Captain Erling Hafto, his owner, who registered him as a crew member. He saved the life of Lieutenant Commander Olav Nilsen at Dundee Docks and generally protected his fellow sailors. In stories Bamse is said to have got up on his hind legs and, at over tall, clamped his great paws on assailants to end any fight. On his death in July 1944 Montrose schools were closed and 800 children lined the route to his graveside funeral. The Bamse Project raised £50,000 to erect a larger than life-size
bronze statue of Bamse at Montrose Harbour. Half the donations came from Norway. The statue was unveiled by
the Duke of York in October 2007. ==Governance==