| Description
| Wooden casket made from Cadzow oak, with celtic band decoration top and bottom of casket and around the lid. Cameronian crest and the Burgh of Hamilton arms on top of the lid. It was presented to the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), on the Conferring of the Freedom of The Burgh 10th May, 1975. The interior is lined with Douglas tartan, the tartan of the regiment. Brigadier D. B. Riddell-Webster, Colonel of the Regiment, was on hand to receive the casket and a contingent of ex-Cameronians turned out to the ceremony to represent their former regiment. Incidentally, the Town Clerk at the presentation and signatory of the scroll, Frederick C. Marks, was an officer in 6/7 (Territorial) battalion of the Scottish Rifles from 1959-67. See The Covenanter, Winter1975 edition p.6-7 for an article on the ceremony and photographs.
Presentation caskets such as this were issued to noteworthy people in acknowledgement of their services to the area or the country as a whole. Usually caskets were a decorative box in which to hold the scroll which conferred freedom of the burgh to the person or "burgess". The origins of this ceremony is centuries old. In medieval and early modern Scotland, a person had to be made a burgess by the local burgh in order to own property or operate a business. They would be presented with a scroll which acted as a legal document acknowledging this fact. The South Lanarkshire collection has local examples which date back to the 1700s, when these scrolls served a legal purpose. By the late 1800s, at the height of Victorian civic pride, being made a burgess had become a symbolic event recognising the achievements of a particular person or group. Caskets and scrolls were particularly prevalent in Scottish burghs, although freedom of the burgh was not confined to Scotland. Some English towns or cities presented caskets as well, with similar laws having existed in various forms across medieval western Europe - whether they were English boroughs, French bourgs or German burgs. Freedom of a town or city still exists in many European cities as a result of this tradition and the ceremony has spread across the world. |
