1759 - 2009 - 250 Years of the Star & Garter

Did you know?

The Star and Garter Hotel was conceived in the same year as Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns and in the same year as Ireland’s national drink, Guinness (1759). The year 2009 therefore marked the 250th anniversary of all three important institutions. To mark the bard’s 250th anniversary the Scottish government launched a myriad of events across Scotland, as a part of its “Homecoming Scotland” invitation to the world. The Hotel followed events as a keen supporter and sharing the birthday.

The Star and garter Hotel started life as a stately, three story, Georgian mansion, home to the rich Boyd family, merchants and shipowners, before becoming a public house in the 1840’s.

West Lothian Bowling Association was founded in the Hotel in 1882 and celebrated their 125th Anniversary here in 2007. Linlithgow Rugby Club were also founded here in 1970 as well as the Linlithgow branch of the Tartan Army in 2006.

Robert Burns visited Linlithgow on 25th August 1787 through the East High Port, outside the Boyd Family Mansion (now the Star and Garter Hotel) and was unimpressed with our beautiful Palace (a top ten visitor attraction today)

The hotel’s emblem is an eight pointed star of chipped silver. At its centre is a white medallion bearing the red cross of St George and surrounded by a dark blue Garter edged with gold bearing the motto “Honi soit qui mal y pense” (“Shame to him who thinks evil of it”). King James V of Scots was invested as a Knight, Order of the Garter in 1535 and created the Order of the Thistle in Scotland in 1540.

The Star and Garter Hotel was once one of eight inns owned by the North British Railway Company throughout Scotland for many years. It still provides sustenance and accommodation to many thirsty and hungry travellers today, being right next to Linlithgow railway station.

The Star and Garter Hotel sponsors Linlithgow Rugby Club, Linlithgow Cricket Club, West Lothian Bowling Association, Linlithgow Union Canal Society, the Linlithgow Branch of the Tartan Army amongst others and is a wholehearted supporter of Homecoming Scotland in 2009.

Also born in 1759 were William Wilberforce, William Pitt the Younger and the British Museum. William Wilberforce was born in Hull, Yorkshire on 24th August and became a British politician, philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. William Pitt the Younger was born on 28th May in Hayes, Kent and became the youngest prime minister in 1783 at the age of 24. He was known as the Younger to distinguish himself from his father, William Pitt the Elder, who was previously prime minister. The British Museum opened to the public on 15th January, its collection of artefacts based on a collection of 71,000 items belonging to the physician, naturalist and collector, Hans Sloane, who wanted his collection to be preserved intact after his death. 1759 also marked the beginning of the end of French rule in Canada with the defeat of French forces in the Battle of Quebec. George Washington married in this year and the German composer, George Handel, died.

The Random House Group has recently published a book written by Frank McLynn entitled “1759: The Year that Britain became master of the World”.
Although 1759 is not a date as well known in British history as 1215, 1588, or 1688, there is a strong case to be made that it is the most significant year since 1066. In 1759 - the fourth year of the Seven Years War - the British defeated the French in arduous campaigns in India and the West Indies, in Germany and Canada, and also achieved absolute mastery of the seas.

As Thackeray famously remarked in Barry Lyndon, it would take a theologian, rather than an historian, to unravel the true causes of the Seven Years War in Europe, but the spine of the wider conflict was the struggle for global hegemony between Britain and France. Drawing on a mass of primary materials - from texts in the Vatican archives to oral histories of the North American Indians - Frank McLynn shows how the conflict between those two countries triggered the first 'world war', raging from Europe to Africa; the Caribbean to the Pacific; the plains of the Ganges to the Great Lakes of North America. It also brought about the War of Independence, the acquisition by Britain of the Falkland Islands and, ultimately, the French Revolution.

This was the world into which
The Star and Garter Hotel and Robert Burns were born.