Gretna Green is a village in the south of Scotland famous for runaway weddings. It is
in Dumfries and Galloway, near the mouth of the River Esk and was historically the first
village in Scotland, following the old coaching route from London to Edinburgh. Gretna Green
railway station serves both Gretna Green and Gretna. The Quintinshill rail crash, with
226 deaths the worst rail crash in British history, occurred near Gretna Green in 1915.
Gretna Green sits alongside the main town of Gretna. Both are accessed from the A74(M)
motorway and are situated near to the border of Scotland with England.
Marriage
Gretna Green is one of the world's most popular wedding destinations, hosting over 5,000 weddings
each year in the Gretna/Gretna Green area, and one of every six Scottish weddings.
It has usually been assumed that Gretna's famous "runaway marriages" began in 1754 when
Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act came into force in England. Under the Act, if a parent of
a minor objected, they could prevent the marriage going ahead. The Act tightened up the requirements
for marrying in England and Wales but did not apply in Scotland, where it was possible
for boys to marry at 14 and girls at 12 with or without parental consent. It was, however,
only in the 1770s, with the construction of a toll road passing through the thitherto
obscure village of Graitney, that Gretna Green became the first easily reachable village
over the Scottish border. The Old Blacksmith's Shop, built around 1712, and Gretna Hall Blacksmith's
Shop became, in popular folklore at least, the focal tourist points for the marriage
trade. The Old Blacksmith's opened to the public as a visitor attraction as early as
1887. The local blacksmith and his anvil have become
the lasting symbols of Gretna Green weddings. Scottish law allowed for "irregular marriages",
meaning that if a declaration was made before two witnesses, almost anybody had the authority
to conduct the marriage ceremony. The blacksmiths in Gretna became known as "anvil priests",
culminating with Richard Rennison, who performed 5,147 ceremonies.
One of the keenest chroniclers of the Victorian era, Robert Smith Surtees, described Gretna
Green at length in his 1848, New Monthly Magazine serial, The Richest Commoner in England:
"Few of our readers—none we should think of our fair ones—but at some period or other
of their lives, have figured to themselves the features of Gretna Green. Few we should
think but have pictured to themselves the chaise stained 'with the variations of each
soil,' the galloping bustle of the hurrying postboys, urging their foaming steeds for
the last stage that bears them from Carlisle to the border. It is a place whose very name
is typical of brightening prospects. The poet sings of the greenest spot on memory's waste,
and surely Gretna Green was the particular spot he had under consideration. Gretna Green!
The mind pictures a pretty straggling, half Scotch, half English village, with clean white
rails, upon a spacious green, and happy rustics in muffin caps, and high cheek bones, looking
out for happier couples to congratulate. Then the legend of the blacksmith who forged the
links of love, added interest to the place, and invested the whole with fairy feature.
How much better, brighter, more promising, in short, a Gretna Green marriage sounds than
a Coldstream or Lamberton toll-bar one! and yet they are equally efficacious. Gretna Green
indeed, is as superior in reality as it is in name. It looks as if it were the capital
of the God of Love, while the others exhibit the bustling, trading, money-making pursuits
of matter-of-fact life. Though we dare say Gretna Green is as unlike what most people
fancy, still we question that any have gone away disappointed. It is a pretty south country-looking
village, much such as used to exist in the old days of posting and coaching. A hall house
converted into an hotel, and the dependents located in the neighbouring cottages. Gretna
Hall stands a little apart from the village on the rise of what an Englishman would call
a gentle eminence, and a Scotchman a dead flat, and is approached by an avenue of stately
trees, while others are plentifully dotted about, one on the east side, bearing a board
with the name of the house, the host and high-priest, 'Mr. Linton.' There is an air of quiet retirement
about it that eminently qualifies it for its holy and hospitable purpose."
Since 1929, both parties in Scotland have had to be at least 16 years old, but they
still may marry without parental consent. In England and Wales, the age for marriage
is now 16 with parental consent and 18 without. Gretna's two blacksmiths' shops and countless
inns and smallholding became the backdrops for tens of thousands of weddings. Today there
are several wedding venues in and around Gretna Green, from former churches to purpose-built
chapels. The services at all the venues are always performed over an iconic blacksmith's
anvil. Gretna Green endures as one of the world's most popular wedding venues, and thousands
of couples from around the world come to be married 'over the anvil' in Gretna Green.
In common law, a "Gretna Green marriage" came to mean, in general, a marriage transacted
in a jurisdiction that was not the residence of the parties being married, to avoid restrictions
or procedures imposed by the parties' home jurisdiction. A notable "Gretna" marriage
was the second marriage in 1826 of Edward Gibbon Wakefield to the young heiress Ellen
Turner, called the Shrigley abduction. Other towns in which quick, often surreptitious
marriages could be obtained came to be known as "Gretna Greens". In the United States,
these have included Elkton, Maryland, Reno and, later, Las Vegas.
In 1856 Scottish law was changed to require 21 days' residence for marriage, and a further
law change was made in 1940. The residential requirement was lifted in 1977. Other Scottish
border villages used for such marriages were Coldstream Bridge, Lamberton, Mordington and
Paxton Toll. In popular culture
An anvil was installed in Gretna, Manitoba, Canada, to symbolise the blacksmith and the
source of the town's name. In an episode of the BBC series You Rang,
M'Lord?, two of the characters elope to Gretna Green. This then prompts two other characters
to elope in a similar manner. However, they are stopped before they reach their destination.
In Love and Friendship by Jane Austen, the main characters convince an impressionable
girl to elope with an acquaintance to Gretna Green.
In Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, When Lydia Bennet elopes with George Wickham she
leaves behind a note stating that their intended destination is Gretna Green, though later
they are found in London In The Richest Commoner in England by Robert
Smith Surtees, Tom Rocket proposes a "Gretna Green match" to Maria "Moley" Dooey, to "escape
the persecution of the lawyers, and the parsons, and the toast-givers, and the devil knows
what." Surtees tells his readers that "Moley was dumb-founded at the proposition, or perhaps
she thought it pretty to be so, for it was not the first, nor the second, nor the third
time, that she had had a similar offer. Habit familiarises ladies' ears to the sound just
as Lord Byron said men's ears became used to the cock of the pistol."
In Nemesis by Agatha Christie, Miss Marple references Gretna Green in passing, noting:
"There was no need for them to fly off to Gretna Green, they were of sufficiently mature
age to marry." In the novel A Poisoned Season by Tasha Alexander,
the main character Lady Emily Ashton discusses with her suitor whether he loves her enough
to consider eloping to Gretna Green. At the end of the novel, secondary characters Lord
Pembroke and Isabelle Eliot elope there. Some scenes of Les grandes vacances with Louis
de Funès were set there. In the BBC drama Waterloo Road, Francesca
Montoya and Jonah Kirby flee to Gretna Green to be married.
In the BBC soap opera EastEnders, Sam Mitchell and Ricky Butcher flee to Gretna Green, as
they are both teenagers, in 1991. Two couples elope to Gretna Green in Lisa
Kleypas's Wallflower book series. In Lynsay Sands' romance novel The Heiress
the main characters' goal is to marry at Gretna Green.
In the second series of Downton Abbey, Lady Sybil Crawley and the chauffeur Tom Branson
set off for Gretna Green with plans to elope, before being caught by her sisters.
In the soap opera Coronation Street Sophie Webster and Sian Powers nearly run off to
Gretna Green to elope. In 1998 Nick Tilsley married Leanne Battersby at Gretna Green.
Season 3 Episode 7 of the BBC series May to December, Zoe surprised Alec with a trip to
Gretna Green to be married. In the Japanese manga series Embalming -The
Another Tale of Frankenstein-, Azalea and Phillip are on their way to Gretna Green to
elope. In the book The Meaning of Liff by Douglas
Adams, Gretna Green is defined as "A shade of green which makes you wish you'd painted
whatever it was a different colour." Gretna Green, a lost 1915 silent film about
lovers headed to Gretna Green starring Marguerite Clark, based on the then popular novel by
Grace Livingston Furniss. In "Sylvester" or "The Wicked Uncle" by Georgette
Heyer, in which Phoebe Marlow is thought to have eloped with Tom Orde to Gretna Green.
In the 1949 Hitchcock movie Under Capricorn, Sam Flusky and Lady Henrietta were a runaway
couple married at Gretna Green. See also
Ower Bogie Las Vegas weddings
References
Further reading Survey Landranger Map, UK: Ordnance, ISBN 0-319-22685-9
— 1:50,000 scale. External links
Gretna travel guide from Wikivoyage Gables Wedding Hotel and Venue, Gretna, SCO,
UK . Anvil Hall Wedding Venue, Gretna, SCO, UK .
The Wedding Bureau, Gretna, SCO, UK . Wedding History, Gretna Green, SCO, UK .
Directory, Gretna Green, SCO, UK: Weddings . The Registrar General, Scotland, UK .