When a 19th-Century Scottish Landowner Blocked a Public Footpath, Locals Rebelled. Now, Archaeologists Have Unearthed Parts of His Controversial Wall

The rebellion against “Harvie’s Dyke,” a pair of stone walls erected in the 1820s, was a triumph for the workers and middle classes of Glasgow, who used riots, boycotts and lawsuits to win back access to the River Clyde

Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent

October 19, 2026 3:17 p.m.

Archaeologists in Scotland have unearthed the remains of a controversial structure near Glasgow that was the nexus of a violent 1823 clash over land rights and private property.

In the early 19th century, a wealthy Scottish distiller named Thomas Harvie bought an estate in the countryside just east of Glasgow. Taking issue with a public pathway along the River Clyde that cut through his property, Harvie built two 12-foot-tall, heavily fortified walls on either side of his estate, blocking the public from using the path. The walls became known as Harvie’s Dyke, a Scottish term for a stone wall. 

“The people of Glasgow [were] quite up in arms against this,” Edward Stewart, an archaeologist with Archaeology Scotland, tells the Scotsman in a video. In 1823, a mob of discontented locals from the East End of Glasgow marched to Harvie’s Dyke and destroyed the walls with gunpowder and explosives that coalminers brought from the mines.

A militia dispersed the mob and arrested participants. Harvie rebuilt his walls, topping them with iron spikes, broken glass and small cannons. But the Glaswegians fought back again, this time through a lawsuit that reached as far as the House of Lords. In 1828, the Lords ruled in favor of the people of Glasgow, and Harvie was forced to install gates in the dike to establish the public right of way through his property.

This year, archaeologists and volunteers took part in “Digging the Dyke”—a collaborative excavation organized by the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust, Glasgow City Council, Glasgow Life and Archaeology Scotland—at a location along the River Clyde where historical records suggest Harvie’s eastern wall once stood.

The excavation unearthed what researchers believe are foundations of the demolished wall, as well as a rare 1791 token engraved with the phrase “Let Glasgow Flourish,” per a statement. Opponents of the dike in the 1820s adopted that slogan as a rallying cry, suggesting that the coin may have been purposefully dropped near the site. Researchers also discovered pieces of mortar, slate and plasterwork that may have composed one of the dike’s defensive structures.

As Glaswegians rallied against Harvie’s Dyke, Harvie became a “pariah figure,” per the statement. The public boycotted his whiskey, and Harvie frittered away his fortune on legal bills. “Harvie never really recovers from this,” Stewart tells the Scotsman. “All because of his hubris and his unwillingness to allow people to take access through his land.”

Meanwhile, the people of Glasgow rejoiced. Their 1828 victory against Harvie inspired poems, songs and commemorative medals.

“The Harvie’s Dyke protesters had developed a green consciousness long before the Green Party was established,” Christopher Whatley, an emeritus historian at the University of Dundee and author of Harvie's Dyke: The People, Their Liberty and the Clyde, tells the Herald’s Jody Harrison.

Later, the campaign against Harvie’s Dyke was evoked throughout the 19th century to prevent landowners from blocking long-used walkways, Whatley said in a 2025 lecture.

“Let the people remember the famous battles of Harvie’s Dyke and take courage,” wrote the Glasgow Weekly Herald in 1884. “That the banks of the Clyde should be free … is in cause a matter of life and death to our humbler citizens, who are in growing danger of suffocation from want of pure air in the city and free spaces in the country.”