Gretna Green the marriage ceremony. The blacksmiths in Gretna became known as "anvil priests", culminating with Richard Rennison, who performed 5,147 ceremonies. The local blacksmith and his anvil became lasting symbols of Gretna Green weddings. Two in particular, The Old Blacksmith's Shop, built around 1712, and Gretna Hall Blacksmith's Shop (1710) became, in popular folklore at least, the focal tourist points for the marriage trade. The Old Blacksmith's Shop opened to the public as a visitor attraction as early as 1887. Victorian chronicler Robert Smith Surtees described Gretna Green at length in his 1848 "New Monthly Magazine" serial, "The Richest Commoner in
Alexander Colquhoun-Stirling-Murray-Dunlop legal points introduced important practical amendments of the laws, the most interesting, perhaps, being that which put a stop to Gretna Green marriages. Some of his measures bore on social improvement, one of them being an act to facilitate the erection of dwelling-houses for the working classes, and another an act to render reformatories and industrial schools more available for vagrant and destitute children, well known as Dunlop's Act. The most chivalrous of his parliamentary services was an attack (19 March 1861) on the government of Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, which he had usually supported, in connection with