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
Coldstream St Pauls Cathedral in London following the journey made by George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle when he marched from Coldstream to London enabling the Restoration of King Charles II. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Coldstream was a popular centre for runaway marriages, much like Gretna Green, as it lay on a major road (now the A697). A monument to Charles Marjoribanks (d. 1833), MP for Berwickshire, whose ancestral home was in nearby Lees, stands at the east end of the town, near the Coldstream Bridge. Alec Douglas-Home (d. 1995), who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom