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
Marriage in Scotland was used by couples from Ireland, because of the daily packet boat service to Donaghadee. Gretna's famous runaway marriages began in 1753 with the passing of "Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act" in England. The Act required consent to the marriage from the parents if a party to a marriage was not at least 21 years old. However, in Scotland it was possible for boys to get married at 14 years and girls at 12 years without parental consent. Some "Gretna" marriages were of (sometimes abducted) heiresses; e.g., the second marriage in 1826 of Edward Gibbon Wakefield to the young heiress Ellen