Gretna Green
| Gretna Green | |||
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| Coordinates | 55 ° 0 ′ N , 3 ° 4 ′ W | ||
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| Post town | GRETNA | ||
| ZIP code section | DG16 | ||
| prefix | 01461 | ||
| Part of the country | Scotland | ||
| Council area | Dumfries and Galloway | ||
| British Parliament | Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale | ||
| Scottish Parliament | Dumfriesshire | ||
Gretna Green is a village in southern Scotland on the border with England . It is 35 km east-southeast of Dumfries in Dumfries and Galloway close to the mouth of the Esk. On the old stagecoach route from London to Edinburgh, Gretna Green was the first village in Scotland. Today it is very close to the A 74 (M) motorway.
Weddings
Gretna Green is one of the most famous and popular wedding venues in the world; Every year around 5000 marriages are concluded there. The place was visited for more than 200 years by underage couples from England, but soon also from parts of the rest of Europe, because they could get married here without the permission of their legal guardians.
For a long time there were no fixed rules for entering into marriage in Great Britain. In 1753 the British Parliament passed the Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act, which, among other things, required parental consent for marriages between minors. This law only applied to England, not to Scotland. There, boys at 14 and girls at 12 were still allowed to marry without parental consent.
Word of this rule got around very quickly: many underage couples fled England and the first village across the Scottish border was Gretna Green. Scottish law at the time only required a declaration of marriage in the presence of two witnesses, so that almost everyone was entitled to attend a marriage ceremony. In Gretna Green, the blacksmith had established himself as the official for the marriage ceremony. The weddings took place in his forge, and the anvil took on a special meaning in the weddings there. The weddings were performed in front of the anvil and at the end of the ceremony confirmed with a few hammer blows on the anvil.
Minors have been married here for more than 200 years. Dramatic scenes kept coming up as fathers chased their child along the way trying to prevent the last minute weddings.
From 1856, Scottish law required couples to have resided in Scotland for at least 21 days prior to marriage. This regulation was repealed in 1977. In 1929 the minimum age for marriage was raised to 16 years, although parental consent is still not required.
Gretna Green today
The forge, built around 1712, became the center of this marriage trade. It was converted into a public tourist attraction as early as 1887. Today hundreds of tourists from home and abroad come to Gretna Green every day in the smithy, which has long been converted into a museum. There is an exhibition and three wedding rooms, all of which have an anvil. In addition, there are extensive souvenir shops and a self-service restaurant. One of the few other houses in Gretna Green also includes a hotel.
Others
- In her novel Pride and Prejudice , Jane Austen mentions Gretna Green as a possible target of the fugitive underage Lydia Bennet with officer Wickham.
- In the 1937 German film Sieben Face Slaps , Willy Fritsch and Lilian Harvey marry as a film couple in Gretna Green.
- The German production They married in Gretna Green (1965) documents the marriage plans of a young Berlin couple.
- The final scene of the feature film Baldwin, the holiday fright from 1967 with Louis de Funes also takes place in Gretna Green, but the location was the area around the Puy de Dôme near Clermont-Ferrand .
- In 1975 Joana published the song And with you I wanted to go to Gretna Green as a swan song for a failed relationship .
- The former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer married his first wife in 1967 in Gretna Green.
- In the 2012 film "Rosamunde Pilcher - Unbridled Into Happiness", Gretna Green is the wedding location of a fictitious marriage.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Golden couples in Gretna ceremony. In: BBC News . April 5, 2006, accessed April 21, 2014 .
- ↑ Filming locations of Balduin, der Ferienschreck on imdb.com, accessed on August 31, 2014.