ANG Angus

Bibliography

The remains of the massive inner enclosure wall of the White Caterthun in Angus, some 7 km north-north-west of Brechin and 7 km west of Stracathro. This Iron Age hill fort commands wide views over Strathmore and when new would have been a spectacular landmark. 700m to the north are the less obvious heather-covered remains of an older, multivallate enclosure, the Brown Caterthun; excavated burnt grains from it have been dated to around 4500 years ago. In the saddle between the two enclosures runs a tarmac road on part of an old hill track linking Brechin, upper Glen Esk and Ballater on the River Dee. The name Caterthun has thus probably been best explained by C P Will, in Place-Names of North East Angus (1963), as from Gaelic cadha eadar dhà dhùn, ‘track between two enclosures’. Will notes that the stress in Caterthun is on the last syllable.

Baillies, Battles and Banks – Street Name Origins in Dundee
Iain Flett gives an outline of his talk and discussion at the autumn 2008 conference in Dundee

This alliterative title provided a starting point for an examination of the usual plethora of origins of street-naming in any historical burgh in Scotland. Tribute was due to the enormous amount of work carried out by Dundee Central Library in creating websites on the history of street names www.dundeecity.gov.uk/streetwise/, on Victorian street photography www.dundeecity.gov.uk/photodb/main.htm and on historical maps www.dundeecity.gov.uk/centlib/maps/main.htm. At the conference these websites were used in live links to demonstrate their richness. 

Baillies
Baillies were leading town councillors chosen to be magistrates and the title still continues as an honorary title in Dundee bestowed on long-serving elected members. One such place-name is that of Yeaman Shore. The Yeaman family was influential in providing merchant burgesses and there is a worn 17th century sandstone monument in the Howff burial ground to the Zeaman family, in the older Scots spelling with initial yogh. Although Yeaman Shore (together with Shore Terrace at City Square) is now nowhere near the river Tay, Crawford's 18th-century plan (available online through the Central Library) plots the original river line at Yeaman Shore westward to the south of what is now DCA (Dundee Contemporary Arts), where the stone sea wall boundary is still visible.

Another illustrious line of Baillies could be found in the Gardynes of Gardyne, and a success story initiated by the Tayside Building Preservation Trust is the renovation of the mediaeval merchant's house at Gardyne's Land in High Street, now converted into commercial accommodation curiously designated a 'backpackers' hostel' but with luxurious fittings and amenities. Another civic group, the Dundee Civic Trust, has been influential in reawakening Dundonians' awareness of the history behind their Lands, Wynds, Closes and Pends. The Trust has put up a series of information plaques at both entrances of the ones in the city centre and has been encouraging citizens and businesses to realise their worth and reclaim them as throughways of heritage and interest and spaces of quiet and relaxation. 

Battles
Although later overshadowed by Nelson's victory at Trafalgar, Admiral Duncan's victory over the Dutch off Kamperduin in 1797 was greeted at the time by national thanksgiving, as to have lost that battle would have had serious implications for Britain. Thus there are no 'Trafalgars' but an understandable proliferation of 'Camperdowns' throughout Dundee, Broughty Ferry and Lochee, notably in Camperdown Works, at one time the largest jute mill in Western Europe. Another naval battle is commemorated in Broughty Ferry at St Vincent Street, which leads to the City Archives being mistakenly asked occasionally why this Forfarshire sea-bathing retreat should have chosen such an unusual saint as a patron. 

Banks
Bank Street was projected in 1824 (with Reform Street) to link Willison Street and Reform Street. Partially laid out in 1832, it cut through a ridge of whinstone to connect with Barrack Street by 1871. It was named after the Bank of Scotland erected at the junction with Reform Street. Closed as a bank and re-opened in the 1980s as a pub called, appropriately, The Old Bank Bar, the name was then sold on when the bar was surrendered and redeveloped by successive chains. That means that the present 'Bank Bar' in Union Street is indeed a bar with pictures of former banks on its walls but with no other connection to a bank. On the other side of the spiritual dimension, name transference in Dundee was most obvious in the Church of Scotland congregation of Meadowside-St Paul's in Nethergate. This name for this survivor of a series of church amalgamations reflected that one of the former congregations had indeed been Meadowside. However, that church had certainly not been in the Nethergate, but beside the meadow which provided such soft foundations for the McManus Museum that The Heritage Lottery Fund had recently been called upon to save the building from subsiding into the ground. 

The Burgh of Dundee
Iain followed with a general overview of the original burgh of Dundee, developed from Danish trading links in the eleventh century with recognition as the burgh of Earl David of Huntingdon in the late twelfth century and full royal rights confirmed by Robert I in 1327. The 18th-century Castle Street commemorated the 13th-century stronghold on the rock outcrop on which the Episcopalian cathedral of St Paul now stood. The limit of the royal burgh, or royalty, corresponded roughly to the line of the Inner Ring Road and could be seen on the online 16th- century sketch by Timothy Pont on the NLS maps website. It was interesting to hear in Dr Balode's discussion of street names in Riga that the terms gait and gatve, used in the two cities to denote a roadway, were connected. In Dundee the earlier spellings Nethergait, Overgait, Seagait, Cowgait and Wellgait had been gradually overtaken by '-gate' endings which had led to popular confusion about what the names referred to. The continuing usage of the 'Cowgait Port' for the last surviving burgh port did serve to remind citizens of its original spelling. The Cowgait Port is also known colloquially as 'Wishart's Arch' because of its traditional association with the protestant martyr George Wishart, who is supposed to have preached from its parapet in 1544 to the plague-ridden lying in St Roque's yards beyond. (St Roque was the patron saint of the diseased, and was the name given to a Carnegie public library on the site before it was sold off to dissolve into an un-Carnegie-like nightclub). It was pointed out that this association, although misled, (the port is a century younger than Wishart) saved the structure from demolition in the redevelopment of the burgh in the Police Improvements of the late nineteenth century ¹. This stay of execution serves as an example where popular association with, and affection for, a name can have a dramatic effect in such circumstances. 

Wells
Some named wells survive in Dundee, the most notable being that of one of its two patron saints, The Virgin Mary (echoed in the Madonna Lily of its coat of arms). The Wellgait, still following its mediaeval route but encased by a late 20th century shopping mall, went to the Well of Our Lady The Blessed Virgin, later shortened to The Ladywell. The name survives in a place of modern spiritual pilgrimage known as The Ladywell Tavern. Iain suggested that the Ninewells that now gave their name to the regional Hospital could have been dedicated toSt Ninian, but Simon Taylor and others at discussion time agreed that that there were too many 'Ninewells' in Angus and Fife for that explanation to be likely. However, in later correspondence with David Orr of SPNS, who is conducting a survey of named wells in Angus and Dundee, it was established that the 'Sinavey' well to the north of old Mains Castle in Dundee was probably a corruption of St Ninian, as Old Mains Kirk was definitely dedicated to him. After other excursions into occupations (Bonnetmaker renamed Hilltown and Bucklemaker renamed Victoria Road) and politics (Parnell renamed Nelson) the rôle of current street naming was considered. Iain paid tribute to the continuing work of naming of streets carried out by a senior engineer from the Planning and Transportation Department of Dundee City Council. He tried to maintain sensitivity about local historic traditions by liaising with local groups. Two recent successes had been the adoption of 'Gourlay' (from the 19th-century shipyard) for a name in the new development at City Quay and the re-adoption of the mediaeval 'Mid Kirk Style' outside the glass-fronted Overgate shopping mall, although arguments have been lost with developers who insist, for example, on using terms like 'Mews' in a misplaced gentrification of a modern Scots development.

1. This may not have been the first time that folk memory came into play to save this structure. Historic Scotland's supplementary information for its statutory listing as a building of architectural and historic interest notes:-
“After the last siege of a town in Britain and Dundee's brutal sacking in 1651, General Monck ordered the slighting and demolition of the town's defensive works. The Cowgait Port was spared, presumably because of its association with the protestant reformer and martyr George Wishart. According to Knox he preached to plague victims in 1544 from “the East Port”, which could refer to the larger port on the Seagate or the lesser one in the Cowgate. The latter, adjacent to the old St Roques Chapel, burying ground for plague victims and site for the Old Wishart Church, seems more likely. It has been argued that Dundee's fortifications were extended in 1650 in anticipation of attack by Cromwell and that the Cowgate Port was then moved to its present position. But a stone gateway would have been no use in an artillery siege, so in all probability this is the site from which Wishart preached. At least some of its elements are 16th century, restored anonymously by Peter Carmichael (Baxter Brother) in 1877.” (Ed.)

(from the May 1999 Conference)
EXPLORING THE PLACE-NAMES OF THE ANGUS GLENS
David Dorward is compiling a database of the place-names of north Angus comprising the whole of the parishes of Glenisla, Corachy and Clova, Lethnot and Navar, Lochlee and the upland parts of Kingoldrum, Kirriemuir, Tannadice and Fernie, all of Angus north of the Highland Boundary Fault, most of which lies above the 500 foot contour line. Given its upland nature, names for relief features abound, especially those derived from Scottish Gaelic monadh ‘hill, muir, upland grazing'. This is a Pictish loan-word into Gaelic, but in one important name we know that it goes back to the Pictish period: the Mounth, the name for the whole upland area between Angus and Aberdeenshire. Some hill-names containing monadh have been assimilated to the related word in English, ‘mount', giving the somewhat inappropriate Mount Keen and Mount Blair. It is notable that beinn (‘mountain, (peaked) hill') is of infrequent occurrence, Ben Reid and Ben Tirran being the only two convincing examples. Other ‘ben' names may rather, because of their topography, represent the Gaelic being ‘bank, ridge', a loan-word from Scots bank, such as Benscravie and Bennygray. The characteristic hill-name in Angus is undoubtedly creag, of which there are over 100. This is followed in frequency by around 80 eminences with the Scots hill, while Gaelic càrn gives almost 50 hill-names.
The Glens of Angus show a rich layer of Scots as well as of Gaelic place-names, containing elements such as latch (‘bog-stream'), grain (‘side valley or stream'), and stripe (‘streamlet').
The database contains some 1200 headwords and since about half of these have one or more derivatives, the total runs to well over 2000 names, only a small fraction of the names that have existed in the past. Some exist in early boundary charters, but are no longer identifiable. Take a walk up any of the Angus Glens and you will come upon dozens of stone piles, representing some long-lost dwelling, which must at one time have had a name, and been surrounded by many names for small features such as fields and rocks. Many of these are irretrievable, but to find an elderly inhabitant who can recall one or two of them is, as you may imagine, one of the great delights in the game of toponymics.
As mentioned in the next item below, the Scottish Place-Name Society, through the efforts of David Dorward, and with kind permission of the estate of C. P. Will, has re-published Will's Place Names of Northeast Angus, (Arbroath, 1967), which covers in great detail the parishes of Edzell, Lethnot and Navar, and Lochlee, adding a full index by David Dorward and a short introduction by Simon Taylor. Requests for copies should be made, along with cash or cheque for £5 (which includes p. & p.), to the Scottish Place-Name Society.

(from SPNS Newsletter 6, Spring 1999)
While preparing a database of the place-names of the Angus Glens I was advised by a Society member to consult C.P. Will, Place Names of Northeast Angus, published by Herald Press, Arbroath, 1963, which covers in great detail the parishes of Edzell, Lethnot and Navar, and Lochlee. I had the utmost difficulty in procuring a copy, since it apparently had a short run and has long been out of print. The Committee has agreed to a suggestion that Will's book (68 pages plus a 6-page index compiled by me, with illustrations by the late Colin Gibson) be prepared for re-issue to interested Society members. It is estimated that £5 per copy would cover the production costs, including p. & p.
The late Mr Will was a solicitor who lived in Edzell, and a self-confessed aficionado whose hobby was the local place-nomenclature. Although his derivations can often be disputed, he gives many early forms and usually clearly states reasons for his conclusions. Will's local knowledge was prodigious, and there may be other members who will find his book as enjoyable and informative as I did.
David Dorward, St Andrews

(from Newletter 3, Autumn 1997)
Mr David Adams of Brechin informs Society members that there are two invaluable indexes of place-names available for consultation in the main Angus libraries of Arbroath, Brechin, Carnoustie, Kirriemuir and Montrose.
The first is an Index of the First Edition Ordnance Survey Six Inch map of 1865. Done by David Adams himself, it consists of 133 pages.
The second is an Index of Ainslie's map of Forfarshire of 1794. Done by John Sheriff, it consists of 64 pages.

Bibliography (to go to the full bibliography, click here)

Dorward, D., 2001, The Glens of Angus: Names, Places, People (with illustrations by Colin Gibson) (Balgavies).
Nicolaisen W.F.H., 1968 'Place-Names of the Dundee Region', in Dundee and District, ed. S.J. Jones.
Will, C.P. 1963, Place names of northeast Angus (a study of the parishes of Edzell, Lethnot and Navar, and Lochlee; with notes from the Brechin area and elsewhere in or around the county) (Arbroath) [reprinted by the Scottish Place-Name Society, with an introduction by Simon Taylor, 1999]