Clackmannan: a small hilltop burgh and its county are named
from the ancient stone
set in 1833 on top of a new standing stone
beside the Cross and the Tolbooth remains.
The stone’s original
position appears to have been on lower ground close to a once
broader Forth estuary.
The name is discussed in
Dr Simon Taylor’s article on the county’s place-names.
Simon Taylor – The Clackmannanshire Place-names project
I would like to start with a special thank-you to Scottish History for All (Eachdraidh Albannach) (SHfA) and the Gaelic in Clackmannanshire (GiC) Project in particular. SHfA is a voluntary body set up 3 years ago to promote knowledge of Scottish History and Gaelic. The founder members felt that there was a need for easily accessible, good quality, information about both these subjects, and the links between them. A successful bid was made to the Local Heritage Initiative Scotland (LHIS), part funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Clackmannanshire (hereafter CLA) is one of six pilot areas in Scotland, with two groups being supported in each area. I was employed by the GiC project to work with a small group of volunteers on the Gaelic place-names of CLA, concentrating especially on twelve local names, including those of the most important settlements. I would like to acknowledge fully the support and input of this project. It is on this work that much of this talk is based. Another product of the project was my article ‘Celtic Place-Names of CLA’, History Scotland no. 4 (July/August, 2004), 13-17 (hereafter HS-article).
Apart from the work done by and for the Project, very little has ever been done on the place-names of CLA. For the Ochils we are lucky enough to have Angus Watson’s The Ochils: Placenames, History, Tradition, published by Perth
and Kinross Libraries in 1995. For the lowland part the work of collection and analysis had to start practically from scratch.
For a definition of CLA as it has changed and evolved over the centuries, I refer the reader to my HS article. Between 1891 and 1975 it consisted of the parishes of Alloa, Alva (formerly in Stirlingshire), Clackmannan. Dollar and
Tillicoultry. Since 1996 the parish of Muckhart, formerly Perthshire, has been added to it.
It is important to bear in mind that CLA for most of the early historical period was a boundary territory - it was not until Lothian was taken into Alba in the 10th century that its boundary status changed. Before that it was where several early medieval kingdoms met: Northumbria to the south of the Forth, the kingdom of Al Clut or Dumbarton, later Strathclyde, to the south-west, and Pictland to the north and east. We have very few historical records from before 900, but from them three refer to major battles in the area, including one in Dollar itself, in 875 between the Norse and the Picts.
The survival of important medieval woodland around Clackmannan may well have established itself during a period of reduced settlement in what must have often been dangerous borderland.
The earliest language of CLA about which we have any certain knowledge is a p-Celtic (i.e. non-Gaelic Celtic) one, and we know about it chiefly from place-names. Given the boundary position referred to above, and the turbulent history this must have brought with it, I think it is probably wisest to leave the language description at that, rather than try to apply labels such as Pictish or British. For the purposes of this paper today, for Brittonic you can read either British or Pictish, or a mixture of both. These include:
Clackmannan itself - ‘stone of Manau’, though it does show Gaelic influence e.g. in the genitive ending -ann. The kingdom or territory of Manau stretched on both sides of the middle Forth, and included not only Clackmannan but also Slamannan, Stirlingshire, which also contains the name Manau. The first element is G sliabh ‘moor’, so ‘moor of Manau’. The Brittonic name Manau comes from the same word as Man (Isle of), and the early forms of both these place-names are identical. The root would appear to be *man- or *mon- ‘projecting or high land’. In the case of our Manau, it would refer to the spectacular ridge of the Ochils, as viewed from the south.
Menstrie, Alva parish (Mestryn 1261 CDS, Mestreth 1266 ER, Mestry 1315 x 1321 RMS), ‘farm or settlement on a plain or open field’. The second element appears to be Brittonic *trev ‘farm, settlement’, related to Welsh tref ‘town,
village’, earlier ‘farm’. The first element *maes (Welsh maes) is the Brittonic equivalent of Gaelic magh, ‘plain, level land’. This Gaelic word is found as the second element in the Gaelic names Alloa and Alva, and in these two names probably refers to the same feature as *maes in Menstrie, that is the broad stretch of lowland between the Ochils and the Forth. The first element of Alloa and Alva is all, ail ‘rock, cliff’, a word that occurs in both Brittonic and Gaelic, and refers here to the escarpment of the Ochils.(1) The fact that Alloa and Alva appear once to have been the same name suggests that *Al-mag was the early Gaelic name for the whole of the above-mentioned plain, and probably (but unprovably) an adaptation of an earlier Brittonic name for the same feature.
Ochils, closely related to Welsh uchel ‘high’.
Dollar (Dolair, Dolar), ‘place of the haugh(s) orwater-meadow(s)’ (cf Welsh dôl ‘meadow’. This word was borrowed from British or Pictish into Scottish Gaelic as dail ‘water-meadow, haugh’).
Dollar from the north: from an old postcard
Aberdona, Clackmannan parish (Aberdonie 1652 Retours), ‘mouth of the *Donie’. This must refer to the junction of the Gartreilly Burn with the Black Devon. Either Donie is a reduced or suffixed form of Devon (earlier Douane), or it is the former name of the Gartreilly Burn.
There are also two important place-names in Logie parish, Stirlingshire, right by the western border of CLA, which can definitely be assigned to British rather than Pictish. These are Manor (Maner 1654 Blaeu), probably deriving from a word related to Welsh maenor ‘stone-built residence of the chief of the district’, and Gogar (Goger 1218 x 1318 RRS v). This is identical to the parish- and settlement-name Gogar, Midlothian, which W. J. Watson analyses as containing British *go-gor ‘small cast, spur, bend’, cf Welsh côr ‘binding, boundary, limit’ (1926, 210). At the Stirlingshire Gogar the Devon, which has been meandering south-westwards since Crook of Devon, about 20 km to the east, turns to flow southwards into the Forth, and it is probably this bend that Gogar refers to. Gogar is of especial significance linguistically, since in its first g it shows the Welsh (British) development of original Celtic w, which in Gaelic became f, and in Pictish remained w (written u), while in Welsh it became gw, with gwo later becoming go.(2)
GAELIC
Of all the languages spoken in CLA over the past 2000 years, Gaelic is the one which has left most trace in place-names. We do not know when exactly it was introduced into the area, nor when it died out, but a very rough time-span of 9th
century until 13th or 14th century is likely, with the main focus on the good-quality low-lying land at the start of this period, while at the end of this period Gaelic will have survived longest in the upland areas.
Most of the Gaelic names will have been coined as the lands between the Ochils and the Forth became absorbed into the kingdom of Alba, the name of the kingdom which arose out of the merging of the Gaels and Picts from about 900 AD onwards, and which formed the core of the medieval kingdom of Scotland. Names such as Pittenskene (now lost, near Clackmannan) contains the element pett ‘portion, land-holding’, which is ultimately from Pictish, but was borrowed into Scottish Gaelic and used to form new place-names in the Gaelic-speaking period. Pit-place-names formed in Gaelic during this same period as Pittenskene are those south of the Forth such as Bantaskin by Falkirk, formerly Pettintoscale etc. (e.g. 1450 RMS), Gaelic pett an tsoisgeil, ‘estate of the Gospel’ i.e. church-land.
Coalsnaughton, Tillicoultry parish (Coschenachtan 1480 ER ix 569, Coschnachtane 1511 RMS ii no. 3641) ? Gaelic cas + personal name Nechtan. Gaelic cas (f.) (Old Irish cos), gen. sing. Coise, dat. sing. Cois, pl. casan ‘foot’. An cois na fairge ‘beside the sea’ (literally ‘at the foot of the sea’) (Watson CPNS, 241 note). This has given rise to the district name Cois Fharraige, Co. Galway, Ireland. Coalsnaughton might then mean ‘district of Nechtan’. It is possible that the eponymous Nechtan was the famous Pictish king Nechtan or Naiton, son of Dargart and Der-Ilei, who ruled in the early 8th century –I refer you to Thomas Clancy’s article ‘Philosopher-King: Nechtan mac Der-Ilei’, Scottish Historical Review 83 (2004), 125- 49.
Other Gaelic names are Balhearty (Tillicoultry parish, baile ‘farm’ + Gaelic àrd ‘high’), Muckhart (Gaelic muc-àird ‘pig height’), and Tillicoultry itself (containing Gaelic tulach ‘mound, knowe’ combined with what is probably a Gaelic compound meaning ‘back land’).
There is some toponymic evidence that Gaelic endured longer in this region than in Fife to the east. Dollarbeg is one piece of such evidence. The use of the affix, Gaelic beag ‘little’, is telling: such affixes are very common in Scots and arise where there has been a division of an older estate. They can refer to size (e.g. Meikle Seggie, Kinross-shire, Little Balbaird Fife) or to direction (e.g. Wester Sheardale, Dollar parish, Easter Kinnear, Fife). It is, however, very rare to find
such an affix in Gaelic in this part of Scotland, and it is therefore a clue to the fact that Gaelic was more vigorous here for longer than in the lowlands to the east.
One reason for this might be the absence of any early burgh in the area, since burghs were one of the main engines for language-change (Gaelic to Scots) in the 12th and 13th centuries. Whatever
plans there had been to develop Clackmannan as a royal burgh failed early, and CLA remained in the crucial period of the later 12th century on the western edge of the huge burgh trading liberty of Inverkeithing, which stretched from the Leven in the east to the Devon in the west (RRS ii no. 250). Nevertheless Scots has left many local place-names, especially for smaller features and later settlements, such as Ferryton and Birkhill (both Clackmannan parish), and Harviestoun (earlier *Harviesdavoch), Tillicoultry parish. Note also Cunninghar in Tillicoultry, from Scots cuningar ‘rabbit warren’. Davie Roscoe informs me that it is still known locally as The Bunny Hill!
I have tried to show something of the complexity and richness of the place-nomenclature of the Wee County, and very much hope that the collection and analysis, which has begun under the auspices of the Gaelic in Clackmannanshire
Project, will one day lead to a full county place-name survey, long overdue.
1 These and other similar names are discussed by W. J. Watson (1926, 502-3). All the forms which Watson quotes
there under Alloa in fact refer to Alva.
2 See Watson 1926, 210 and Jackson 1955, 163.
[The project team are in the process of creating an interactive CD-ROM which will be available soon free of charge as an educational and tourism package. Please contact Carol Roscoe at the address below for more details. There will be a small charge for postage only. <carol.roscoe@tiscali.co.uk>]
Dr Simon Taylor (abridged from his talk at the Dollar conference, Nov. 2005)
Peter McNiven – The gart place-names of Clackmannanshire
Clackmannanshire is home to a remarkable cluster of place-names. They all contain the element gart. A gaelic word related to the Welsh garth, meaning ‘field, enclosure’, it has cognates in many Indo-European languages, including
Russian gorod (-grad), ‘town’, Old Norse garþr, and English yard and garden.
There are sixteen Clackmannanshire gart names, with four nearby in Fife and Kinross-shire. These are not the only gart names in central Scotland. There are two other large clusters between Lake of Menteith and Loch Lomond and between Airdrie and Glasgow, with others between Stirling and Falkirk and in the glens around Callendar. The distribution of these
names is most peculiar: in the east they stop at the medieval Fife border, and are not found north of the River Devon in Clackmannanshire. In the west, they are not found west of the River Leven, nor south of the Clyde. This has led to some speculation as to whether there may be a Brittonic influence at play, but it may be that they are very early Gaelic names. Their absence further east in Fife may be due to that area being Pictish in the 9th century when many of these names might have been coined.
There are approximately 157 gart names in central Scotland and in my talk I said I had 10 found 122 looking at the maps of the area, both modern and old. I discussed some of the pitfalls involved, including misspellings and names in the
area that look similar at first glance.
The distribution of the gart names seems to suggest that they are something quite distinctive. It is significant not only that they are largely confined to central Scotland (there are clusters in Argyll and Galloway, however, but these are for
another time!), but are in fact limited to certain parts of central Scotland. Generally, this is where the land quality is not so good, i.e. forest or bog. We can probably say that gart names are quite different economic and social entities from other
settlement names such as achadh or baile, and that they are indicative of a poorer class of tenantry, and perhaps also of a population expansion prior to the decline of Gaelic here in the 14th Century.
The precise reason for the foundation of the gart names may never be known, but in Clackmannanshire at least they may have acquired a specific purpose. It seems the distribution here points to them being settlements in the medieval royal forest of Clackmannan mentioned in some early charters. There was a building boom in the post-1100 period when churches, castles and monasteries sprang up all over the country. Although stone predominates in today’s ruins, a huge amount of wood went into these buildings –for scaffolding as well as floors and roofs. At least seven monastic establishments has quarters in the royal toun of Clackmannan by the Wars of Independence, and I pointed out that these may have been given so the monks could do business with the foresters. Indeed, a charter of Holyrood Abbey dating c.1141x47 specified that David I’s ‘foresters’ were to allow the ‘abbot and convent’ to take timber from the forest, and their servants engaged on timber extraction are to enjoy the ‘king’s peace’. As a suggestion for where to look for these foresters and servants we need look no further that the place-name gart.
I looked at one name Tulligarth as a case study which allowed me to go into the parochial level. Nearly all the gart names are either in Clackmannan parish or within metres of its border. I tentatively proposed that Tulligarth – tulach, ‘hillock, mound, assembly place’ –might be the meeting place for the garts. I finished the talk by hoping I had demonstrated that here was the beginnings of a project in which place-name elements like gart could throw original and important light on medieval settlement and environment in central Scotland.
Peter McNiven (summarising his talk to the Dollar conference, Nov. 2005)
Dr David Munro: Cartographic Sources for the Toponymy of Clackmannanshire and Kinrosshire
Although they were the smallest of the former counties of Scotland, Clackmannanshire and Kinross-shire are rich in cartographic source material that sheds light on changing patterns of land use and settlement and provides the toponymist with a wealth of place names.
At the macro level, well documented surveys of Scotland by Blaeu, Roy and the Ordnance Survey offer varying levels of comparative place name detail from the 17th to the 19th century. While Clackmannan is one of the gaps in Blaeu’s Atlas
Novus (1654), only a small portion of the county appearing on plate 26 (‘Sterlin-Shyr’), the county of Kinross is covered on plate 27, ‘The Sherifdome of Fyfe’ and plate 28, ‘The West Part of Fife’. In addition to this, there exists a draft survey of ‘Keanrosse-shyre’ by James Gordon (1642). The place names on each of these maps are inconsistent. For example, the village of Kinnesswood, which does not appear on plate 28 of the Blaeu Atlas, is rendered as Kineskwood on plate 27 and Keaneskwood on the Gordon map.
The gap in Blaeu’s Atlas Novus is filled in the 17th century by ‘A map of Clakmanan Shire’ produced c.1681 by John Adair at a scale of 2 inches to the mile. This is the first of a series of more detailed county maps completed by land
surveyors between the late 17th century and the mid 19th century. Volume 2 of the Early Maps of Scotland (Moir 1983) lists over 20 county maps for Clackmannanshire including James Stobie’s ‘The Counties of Perth and Clackmannan’
(1783), W. Murphy’s ‘Clackmannan Shire’ (1832) and S.N. Morison’s ‘Map of the County of Clackmannan’ (1848). Most of the county maps covering Kinross-shire are included with maps of Fife, one of the most notable being John
Ainslie’s ‘The Counties of Fife and Kinross’ (1775). A rare map of the Kinross-shire on its own not listed in Moir (1983) is the Edinburgh surveyor John Bell’s ‘County of Kinross’ (1796).
The microtoponymy of Clackmannan and Kinross is revealed in manuscript plans and associated documents, particularly those which serve to formally record landscape change such as division of runrig and division of commonty, as processes either in the Sheriff Court or the Court of Session. John Hope’s 1788 ‘Plan of Excambion and Division of the Lands of
Dalquich [Dalqueich]’ (National Archives RHP 35) documents the creation of four farms from the complex system of runrig previously delineated in James Morison’s 1785 ‘Plan of the Runridge and Rundale of Dalquigh’ (National
Archives RHP 44). Ebenezer Birrell’s 1830 ‘Plan of the Whole Commonty of Portmoak Moss’ (Kinross-shire Historical Society 46) records names linked to peat cutting in the Bishopshire to the east of Loch Leven.
Farm and estate plans also recording landscape change are a rich source of field names. Three consecutive plans of Blairhill Estate on the border between Clackmannan and Kinross were compiled in 1809, 1822 and 1850 to record the
creation of an orchard, the building of a mansion house and farm buildings, the amalgamation of fields and the expansion of the estate. The last of these plans details over 50 farm, croft and field names including curiosities such as Egypt,
Capernaum and the North and South Bella Blunt.
Plans associated with the building of roads and railways, estate sales, the supply of water, fishing rights and the lowering of Loch Loch Leven in the 1820s all add to the stock of historic names in Clackmannan and Kinross. Examples of town
plans include Bernard Lens’s 1710 ‘Plan of Alloa’ for the last Earl of Mar and plans of Alloa (1825) and Kinross (1823) in John Wood’s Town Atlas.
It is important to appreciate the context of the local maps and plans produced during the ‘golden age’ of land surveying in Scotland between 1720 and 1850. In searching out map sources, it is also important to be aware of the county boundary changes that have taken place in both Clackmannshire and Kinross-shire as well as the extent to which some land surveyors and publishers copied the work of earlier surveyors.
In addition to the two volumes of the Early Maps of Scotland edited by Douglas Moir and published by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in 1973 and 1983, a useful source for local maps and plans in the National Archives of
Scotland is the Descriptive List of Plans in the Scottish Record Office edited by Ian H. Adams and published by HMSO in the 1960s. A list of the maps and plans held by the Kinross-shire Historical Society can be obtained from David Munro (e-mail: david.munro@strath.ac.uk).
David Munro (based on his talk at the Dollar conference, Nov. 2005)