Coldrain
Cartographic Sources for the Toponymy of Clackmannanshire and Kinrosshire
Kinross-shire: perambulating the Marches
Simon Taylor: COLDRAIN
Geoffrey Barrow (1981) posits the existence of local, open-air courts serving a roughly parish-sized unit, or in some cases a collection of parishes, having a similar function to the English hundred court. At these open-air courts local disputes would have been settled through the application of legal expertise, probably in the form of a judex (Latin) or dempster (Scots) or britheamh (or breathamh, giving Scots breive). Barrow argues that the name for these courts, which are practically invisible in the historical record, is couthal, a loan-word into Scots from the Gaelic còmhdhail 'meeting, assembly'. Couthal does in fact occur as a Scots word in an agreement made in 1329 between the abbot of Arbroath and a local Angus laird, Fergus son of Duncan, which states 'the said Fergus and his heir shall have the court which is called couthal for the men residing in the land of Tulloes and Craichie, to deal with the countless acts arising amongst themselves only, and they shall have the fines arising therefrom' (Arb. Lib. ii no. 2).
An example of the eastern Scottish place-name 'Cuttle' (now Cuthill) by Prestonpans, East Lothian,
from William Forrest's lavishly drawn Map of Haddingtonshire, 1802 (acknowledgements to NLS).
As a Scots word it is behind the many Cuttle-names in eastern Scotland (such as Cuttlehill and Cuttleden; see Barrow 1981 for more details). Much rarer are names which derive directly from the Gaelic form of this word. One such is Coldrain, Fossoway and Tullibole parish KNR (NO08 00). Some early forms are:
(land of) Cu<t>hyldrayne 1366 RMS i no. 221 [printed Cuchyldrayne]
terram de Cothilduran 1363 x 1369 RMS i no. 825
(lands of) Coludrane 1452 RMS ii no. 574
(third part of the lands of) Kuldrane 1466 RMS ii no. 877 [Kuldrane and Maw vic. FIF]
Coudran 1515 Fife Ct. Bk. 1 [Coudran and The Maw]
Coldrane 1520 Fife Ct. Bk. 184 [Coldrane and The Maw]
(lands of) Collandrane 1589 RMS v no. 1671
G còmhdhail + droigheann 'Moot or small court of thorn'.
Extract from John Bell's 1796 map of the County of Kinross (acknowledgements to NLS)
The site of the couthal at Coldrain is a large prehistoric burial mound called Thorn Knowe (NO084002) This is typical for these early places of legal assembly. As Barrow points out, several of the open-air courts in England must have begun life at such spots, judging from several Hundred and Wapentake names which refer to mounds, as well as to trees and stones.
Simon Taylor
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)
Kinross-shire: Perambulating the Marches
This is a summary of the paper Perambulating the Marches: Disputed Boundaries and Division of Commonty as Sources for the Toponymy of the Lomond Hills given by Dr David Munro at the SPNSoc.'s Conference last November (1998) in Perth.
The western portion of the Lomond Hills lying in Perth and Kinross (from 1685-1975 in Kinross-shire; till 1685 in Fife) forms a dramatic scarp- and dip-slope feature with a solid geology that comprises layer upon layer of sedimentary rocks capped by a volcanic lava sill of quartz dolerite. The names on today's maps covering this area are few and far between but historic documents of two types yield a wealth of place-names from days when the hills were frequented by cattle-herds and quarrymen.
Much valued in the past for its natural resources of stone and grazing, that portion of the western Lomonds known as the Bishop Hill was the subject of a series of boundary disputes that occurred between 1389 and 1793. Though relatively infrequent, these disputes provide useful comparative sources for place-names on the boundary between the estate of Arnot and the lands of Bishopshire.
On 9 March 1389 the dispute between Sir Henry Arnot and the bishop of St Andrews culminated in the perambulation of the march between their respective lands. The ‘more well-to-do, nobler and older' men of the sheriffdom of Fife gathered at Kinneston (Kynnesktoun), along with Bp. Walter and Sir Henry. A group of 22 men comprising 7 knights, 7 gentlemen and 8 commoners set off from the River Leven (the watter of Levine), the record of their perambulation describing some 19 key landmarks along the way [SRO GD 150/263 f.32r-v].
The same march was the subject of a long-running series of disputes during the 18th century. These are documented through legal processes that took place in Kinross Sheriff Court in 1724, 1763, 1764 and 1790. Witnesses in proof described the boundaries, recalling names that can be equated with those mentioned 400 years earlier. The Shoggle Boggle Well described by 80-year old John Thomson in 1724, for example, is likely to be the Tulyn' of Bogill noted in the 1389 perambulation.
While boundary disputes proved useful place-name sources on the open hill, they tend to focus purely on the names along the line of march. An under-utilised source for place-names over a wider area can be found in legal processes associated with divisions of commonty. An Act of the Scottish Parliament in 1695 provided for the dividing of common lands, a process that gathered pace during the 18th-century period of agricultural improvement.
The process of division of commonty could occur several times over a single piece of land, each division being recorded through legal processes in either the Sheriff Court or Court of Session. In 1729, for example, the Commonty of the Bishop Hill was divided amongst 7 farms and fairmtoun villages in Kinross-shire. Nearly 70 years later in 1795 the portion that had been allocated to Wester Balgedie was further apportioned through a division of commonty to 6 feuars in that village.
Each of these processes of division yields its own array of place-names describing not only boundary landmarks but also sources of water, tracks, quarries and other features associated with contemporary use of the land. Details of the Division of the Back Brae of Wester Balgedie in 1795 are recorded not only in written documents but also on a plan drawn by the vellum-maker John Birrell, a part-time surveyor living in the neighbouring village of Kinnesswood. His parchment plan records, for example, the Kippit Hill, the Crook Road Head, the Lintwhite Moss and the Horse Heugh Burn.
Documents associated with boundary disputes and divisions of commonty provide a rich source of place-names. Not only that, they are a window on aspects of social and agricultural change.
Bibliography (to see the full bibliography, click here)
Watson, A., 1995, The Ochils, Placenames, History, Tradition, Perth and Kinross District Libraries (£10.95).