KNR Kinross-shire
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)
Taylor, .S., 1995, 'The Scandinavians in Fife and Kinross:
the Onomastic Evidence', in Scandinavian Settlement in
Northern Britain, ed. B.E. Crawford (London), 141-67.
Taylor, Simon, 2007, ‘The Rock of the Irishmen: an early
place-name tale from Fife and Kinross’, in West
Over Sea: Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement
before 1300, edd. B. Ballin Smith, S. Taylor and G. Williams
(Brill: Leiden and Boston), 497–514.
Watson, A., 1995, The Ochils, Placenames, History,
Tradition, Perth and Kinross District Libraries
(£10.95).