Lost Place-names,Vanished Houses and Settlements

Occasionally in the past I have looked at the Lost Houses of Angus, usually those large castles and mansions where the gentry lived. Lost place-names have cropped up occasionally and this piece will examine another batch along with mention of villages and hamlets which no longer exist.

Arthur Dalgetty's The Church and Parish of Liff  (1940) has some relevant information from the parish to the west of the city of Dundee.  His informant was Miss Mary Balharry, resident of Denhead of Gray, who died  in 1939, at the age of 86.  Like remembered lines on vanished places elsewhere the follow local extinct places have a music in their repetition:

Denhead, Denmill, Balgarthno and Smiddy Hill,

Corscrook, Cosienook, Groggie Wells and Dubton.

   Dalgetty picks out some other choice ancient places which can be identified from older maps.  Some remain mysterious, such as the spot marked in a field opposite the entrance to Balruddery - Cleekemin.  Another former parish resident, Mr James Lawson, provided more intrigue when he stated that his mother's house was named Yearn Ane Blade.  Mr Dalgetty linked this to the only property in the parish which had house leek growing on the roof, often used to make cosmetics.

Wee Settlements, Long Gone

   There has been recent interest in two minor settlements in Angus which have vanished off the face of the earth (and off maps).  One is the Burnside of Dun, which features in a small book by Catherine Rice and published by the Abertay Historical Society, called All Their Good Friends and Neighbours: The Story of A Vanished Hamlet in Angus (2014).  This settlement of handloom weavers, a few miles west of Montrose, held around 60 souls in the mid Victorian era and due to the transitory nature of farming economics the work there went and then so did the people.  A few bare stones remain as a mark of human habitation.

  A more recently abandoned place is Smithton, at Lundie, north-west of Dundee.  This was a very small settlement sitting near a rise called Smith's Knowe, past Lunding village. The story to find this place is the subject of a very informative piece on Grant Hutchison's website The Oikofuge.  This place was abandoned as recently as the 1960s and its existence quietly slipped into nothingness without the outside world actually noticing.  The place was too small to actually quality as a bona fide village, but what else shall we call it: clachan? farm toun?  crofting community?  settlement?  None seem entirely accurate enough to encompass a community whose people have been scattered to God knows where.  Hutchison notes that David Doward mentions the place in his book The Sidlaws (2004) and also that it merits inclusion in Angus or Forfarshire by Alexander Warden.  The latter gave a folk derivation of the name, surmising that it was actually 'Mist-toun', so called because of the perpetual haar hanging over the place, but Dorward is undoubtedly right when he says it must represent 'Smith's toun'.

Lundie in the snow 

   Other settlements, of course, lost their identity and sometimes their names by being absorbed by their expansive larger neighbours. Small places around Dundee and all the larger towns in Angus have shared this peculiar fate. But there were also smaller examples, such as Hunter's Town, which stood between Barry and Carnoustie. Like Burnside of Dun, it vanished as a distinct entity in the 19th century. Those looking for its ghost can look in the area of Barry Road in Carnoustie.

'Ghost' Homes of the Claverhouse Grahams

   Some other places, particularly large houses and castles, may never have existed at all, despite the evidence of local people who assert that there certainly was such a building at such and such a place, once upon a time.  This seems to be the case with Claverhouse Castle, just north of Dundee. The minister who wrote the Old Statistical Account for the area at the end of the 18th century asserted that the remains of  stones from the castle had been unearthed.  C. Sandford Terry carefully scanned the written records and found scant evidence for the existence of any castle on the site.  The first of the famous family associated with the estate was John Graham, son of Robert Graham of Strathcarron and Fintry.  His first base in Angus was Ballargus in the regality of Kirriemuir, followed by his acquisition of the Claverhouse lands (between 1503 and 1511).  The family later bought Claypotts, but this was never the favoured residence for them .  Their primary home, purchased in the 1640s, was in Glen Ogilvy, a few miles north of Claverhouse.

   There may have been a large laird's house at Claverhouse, but never a castle, and any such building had vanished by the end of the 17th century.  Later map makers, however, added the spurious presence of 'castle' against the location.  In fact a mock  ruined 'castle' was added to the location in the mid-19th century.  The reason why the family home, which must in any case have been extensive, has vanished is unknown.  The Graham residence in Glen Ogilvy has likewise (mysteriously?) vanished out of existence.

The spurious 'Claverhouse Castle' built in the 19th century 

Sources

http://www.abandonedcommunities.co.uk/sources.html

Arthur Dalgetty, The Church and Parish of Liff (Dundee, 1940).

C. Sandford Terry, 'The Homes of the Claverhouse Grahams,'  The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 2, No. 5 (Oct., 1904), pp. 72-76

Previous Posts on Lost Houses

Lindertis House

Red Castle

Aldbar Castle

The Secret Tunnel of Lintrose: A Pictish Mystery? Secret Tunnel? Writer's Folly?

Lintrose House, also known as Todderance, stands a few miles away from Coupar Angus.  Although it has been incorporated into Perthshire from the late 19th century it was historically part of the county of Angus (in the parish of Kettins).  The property belonged to the Halyburton family.

Lintrose House

   In the 1870s a remarkable underground architectural feature was discovered here.  This is the description given by the author Elliott O' Donnell in his book Rooms of Mystery (London, 1931), where he describes the feature as a cave, though it may in fact have been a tunnel:

It was fifty feet long, and its sides were bricked and its floor neatly paved.  there were two antique fireplaces in it, and there is no doubt but that it was once used by some person or persons as a hiding-place.  Some thought Rob Roy had hidden there; some, Sawney Beane; others believed that it was intended for the use of Covenanters; and others, again, for the unfortunate Jacobites.
   The place was searched for hidden treasure, but without success, nothing of any value being found there.  Of course, the story that it was haunted got into circulation, but, as far as I can ascertain, there was nothing to warrant it. [Rooms of Mystery, pp. 23-24.]

     All that I can say, knowing nothing else, is that the associations with Rob Roy and Sawney Beane are very wide of the mark geographically; neither had historical associations with Strathmore (and Sawney was not even a real person).  Could the cave/tunnel in fact have been a reconditioned Pictish souterrain (or weem)?  Has folklore interfered with actual historical memory?  Warden in Angus or Forfarshire (Dundee, 1880, vol. I, p. 55) says:

Some years ago a weem was discovered on the highest part of a field east of Lintrose House.  It was about fifty feet long, about seven to eight feet wide, and about five feet high.  At the entrance it was only about three feet in width.  The floor was paved, and the walls formed in large courses...There had been two fireplaces, in which pieces of charcoal were found, and human bones were lying on the bottom.  This cave was built with lime, an art acquired from the Romans when in the country, so it cannot be of the great age of the weems of the primeval races.

O'Donnell

   Was O'Donnell here the person who - possibly purposely - became confused?  Difficult to say.  There have been a number of souterrains discovered in this vicinity around Pitcur and Kettins.  Interestingly, nearby Coupar Angus Abbey has a tradition of a secret tunnel (O'Donnell includes a section about it in his book.) One could perhaps have been discovered and re-used as a secret chamber.  Then again, the writer Elliott was himself occasionally accused of re-imagining things to make them seem more interesting or mysterious.   

The Banks of Sweet Dundee - A Ballad of Wronged Romance (plus A Lochee Love Song)

As a kind of footnote to my previous post about the songs associated with Dundee (Dundee Songs...Baffling Meanings?), here's two examples of the local muse expressed in the 19th century.  The Banks of Sweet Dundee is pure soap opera in ballad form.  First noted in the 1820s, this simple tale of good versus evil spread all over Britain and North America.  But does it refer to our Scottish Dundee? The ballad seems to be British and there are no other British Dundees, but then again the description of the topography and its rural setting would seem to argue for a different place entirely, though we can't know for sure.  In one source it is coupled with the intriguing ballad Smell! Smell! His breath! which, unfortunately, has no local connection.

It's of a farmer's daughter,

So beautiful I'm told,

Her parents died and left her

Five hundred pounds of gold.

She lived with her uncle,

The cause of all her woe,

And you soon shall hear this maiden fair

Did prove his overthrow.

Her uncle had a plough boy,

Young Mary loved full well,

And in her uncle's garden,

Their tales of love would tell.

And there was a wealthy squire,

Who often came her to see, 

But still she loved the plough boy,

On the banks of sweet Dundee.

It was one summer's morning,

Her uncle went straight away.

He knocked at her bedroom door,

And thus to her did say,

'Come rise up pretty maiden,

A lady you may be.

The squire is waiting for you, 

On the banks of sweet Dundee.'

'A fig for all your squires,

Your lords and dukes likewise,

My William's hand appears to me,

A diamond in my eyes.'

'Begone, unruly female,

You ne'er shall happy be,

For I mean to banish William

From the banks of sweet Dundee.'

Her uncle and the squire 

Rode out one summer's day.

Young William he's in favour,

Her uncle he did say.

'Indeed, 'tis my intention

To tie him to a tree,

Or else to bribe the pressgang

On the banks of sweet Dundee.'

The pressgang came to William

When he was all alone.

He fought boldly for his liberty,

But they were three to one.

The blood did flow in torrents.

'Come kill me now,' said he.

'I would rather die  for Mary,

On the banks of sweet Dundee.'

This maid was one day walking,

Lamenting for her love.

She met the wealthy squire

Down in her uncle's grove

'Stand off, base man,' said she.

'You sent the only lad I love

From the banks of sweet Dundee.

He clasped his arms around her

And tried to throw her down, 

Two pistols and a sword she spied

Beneath his morning gown.

Young Mary took his weapons,

His swords he used so free,

But she did fire and shot the squire

On the banks of sweet Dundee.

Her uncle overheard the noise,

He hastened to the ground.

'Since you have killed the squire

I'll give you your death wound.'

'Stand off then,' said young Mary,

'Undaunted I will be.'

The trigger she drew and her uncle slew,

On the banks of sweet Dundee.

The doctor soon was sent for,

A man of noted skill.

Likewise came the lawyer

For him to make his will.

He willed his gold to Mary,

Who fought so manfully,

And now she lives quite happily

On the banks of sweet Dundee.

   An alternative version of this ballad is known as 'Undaunted Mary'. It was collected by William Barrett from a seaman in 1877.  (The words and audio file can be accessed here.) Other versions are known from the Appalachians and Nova Scotia.

   The second ballad, The Bonnie Wee Lochee Lass, was in oral circulation well into the 20th century and tells of a more straightforward romantic encounter, a cross-cultural tryst between the eponymous last and a lad across the border in Dundee.

It fell upon a Lammas nicht now ai went oot for a stroll,

I hadna walked sae very far when I wandered doon by the toll,

I’d only gaed one mile or two when a bonnie fair I did pass,

’Twas there I fell in love wi a bonnie wee Lochee Lass.

“Now whaur are ye gaun? Gie me yer han’, hoo dae ye dae?” says I,

“Haud up yer head ma bonnie wee lass, now dinna be sae shy,

Now whaur dae ye bide? Whaur dae ye stay? Come tell tae me yer name,

Will yer father no be angry now if ai was tae tak ye hame?”

We sat, we cracked a guid lang while aboot a thing or twa,

We cracked an cracked until we saw the stars had gaen awa,

She drew her shawl aroon her head and quietly she did explain,

Says she, “Young man ye’ll keep yer word, for ye promised tae tak me hame.”

An now we two are married an happy as we can be,

She’s got twa children by her side, another one on her knee,

We laugh an crack at oor fireside an think o the times that have passed,

I’ll never forget the nicht I fell in love wi ma Lochee Lass

Superstitions: Grist in the Mill of the Mind

   Superstitions are, by their nature, snapshots of the chaos of the human condition perhaps.  Most have no reason beyond perpetuating fragments of behaviour that have long ago been separated from the reasons why they were begun.  The more you look at them, the more they are found to be elusive, frustrating, sometimes frightening fragments of something else, a bigger thing which will never be fully revealed. (I mused on much the same issued in my previous post on the subject The Slippery World of Superstitions.)

Modern Workplace Initiations

   Are modern superstitions any more explicable than historic ones.  Do they explain the frightening forces behind the everyday world in a satisfactory fashion.  Sometimes the actions of the superstition themselves are far from harmless. Take the following incident from Kirriemuir which ended up in a case in the Court of Session of Edinburgh.  (It was reported in The Scotsman, 28th November 1960 and reported in a subsequent issue of Folklore by A. M. Honeyman).  A 15 year old employee in Kirriemuir was subject to an initiation joke which backfired badly.  He was told to stand against a door, for the purpose of getting measured.  While doing so, someone behind the door hit it very hard with a hammer, and the reverberation resulted in the apprentice sustaining a linear fracture of the skull.  While I don't know who this unfortunate lad was, what happened in the court case, or indeed who his employers were, this type of initiation for new employees is common throughout the U.K. and possibly the world.  Many poor novice employees in Dundee must have have a marked aversion for the state in Albert Square, for there impassively sat the poet Mr Robert Burns and it was common form at one time for these hapless lads (and lasses?) to be sent with messages and requests to Mr R. Burns in that location. (Sometimes innocents were sent out for a 'long stand'.)

Mr Burns, shortly after his installation on a plinth in Albert Square, Dundee.

 George M. Martin, Dundee Worthies (1934) records a number of pointless tasks which newly employed workers  would have to endure at the behest of experienced employees in their various trades in the burgh.  He begins with his own experience as an engineering apprentice at Messrs. Gourlay and Brothers when he was asked by a leading hand to go to the moulding shop for  the 'cubilie', actually a furnace which contained ten tons of molten metal.  If he had gone on the mission, the lead worker there would have sent him to another department for an equally irrelevant object or to complete an impossible task. Among mythical tools newly employed people were sent to fetch included the 'half round square', the 'soft pointed chisel', the 'brass faced file', and so on.

   Among the rites/tests recorded among local employers and industries were the following:

• Dundee Harbour Engineers.  New starters were sent for the graving dokkey, which was actually a huge manual key for the sluice gates; transporting of which would cause major difficulty.
• Bakers.  The apprentice was sent from bakery to bakery for a 'crystal chafer' or 'crystal chafer for the funeral shortbread' and was given a huge, heavy bad full of oddments, bricks, etc., which he had to handle with care as the contents were exceptionally brittle.
• Hatters.  Same pranks as the bakers, but the object fetched was a 'glass iron for the hats'.
• Painters.  Sent for the red stripe from a barber's pole.
• Jewellers.  Apprentices had to polish a piece of metal with 'Water of Ayr' stone until it smelled of onions.
• Certified Accountant new lads were sent to jute spinners to ask for a card breakers and were shown a monstrous, huge, multi ton machine.
• Plumbers' apprentices were sometimes marked with a smudge and told to take a length of brass to a chemists to get it vaccinated.

Superstitions About Birth on the Brink of the Modern Age

   Stray pieces of folklore attached to fundamental aspects of human life are likely to be universal.  Sometimes local lore is unexpectedly recorded and has the appearance of being, if not unique, then a tantalising variant on a more generalised superstition.  In her autobiography Look Back in Wonder (1966), Dr Elizabeth Bryson describes attending at her first birth at the turn of the century in Dundee.  All went well with the procedure and she handed the newborn child over to the group of women who had also been present at the birth.  Mother and child were in fine health and it was nearing midnight.  Dr Bryson asked if one of the women would mind washing the infant.  But she was met by an exclamation of horror and one of those present swore she had never done so and would not now perform this task as it was the duty of a doctor or a nurse.  Why should this superstition exist?  Is it something to do with not wanting to be the person responsible for crossing the sacred boundary between the ante and post natal worlds?

  Birth, as the border zone between life and non-existence, was always regarded with superstitious awe.  Those who specialised in assisting delivery had almost magical abilities.  In Scotland formerly midwives were known as howdies or howdy wives.

Older Lore

   Many historic superstitions revolved around commonplace objects which were found in rural homes. Looking for lost objects on Angus farms in past centuries was often time accomplished by 'spaeing by the girdle', the girdle being the kitchen implement used, for toasting cakes. For the purposes of divination it was heated until red hot then placed in a dark place with something on top of it.  The whole gathered company then trooped past and each in their turn took a piece of the object placed on top, each under the belief that Satan himself would carry off whichever guilty party among them was responsible for the theft of the missing object.  Guilt usually led to the thief breaking down and owning up before the dread encounter took place.

  Frederick Cruickshank tells us about  a 'cure' for cattle which were thought to be wasting away.  This was effected by placing a freshly cut green sod in the stall before the beast.  Connection with religious observance was also common place.  Certain times of the year were marked by special ceremonies, sometimes aligned by older festivals. Rood-Day, May 3rd, may have inherited some traits belonging to the Celtic May Day celebration, Beltane.  In Angus, on the evening preceding Rood Day, a piece of a branch, cut and peeled and bound round with red thread, was placed over the byre-door, to avert the evil eye.

Bell Tower, Navar Kirk

Some Sources Consulted

Rev. Frederick Cruickshank, Navar and Lethnot, The History of a Glen Parish in the North-East of Forfarshire (Arbroath, 1899).

Alexander Hislop, The Book of Scottish Anecdote (8th edn., Glasgow & London,n.d.).

A. M. Honeyman, 'Fools' Errands for Dundee Apprentices,' Folklore, Vol 70, No. 1 (Mar. 1959), pp. 334-336.

A. M. Honeyman, ' "Measuring" Kirriemuir's Apprentices,' Folklore, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Dec. 1960), p. 251.

A. M. Honeyman, 'Midwifery in Dundee,' Folklore, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Summer 1966), p. 132.

James Murray Mackinlay, Ancient Church Dedications in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1910).