Friends of the Ochils Newsletter 19: Autumn 2001

To the Manor Powis born - a Menstrie book reviewed

It's not often that a high-quality, well-researched book on the Ochils appears, but the recent official volume on the evolution of the Menstrie Glen area is a work of considerable merit. First, Robin Kelsall weaves the book into his lifelong memories of the area, then Ken Stewart walks the course as it were and discusses other aspects of the book.

TO GROW UP in Blairlogie was a delight and, in retrospect, a privilege. A tiny place, it provided a wonderfully safe environment in which we children could roam far and wide, exploring and investigating all that surrounded us - and, of course, we were lucky enough to have as our playground the soaring and immediate presence of Castle Law and her lesser neighbours, Goats' Craig and Pengower. Initially, small legs and the all-seeing maternal eye conspired to confine us to the very lowest levels, but as confidence and stature grew, so too did ambition until, one magical day, we found ourselves standing on the very top of Dumyat.

Looking back the way we'd just come, we marvelled at the miniature world laid out before us: Stirling and its wee castle off to the right, the Wallace Monument looking anything but imposing, a tiny steam train puffing past Manor Powis pit, heading for Alloa - and, way in the distance to our left, the tops of the Forth Bridge itself. And then we turned about to look in the opposite direction - just sheep, grassy slopes and, in the glen below us, a small farm. (Jerah, as we were to learn much later.) Pretty dull stuff in our estimation, so we faced south again.

An equivalent band of young adventurers from the Blairlogie of, say, 1700 would have seen things very differently. Obviously no monument, pit, railway or Forth Bridge, but a pastoral patchwork of small farms and the occasional grand house. But it's what they would have seen when looking north that's interesting. Where we saw only one farm in the glen below, they would have seen 27; it was, in fact, an area of considerable agricultural activity. How do I know this? Through the pages of a splendid publication that came out earlier this year.

Produced by the somewhat cumbersomely named quango, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, and entitled "Well Shelterd & Watered" - Menstrie Glen, a farming landscape near Stirling, this is a scholarly and deeply researched work involving four years of unremitting labour both on the ground and among the shelves of national and local archives, libraries and other documentary sources.

Three things contributed to the highly successful outcome of this particular archaeological survey. Firstly, there was the condition of the landscape itself. Menstrie Glen, after about 150 years of quite intensive mixed farming, went comparatively quickly to being a sheep walk. In other words, the landscape was spared further ploughing, thus preventing its destruction and easing the investigations of the future surveyor. Secondly, the researchers had access to a splendid selection of aerial photographs of the glen taken by the RAF in 1946 and 1955. These showed, in spectacular relief, the extensive existence of runrig, banks and enclosures. Thirdly, James Wright of Loss (owner of most of Menstrie Glen in the mid-18th century) was a compulsive taker of notes and hoarder of paperwork, and the huge amount of information contained therein was readily available to the researchers.

Dave Cowley (co-author of the text along with John Harrison) has supplied me with 30- plus slides of the book's illustrative material for a wee presentation at this year's AGM on 1 November. Come along - the content will be good even if the presenter's a bit dodgy.

Robin Kelsall

This is a fine, well-produced book giving great attention to the fairly small area which is Menstrie Glen. I am not competent to judge how well the historical research and archaeological analysis have been done, but the book certainly gives an impression of competence and excellence. I found it to be a book to dip into frequently rather than to read extensively at one sitting. The photographs in themselves are well worth having.

Having been asked to write about the area, I felt the need to get to know it better. I had previously walked a number of times on the surrounding high ground - Dumyat, Loss Hill, Myretoun Hill - but the lower ground was not really familiar. I made a circuit by the glen tracks on a rather dreich day with rain at times, using the ruin at Jerah to give a little shelter for a break. Despite the weather, the change of angle gave plenty of interest and I felt I picked up something of the atmosphere of the place. The twists and turns of the tracks are also a help in maintaining a changing scene.

The core of the book is the history of farming in the glen. The current situation is a reversion to the times of the 15th and 16th centuries when most of the glen was sheep pasture. Things changed through the 17th century when a tenanted and cropped period began with widespread settlements. This may have been more successful than is often credited, as the improvers had an understandable tendency to denigrate previous practice. All the same, this was in partial decline by the time of the great changes of the early 1760s, instigated by James Wright of Loss, who rushed things forward to the extent of undersowing the final standing crops with grass, the quicker to develop pasture. This led to rapid depopulation. Wright created parkland round Loss, some features of which survive, though he himself may have been bankrupt by the time of his death in 1769.

The settlements receive full discussion with extensive diagrams of houses and out-buildings. At their maximum around 1700 they reached up to the head of the glen at the Sheriffmuir road. The steep decline since the 1760s has left only one - Foreside of Lipney, now Dumyat Farm. The shielings are also discussed. They mainly pre-dated the permanent settlements and probably had become disused as such by 1600.

The archaeology of the landscape is also given attention. The sudden change in land use means that earlier cultivation patterns have been preserved rather than destroyed by ploughing. Aerial photographs enable the rig cultivation systems, terraces, enclosures and the like to be analysed in a useful way. Overall, this is a fine book for those who know the area, and with plenty of sources and leads for further study.

Ken Stewart

"Well Shelterd & Watered" - Menstrie Glen, a farming landscape near Stirling

Published 2001 by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, 72pp, ISBN 1 902419 25 1

Newsletter 19 Index