This book, published by Clackmannan District Libraries in 1982, looks at some of the changes made to the town of Alloa in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
ALLOA
THE WAY WE WERE
by Isobel Grant Stewart
FOREWORD
When we embarked on this series of local history publications some months ago, we were unsure as to how the public in Clackmannan District would react. Any fears we had were quickly dispelled as each booklet has quickly sold several hundred copies. Not only that, but it is almost common-place for people to walk into my office with ideas for future publications and indeed manuscripts of local subjects!
Isobel Stewart was one such person and this is the second booklet of hers we have published. It consists of three articles which miss Stewart originally wrote for the Alloa Advertiser. The articles on the harbour and the museum have not been altered but miss Stewart has considerably revised the articles on street names. I hope readers will find both the facts and the conjecture contained in the articles interesting.
My thanks are due to Kim Williamson, a member of my staff, for the cover design. Kim also designed the cover for Miss Stewart's first booklet which we published entitled "An Enterprising Family". Many thanks are also due to the local newspapers whose coverage of this publication programme has been of great help. Particular thanks are due to the Alloa Advertiser. Their staff has been particularly helpful in producing interesting and informative coverage for all our publications.
D. HYND
District Librarian
January, 1982.
ALLOA
THE WAY WE WERE
THE HARBOUR
The minute books of the Burgh Commissioners dating from the middle of last century reveal an Alloa few would recognise today.
From the numerous references to the harbour and its problems, we get a glimpse of a bustling port that could do justice to "The Onedin Line".
Even the burgh boundaries, as first defined, began thus: "From the keystone of the bridge at the upper end of the Pow of Alloa, along the North Quay, the Harbour of Alloa and the bank of the River Forth at low water, to a point thereof in a straight line with the west wall of the Alloa Foundry..."
The emphasis in the early days seems to have been on Alloa as a port, long before it became noted for its textiles, beer, glassware and electrical products.
The streets of the shore area — Carron Street, East and West Castle Street, Forth Street and Broad Street were once the site of substantial houses owned by prosperous shipmasters, chandlers and merchants.
Along with Craigward and The Walk they were named as the places where house-holders whose property was worth £10.00 or more lived - this was the qualification for eligibility to vote for the nine burgh commissioners.
There is a note in the records that a Captain John Liddell of Forth Street had complained that he had not been returned as a commissioner although he had a sufficient number of votes !
One could surmise that, in 1854, a considerable amount of the trade in the harbour was sea-going. "No person shall drive the refuse of whale blubber or other fish refuse through any part of the burgh except between the hours of midnight and 7.00a.m.", we read. The byelaw adds: "And it shall not be dropped upon the streets during the removal thereof".
During this period it had to be decided whether the Harbour Trustees, who had administered the harbour for many years separately from the rest of the burgh, should be allowed to continue doing so.
The problem was that the burgh boundary had been extended under a local Act to include the whole of the harbour and the shore out to the high water mark.
Eventually legal opinion was sought, and counsel reckoned the new Act did not supersede the rights, powers and privileges of the Harbour Trustees. So they were allowed to remain as before.
In 1860, the records show that £150 was received by the burgh from the trustees for "water and repairing streets and roads leading to the shore for the year up to whit-Sunday". This seems to have been an annual charge for the services of what we would now call the public works department.
The big news in April 1861 was the building of a high-water loading berth at the harbour of Alloa Colliery. Plans were submitted, but they were referred by the commissioners to the improvement committee, who called in a "man of skill", architect John Melvin.
Melvin approved of the scheme. "This is constructed in the most substantial manner and no danger can arise to the public from any of it giving way", he reported reassuringly.
"The effect, of it on the quay traffic will not be so objectionable as the present mode of loading ships at high water", he continued. "Your reporter has often observed the erection of long inclined gangways with horses pulling up the waggons".
In 1862 a letter from the railway's company's lawyers refers to "iron at present being shipped to Alloa Port" and talks of the branch line to the shore being extended right into the harbour. The cost of this operation was in dispute.
The following year the commissioners received a petition from "certain inhabitants near this shore as to repairs on the street to the Wet Dock, and requiring a gas lamp for that street".
Later that year the same road came up again, but this time "two lamps are much needed here, the place being utterly dark at present when the dock opened it is likely to become an important thoroughfare". In the same report, Dock Street was suggested as an appropriate name for the road, but it seems never to have been taken up.
In 1866 a letter appears in the records from the Board of Supervision "for the removal and abatement of nuisances under the apprehended approach of cholera". The Superintendent of Police was instructed to "keep a vigilant watch upon ships arriving in the harbour in case there should be cholera on board and immediately to report all ships having, or suspected to have, cholera on board to the officer that he may make the necessary inspection".
The Board appointed Mr. Peter Brotherston, surgeon, to examine all vessels. Shades of our present-day rabies scare!
In 1888 there are "plans and sections of a proposed new entrance to the docks and other works. The engineers, Thomas Meik and Sons, of London and Edinburgh, laid their plans before the Commissioners of the Forth Navigation in November of that year.
The detail on the plans is for what remains what is long gone. From east to west we can see the Alloa Foundry, railway and gasworks in (in the area of Craigward), gasometer (still in existence), a well for inhabitants' water supply, brickworks and a brickyard, Craigward wharf which dealt exclusively with timber, glass works near Ferry Pier (which was near Forth Street, roughly at the foot of today's Glasshouse Loan), sawmills and a ship-building yard near "Glasgow Wharf", Linden House at the foot of the Walk, and a sheepfold somewhere about where Park School and East Castle Street are now.
Such was the bustling port of Alloa in the days when Bowhouse a tenant farm and there were more than derelict jetties and a waste-land at Alloa's riverside - a time when the town was well known in Germany, Scandinavia, France and the Low Countries.
THE MUSEUM
At first sight, a bronze spearhead and a post—coach way-bill, dated 1826,may seem to have little in common. Equally, a handwritten song by James Hogg the Ettrick Shepherd seems to have little connection with an Australian Aboriginal's widow's cap.
Yet these curiosities once shared the same living-space in the cases of the Alloa Museum, managed by the local Society of Natural Science and Archaeology.
Founded in 1863,with fewer than one hundred members, the society raised over £2,000 in subscriptions and promissory notes, to erect a fine building of their own, ten years later, in the new development of Church Street, part of the parish church glebe, which once stretched from Bedford Place to Marshill.
Clackmannan County's book on 'Conservation Areas' tells us: "This residential area was built from South to North in local stone, but with a pleasing variety of styles to produce today an area with great character. One of the first buildings was the former library and museum hall in Church Street".
A glance at the ledger kept from April 13, 1863 to January 11th, 1898 reveals a wide cross-section of articles on display, and also casts a side-light on the quality of the men who became the Society's members and supporters.
The "bronze spearhead" was noted on march 5, 1878, as being found in Blairdrummond Moss "20 years since" by a Mr. Corville of drip Bridge, Stirling: The Post Coach way-bill concerned the service from Alloa to Glasgow, dated July 1826, which made it 50 years old when presented by Mr. Gavin Martin.
James Hogg's song, given to the museum by a Mr. Thomas Scotland, mill-wright, might seem to hint at an interesting story attached, but the record gives no clue.
However, we do know about the donor of the "Widow's Cap", a boomerang, emu skins, a duckbill, and a club from Fiji, which were given by the family of the "late" Dr. Duncanson, who was a "well-known townsman in his day, belonging to an old Alloa family, mostly connected with the shipping interest".
In 1849, he took a voyage to Savannah, and then travelled across the States of America. On his return he took a Continental tour, which "added greatly to his information", we are told. The doctor was one, and perhaps the chief one, of the founders of the Archaeological Society, and was deeply attached to it the remainder of his life. (He died in 1876). "He was its first President and as such, entertained the members to a conversazione at his own residence, which in all respects, was a brilliant affair".
No mention of Australia but it is thought that items were bought from sailors at the busy harbour, and others supplied by labourers working there: for example, "the core of the horn of a wild ox", from the "new wet dock", given in 1863.
On October 6 1868, the doctor presented the "skull of one of the whales captured in 1866 at Alloa Shore", and other "finds" were the antlers of a deer, and "a piece of elk horn", also dug up at the site of the dock.
A weird spectacle must have been the "chicken with two heads" presented by Dr. Brotherston of Alloa (noted in "Alloa 60 years ago" as "not only a native of Alloa, but a son of Alloa Manse an well").
This doctor "soon came to be known as a skilful surgeon - many thought he had no equal outside of Edinburgh". He presented, trough the years, many bird specimens to the Museum.
Not all the members' names are those of noteworthy men. Pieces of fossil coal were often found by miners in the local collieries, and their names are noted in the record book.
A church relic was an "assignation" (in certificate form) of two seats in the gallery of the old Alloa Parish Church, in 1728, the "Auld Kirk" having been rebuilt and in 1680/81, for the vast sum of more than £5,800.
Coins were picked up here and there - two of Charles Second's time, from the "excavations at Kilncraigs in 1867", and, strangely, a Portuguese coin found at Sheriffmuir in 1876, even an old Roman coin found in The Walk, presented 1976.
Jas. Johnstone, Esquire, owner of the Alva Estate, handed over a cinerary urn and quern found there in 1874.
Even Sauchie Tower's "stone with coat of arms" could be seen there in 1876, and, three years later, Lord Mansfield gave, through his factor, a stone from the turret of the tower, "bearing the arms of the Shaws of Sauchy, probably those of Alexander Shaw, about 1511".
An interesting exhibit would have been the "seven models of ships built in Alloa Dockyard", in 1879 by the family of the late Thomas Adamson, who managed the dock in the 50's and 60's, being mentioned as "a most energetic business gentleman"
No. R.S.P.B. existed to keep a watchful eye on rare birds, and the first specimen of a "spotted craik or rail shot in the district was "bagged" on Alva Estate and transferred to the museum in 1877. Shortly after, a "Bohemian Waxwing", equally rare, was shot, the first in the County.
A touch of the macabre was provided by the "vampire from Java", given by Captain Dunlop, Alloa, in 1881, and W.D. Wylie, "formerly of Alloa, now at Kinsemba, West Coast of Africa" (in 1879) gave a list of 54 items, ranging from an "ivory sceptre to a musical box played by the thumbs".
The same year, a Mr. Jas. Dawson (formerly of Alloa) presented nine birds and animals of Australia, where he now lived.
A fair exchange was made in June, 1882, when the curator, Mr. John Taylor, received a "peregrine falcon, short-eared owl, turnstone, greenshank and stormy petrel" in return for a pair of capercailies from St. Andrews College Museum. Who had the better bargain? One wonders.
A sad memento of the same year, was the "walking stick made of wood from wreck of the Tay Bridge" gifted by a Collyland miner.
It is recorded that a paper on The Story of Sheriffmuir was read by Mr. Wm. Drysdale, in 1882, referring to "an officer's bayonet and barrel of a flintlock musket picked up on the field of battle".
The museum even boasted a "Russian soldier's uniform from the Battle Of Inkermann, in the Crimea" and an "Egyptian Key Bugle" from the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir.
Nothing would seem to have been too trifling. The "remains of the fireplace tongs used in his schoolroom at Forestmill by Michael Bruce, author of Ode to the Cuckoo, donated in 1883, by Mr. James Lothian, whose father, from Dunfermline originally, had been the first printer in Alloa, and had started the Alloa Advertiser in 1841.
Mr. Jas. Lothian often contributed papers to the society, and one was entitled "Extinct Clackmannanshire Societies" (showing how, "in the course of half a century, many societies for various objects were formed with every intention at the time to be permanent, but yet, through time, ceased to exist").
The entries totalled 802 by June, 1884, but thereafter, the items cease to be numbered.
An old engraving of "The Tower of Alloa", was given in 1890, and, three years later, an unusual event is marked - "a shark, caught by a fisherman in the Forth, near Alloa" was bought for the museum.
Entries are becoming fewer and fewer, but 1896 featured two spectacular donations, almost like a climax in the affairs of the society.
On April 1 (perhaps not appropriate date?) William Bailey, senior magistrate and owner of the Alloa Pottery, presented the Museum of Alloa with an "Egyptian mummy in coffin, 2,800 years old, purchased by the donor from the curator of the Government Museum at Cairo". A glass case was also presented for the preservation of the exhibit.
And the second benefaction?
This occurred six months later when Dr. Peter Miller, of Edinburgh, gave a large collection of war medals, foreign medals, trade tokens and British silver and copper coins, along with a specially made case to contain them.
The donor gave these to "the town of Alloa and the Commissioners of the town, and requested the society to become custodians thereof, which the society agreed to do, after conference between Mr. David Thomson and Mr. I. Pulsford, president of Society and Dr. Dyer, a member of Council".
On January 11, 1898, appears the final entry, "Models of an old Alloa House" (by coincidence, could it have been Tobias Bauchop's house, now undergoing restoration?).
The catalogue ends abruptly, with no clues as to what had happened.
We do know that, by 1911, the "Museum Hall, with its suite of rooms, is largely used during the winter season, for many social gatherings in which a dance is a leading feature. For a select concert or lecture, it is most comfortable".
But where was the "skull of a whale, the Russian uniform, the Mummy in coffin?"
How strangely prophetic had been the words of the newspaper proprietor, Mr. James Lothian! Another Clackmannanshire Society, although well-established and well endowed, had become extinct!
STREET NAMES
Names of individuals seldom reflect their appearance, personality or occupation; names of streets and roads, however, particularly in our older towns or villages, call up echoes of the past, be they fact or fiction. Crafts, scenic descriptions, attempts at honouring local "luminaries" who had risen to prominence but are now almost forgotten; all are granted recognition. In some cases, use of a surname may help to "date" the creation of a street or road.
In 1853, Alloa applied for, and was later granted, the right to appoint nine Commissioners to rule her affairs, under the Police and Improvements Act of 1850. In the relevant minute, Alloa is referred to as a "Burgh of Barony" under its Superior, Lord Erskine, Earl of Mar and Kellie. Already, mention is made in these Minutes, of Mar Place, Kellie Place, Erskine Street, all named after the titles of the Lord of the Manor, Some names of that time, still existing today, are graphic in their intention, but doubtful in origin, for all that. Does Primrose Street, for instance, refer to the rural character of Alloa, or to the surname Primrose, the partner of John Bald, founder of Carsebridge Distillery - or, even more exalted, to the family name of the Roseberys, with their coal interests, south and north of the Forth? There is a proven connection between the naming of "Grange Road", and James Erskine, brother of the Earl of Mar, who went into exile after the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion. Lord Grange took no part in the rebellion, although he had secret connection, it was believed, with the rebels; he restored the family estates later. One curious fact is that his wife, "proud, violent and jealous", caused him much trouble, so that he became estranged from her, and, although he celebrated her funeral in 1732, she was alive until 1745, being imprisoned in such places as Linlithgow, Polmaise, the lonely Island of Heisker, and even, for seven years, on St. Kilda - the veritable "back of beyond!" Such a link with Grange Road is strengthened by the presence of a "Grange Pit" shown nearby, on a 1683 map of "Strathdevon and District between the Ochils and the Forth".
To return to Primrose Place, off Primrose Street, this was once known as the "Sandy Hole", since there was a "little vale through which flowed the Fairy Burn" to the North of it, where the old station and the Ring Route are today. Greenfield Street once marked the crofts on the outer edge of town, and Greenside (the area surrounding the centre of the Old Town) was where the open grassed area would be for drying or bleaching clothes or following the pastimes of the day. The Old Town has almost been submerged in industrial buildings, car parks, and other development, and the names are only of "phantom streets", which have disappeared under tarmac and stone - on an Ordnance Survey map of 1864, Alloa Burgh, we have, in that area, the Town Green, Old Bridge Street, Old Market, Old High Street (roughly between Maclays and Patons' and Baldwins' buildings) also Trongate, Meiklejohn's Vennel, East and West Vennel).
Alloa lost a large section of its mediaeval "heart" in 1867, when an application was made by Messrs. John Paton Son and Messrs. George Younger and Sons, Brewers, to "deviate one street up Old Market Street and to substitute a new street, therefor". Town Commissioners thought the proposal would be a great improvement to the town and to the sanitary conditions of the locality. The two firms indicated that the whole properties between the Trongate and the New Entry and between the Tabernacle (an old place of worship for the Methodists) and Brathie Burn belonged to them, and that block embraced the old street proposed to be cleared and "the ground on which we offer to make the new street".
This would be a continuation of New Entry (next to Patons' and Baldwins') northward to Trongate and Old High Street "and would form a much more convenient access than the present circuitous route round by Old Market Street. Underlining the very narrow state of the present thoroughfare, the applicants promised that the new street would be from 21 to 24 feet wide "being about the same as Greenside Street and the lower part of Candleriggs, and fully one half wider than Old High Street and Trongate". Ruinous houses on both sides of Old Market Street were to be removed and replaced with stores and similar buildings, thus providing the town with extra revenue. In a separate meeting the town's Commissioners agreed that the solum of Old Market Street on completion of the new street
allowed to "be taken possession of by Messrs. John Paton Son and Company, to be built on as proposed by them". Thus, Alloa's town layout of the Middle Ages has been eradicated in the interests of progress. In passing, it is interesting to notice that our present High Street was once named "High Coalgate", being considered a continuation of the present "Coalgate", adjoining Mill Street. (This was mentioned in the meeting—house charter of the Anti-Burgher Congregation dated 1772) Another current street name of that time was "Cowie's loan or lane" for Mar Street.
Whins Road (whin implying "broom" bushes) reflects its country origins also, on the outskirts of the town.
Part of Whins Road is sometimes termed Gaberston (often mis—spelt and mis-pronounced, as Gabertson). This might seem to indicate a "ferm toun" in its suffix "ton", and reflects the name of "Brude" a Pictish King who is alleged to have fought a battle against the Saxons on nearby Hawkhi11 in 1711, commemorated, it is said, by the "Carved cross slab" still remaining in a field near Clackmannan Road. The name "Brathie" or "Brothy" Burn is supposedly another relic of this King's presence in Alloa; he it was, who was visited by St. Columba in his fortified capital at Inverness. Further research shows that Columba died in 597 A.D. which would date King Brude to the 6th century; what then of the "cross slab"? noted as an "ancient monument of the 8th century, of local significance" in the
County Planning Department's booklet of December, 1973 (Scottish Architecture in Clackmannanshire). It may be that it has no connection with Brude but with a later burial, or a later battle.
Hilton Road, known to some older Alloa residents as "The Tolls", relates to a pit in the vicinity, called Hilton, marked on the 1683 "Ochils and Forth" map, as was its counterpart, Holton, which was a mining area on the edge of what is now Sauchie. A brick work also bore the name Hilton.
Lambert Terrace is an interesting survival as it reminds us of the long-ago Gaberston woollen mill which made shawls and employed hundreds of workers, even in the 1840's, the owner's name being lambert. Springfield Road recalls not only its country origins but also the Spinning mill of the Victorian era, burned down in the early 1900's. It was sited opposite the premises of Ind Coope, below the railway bridge spanning Whins Road.
Many names can be deceptive, as with Shillinghill, which has no connection with money. The original word, "shieling", meant a piece of rising ground where grain was winnowed, or tossed in the wind by flails. Of course, a corn mill or corn mills, had been in the neighbourhood for centuries.
Off Shillinghill, beneath another car park, are more "phantom streets" of Alloa.
King Street is a mere sawn-off stump of a one-time long street reaching North, and turning sharply West, towards Primrose Place and the Public Baths. Another street which joined on to Shillinghill, was Back o' Dykes, now only remembered in the name of a bar. I have been told of another interesting street name, Pipe Close, in that quarter of Alloa; but I do not know of any explanation as to its origin. Jamaica Street used to run parallel with Shillinghill, from King Street, eastwards, but the building of the Ring Route has blurred its outlines also, and nothing remains of it.
Church Street, a "new" street in the late 19th century, was built roughly to Ludgate, from Marshill to Bedford Place. The Minister's Glebe, (hence Glebe Terrace) formed the sloping hillside where a nursery garden now lies; there was once pasturage and an orchard on this site, and it is reported in old records that a large field there was the site "for much local pageantry, cattle shows, circus performances or other travelling exhibitions". The famous athlete of the Victorian era, Donald Dinnie, appeared there. Church Street was named possibly because of its position near so many of the town's churches - Parish, West and Chalmers Church, now a discotheque.
Ludgate, or Lower Ludgate, to be more correct, was once bordered by market gardens on its eastern side; the upper part of the street cuts across to Tullibody Road where North Church stands, in its oddly-shaped grounds (perhaps due to the former toll-house which stood on that site). In "Alloa 60 Years Ago" published in 1911, Ludgate is noted as being a "narrow, rural-looking lane with high hedges on each side". It is thought that the "Lud" part of the name indicated a pond nearby.
Mitchell Crescent, Henderson Avenue, Paton Street, Moir Street, Younger Street, all these honour Town Council personalities or well-known manufacturers of their time. Dirleton Gardens puzzled me for a while until I discovered that a title of the Earl of Mar was Baron Dirleton; Viscount Fenton (Fenton Street) was another of the Mar titles. One of the Earls was Walter Coningsby Erskine, this middle name has been given to Coningsby Place near Glebe Terrace.
Shaftesbury Street evokes memories of the famous Lord Shaftesbury with his humanitarian work respecting factory conditions, while Ashley Terrace recalls one of his Christian names; the Alloa link is that a daughter of this beneficent Earl married an Earl of Mar.
A particularly attractive name is Sunnyside (marked as a settlement of some kind on the 1683 map). At one time, the "brouwers of Sinyside" were well-known for their skills in making ale, and in the 1850's there was a plantation with fine old trees at Sunnyside, before its present-dew association with a cemetery.
Claremont would seem to be an untypical name for a small Scots burgh to adopt, but it would indicate the pride that was felt in this "new" district, of fine Victorian villas, many of which still remain. Claremont set on a high ridge known to older residents as part of the "Old Road" which led to Tullibody. Alexandra Drive was built, only in the early years of this century [20th], named after the Queen of Edward VII.
Broad Street was originally named John Street, after the 6th Earl of Mar (1675-1732) who constructed this street to the Shore; but it was soon re-named "Broad Street" - "to show how broad a street should be".
The same Earl built a new highway to Clackmannan. Part of Broad Street is known as "The Walk" or "Lime Tree Walk" - these trees were gifted to the town by sailors whose vessel had to spend the previous winter in the port, due to bad weather, and who were treated kindly by the inhabitants.
At one time, some fine large, detached residences bordered Broad Street, which had a continental air, due to the "linden trees". Beyond, nearer the harbour, were several well-remembered streets, stretching towards the West, such as Forth Street, Castle Street, Carron Street, (the ironworks connection would seem to explain this) now vanished under the developments of "United Glass" [now O-I]. Candle Riggs has recovered its old name, having spent the Victorian period, as "Candle Street"; "The Caunel Rig" was its earlier name.
It has been said that the name, "Smithfield" in Smithfield Loan, echoes a cottage or house which once stood in the neighbourhood.
For sheer romance, I give the prize to "Hawkhill" which has obviously connections with mediaeval falconry and the age of chivalry; the old road to Clackmannan swept past its base, but along the line of the present-day Devon Road.
There are more I could mention, but these may be self-explanatory, or recently-formed. Suffice to say, that Alloa, in common with many other towns of a like age, has a fascinating total of streets, road and place names, which reveal a mixture of accuracy, supposition or mere whimsicality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Minutes of Alloa Commissioners. 1853 - and subsequent years.
CRAWFORD, John. Memorials of the Parish of Alloa. Published - J. Lothian Alloa Advertiser Office, Alloa. 28th March, 1874.
ARCHIBALD, James. Alloa 60 Years Ago. Published - Buchan Brothers, "Advertiser" Office. 1911.
Catalogue of the Society of Natural Science and Archaeology. 1863 - and subsequent years.
Booklet of "Conservation Areas", prepared by Clackmannan County Council, - 1975 (Architectural Heritage Year) .
N.B. The reference to the first issue of the Alloa Advertiser in 1841 is to Mr. Lothian's monthly magazine. The newspaper began publication in 1850 and it is the newspaper which is kept in microform at Alloa Library.