District news
shop. At 8pm (doors open at 7.30pm) ‘Downton Abbey’, over 18s only, BYOB, tickets Adult £6, concession £4. For further information and to book tickets go to www.milnathortfilmhouse.com
KINROSS MUSEUM
Saturday, February 29 sees the 10th anniversary celebration from 1pm -3pm at the museum in Loch Leven Community Campus, all welcome.
KINROSS AND OCHIL WALKING GROUP
Sunday, March 1 is a walk from Tillicoultry to Kirk Glen. Six miles following the River Devon to the Glenfoot Bridge, a little road walking up to the golf club, over to Kirk Glen, down to Harviestoun and returning along the old railway line. For further information and where to meet please call group secretary, Ann Eve on 01577 863887.
KINROSS AND DISTRICT JAC
Dung sale on Sunday, March 1. Kinross Young Farmers will be going around Kinross selling dung to houses. The cost will be £5 for a wheelbarrow and £2 for a bag. All money raised will be donated to the Royal Highland Education Trust Perth and Kinross. All queries please contact Rachael Wood on 07765 858100.
KINROSS-SHIRE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The talk on February 17 was shared by two speakers, Eric Simpson and George Robertson. Mr Simpson covered the general aspects of travel on the Great North Road and Mr Robertson on the journey by coach from North Queensferry to Kinross.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the roads in Scotland needed improvement. There were Wade’s military roads in some parts from earlier times but they were in a very poor condition and there were few bridges. Turnpike road trusts were set up to pay for the road and bridge building by charging tolls for their use. Thomas Telford was employed as engineer and built 1000 miles of roads and bridges on the east coast.
The evolution of better roads meant that faster coaches could travel and so faster horses were bred to pull them. Horses were changed every eight to 10 miles. Tens of thousands of horses were needed to keep the system going. Mail coaches were the fastest, all with the same livery, all with a guard to protect the mail armed with pistols and a blunderbuss. Not only did mail travel on the mail coach but also newspapers. The outside of coaches told of victories in war and new laws passed. News passed orally too.
The tolls were collected at toll houses which had a bar across the road to stop passing without payment. This was based on the mileage done and each mile was marked by a milestone on turnpike roads. Many toll houses are still to be seen but now just as homes, and can be found all the way up to Thurso in the north of Scotland.
As more people travelled by coach, so more accommodation was needed. Inns with rooms for travellers and stables for horses. Slides were shown of some old coaching inns still in use today.
In Dunkeld a new bridge was built by Telford across the river, partly paid for by the government and partly by the Duke of Atholl. This meant that people had to stop using his ferry which they had paid for to cross the Tay and had to pay to cross the bridge instead. It ended up with the local people rioting and throwing the toll gates into the river.
North of Inverness, there were no military roads and the Duke of Sutherland and Sir John Sinclair pumped in a lot of money to improve the roads in the north.
Blacksmiths were also found along the roadway, providing shoes for the horses and repairs to coach wheels.
Street names often reflected the route of the Great North Road as in Milnathort with ‘Old Perth Road’.
When the railways came, the roads became deserted, but from the 1880s, cyclists started to use the roads again when the safety bike was introduced.
Mr Robertson started in North Queensferry where travellers cross the Forth by ferry, there were 13 establishments providing refreshments for travellers and horses for the coaches. Originally the route started with a very steep hill but in 1772 it was moved to a different road which was not so steep. The ‘Ferry Toll House’ has gone but the ‘Ferry Toll Bus Park and Ride’ sits on the site of it.
There were several groups that could pass through Inverkeithing without paying a toll there, including those going to the salt pans and soldiers. The route of the old Great North Road, no longer in use, can be still be seen at various points on the way north. Crossgates, named for the meeting of roads from north, south, east and west, had the Cross Inn for coaches. In 1842 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, travelling north, changed horses in Cowdenbeath. This is where the road from Burntisland and its ferry met the Great North Road.
Continuing to travel north, there was an inn at Blairadam and another one at Gairneybridge. In 1812, the South Queich bridge in Kinross was in a ruinous state but the road tolls helped to pay for repairs.
Kinross was also visited by Victoria and Albert when they changed horses at the Kirklands Inn. Other coaching inns in Kinross were the Red Lion, the Green and the Salutation. They all had vehicles and horses available as well as accommodation and refreshments. Travellers recorded reports of their visits to Kinross as early as 1769, praising them in the main.
In Kinross, there is a milestone still to be seen opposite the Campus in the Muirs and another in the southern end of the town. Many milestones have disappeared over the years.
The time of coach travel didn’t last brand new bronze statue of Perthshire’s famous fiddler, Niel Gow (1727-1807) is glimpsed for the first time. The clay statue by sculptor David Annand has been recently cast in bronze at a foundry in Edinburgh. It will go up in Dunkeld, close to where the musician lived, later this year as a permanent memorial to the man who was the celebrated fiddler to the second Duke of Atholl. Money to fund it was raised by the annual Niel Gow Fiddle Festival, established in 2004, to celebrate the life and music of Perthshire’s fiddle legend. Tickets for the 2020 festival, which next takes place on March 21 and 22, are available from Birnam Arts. The fantastic line-up of musicians coming this year are listed at https://www. birnamarts.com/ niel-gow-festival-2017/
long. The coming of the railways brought their end but the inns would have coaches waiting at the stations to collect passengers. In 1878 there was a meeting of the trustees of the Great North Road in the Kirklands. Their debt had amounted to £17,352/12/6. The decision of the meeting was that the county and the burgh should take over looking after the roads.
Now we have a motorway and can make the same journey by coach [bus] from North Queensferry to Kinross and the future is moving towards driverless buses.
After some questions from the members, Prof David Munro thanked the two speakers for great insight, showing how life changes and for how short a time the coaches actually ran.
The winner of last week’s TICC bonus ball was Annie Fairweather on number 18. The Dino Out of School Club will hold its annual coffee morning tomorrow at 10am in the TICC. All welcome. First prize in the main raffle will be a £150 Co-op gift card.