Solving the puzzle of a disappearing castle
DIGGING INTO THE PAST with Dr Murray Cook
Place of Balglass Now here is a puzzle for you … how do you lose a castle? This is the problem that faced me last weekend at Balglass near Fintry which is Gaelic for‘grey settlement’.
In the late 18th century Balglass was described as an old castle and today there is a very substantial single retaining wall without doors or windows, with the remains of a 19th century farm on top of it.
I, along with a hearty band of volunteers had gone there to explore an area of stone paving uncovered by the owner when digging a pit for a trampoline!
A small excavation revealed some 17th century pottery, what looked like a medieval road and reused medieval masonry in a wall, although, the stonework that the owner uncovered is a 19th century byre.
It’s clear that there was a substantial building here, potentially a castle with a substantial road coming up from the bottom of the valley, so what exactly happened?
It looks like the road was buried and blocked to build a garden in the early 18th century. Then in the late 18th or early 19th century the older house was pulled down to create a raised platform that a new house was built on with a terraced garden round it. The terrace seems to have reused the stone from the older building.
However, by around 1850 the new house was demolished and turned into a farm.
We can see this pattern all over Stirling and indeed Scotland, money from the British Empire (first slavery, sugar and tobacco and then latterly India) flooded into landed families who looked at their old damp, drafty, small pokey houses and decided to pull them down and start again.
That’s one way to solve your insulation problems!