Tuesday, April 21, 2020

The Township of Glen - 1

There is very little sign on the modern landscape of the thirty or more townships which existed in Golspie parish before the clearances in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, so when I have an idle moment I search for them on satellite images. This resulted in the discovery of the outlines of buildings and walls with what looks like a later sheep fank superimposed on them.

It's in the glen of the Golspie Burn to the northwest of Backies, on a slope below....

....the narrow, single-track road that runs from Golspie into the hills and on to Rogart.

The question is - which township is it? Margaret Wilson Grant's map shows a township, appropriately called Glen, in the glen of the Golspie Burn but on the right bank of the stream rather than the left, and further upstream. However....

....I am convinced it is Glen since William Roy's map, dated some time soon after 1750, clearly shows a 'Glenton of Dunrobbin' in exactly the right place. More, it shows that it was quite a large township, possibly spread across three sites.

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