stirling-1963-vol-1/05_038

Transcription

INTRODUCTION : GENERAL
July (59·6°) and the coldest January (38·1°). The average total sunshine for the year recorded
at Stirling is 1192 hours, ¹ the sunniest month being June (174 hours) and the dullest December
(29 hours). On the higher ground the mean annual sunshine is probably in the order of
1000 hours.
In addition to the wealth of its agricultural soil, the county posses a most valuable
resource in its minerals. A return will be made to this subject below, in the discussion of
industrial developments (pp. 7 f.).
Further natural features of great importance to the county's history are the lines of
communication that traverse this part of central Scotland. ² The lowland belt, in the first
place, must always have lent itself to movement between east and west, even when the actual
bottom-lands were covered with undrained marsh and encumbered with woods. Again,
movement between north and south was vitally influenced by the topography of the Forth
valley. At Stirling the breadth of the low-lying ground is only about a mile, but immediately
above the town it begins to widen into what must formerly have been a great wilderness of
moss, with no practicable crossing but the one by the Fords of Frew, where hard ground could
be found between the Blairdrummond and Flanders Mosses. The head of Flanders Moss lies
some seventeen miles to the west of Stirling Bridge, and the route that turned it was flanked
by a wild, mountainous region besides being inconvenient for access to the principal centres of
population. Travellers, and more particularly armies, even when coming from or bound for
places in the west, must generally have preferred, when possible, to make for the eastern
crossing. Thus Stirling, with its bridge and castle, has always possessed outstanding strategic
importance, as guarding the routes not only from north to south but also from east to west. ³
External communications likewise deserve to be mentioned here. Stirling, in virtue of its
position at the highest navigable point, must long have been a port for small vessels, and was
evidently established as such at least as early as 1150. ⁴ The harbour and business connected
therewith appear pretty often in the records, particularly from the 16th century onwards. ⁵
Larger ships were prevented from making the port by shallow "fords", actually bars of rock
or solid boulder-clay stretching across the bottom of the river, as well as by the twisty course
of the waterway, and their cargoes had consequently to be discharged into lighters lower down
the Firth, e.g. at Bo'ness, or brought thence to Stirling overland. When deep water was
needed for the large vessels of James IV's navy, a base, the Pool of Airth, was established near
Airth ⁶. Airth itself, which stands nearly a mile north of the mouth of the Pow, was used for the
export of coal probably as early as 1596 (cf. No. 564) and certainly by 1608 ⁷ ; it was the
principal port of the district in the early 18th century (cf. No. 557), but was superseded
successively by Carronshore and by Grangemouth - the last after the opening of the Forth
and Clyde Canal (No. 552). In 1792 harbours are also mentioned as existing at Dunmore and
Newmiln, near Airth. ⁸

1 This figure is regarded as too low, as the exposure of the sun-recorder results in a cut-off at least 5 per cent. in the year
as a whole.
2 Roads are discussed below on pp. 52 ff.
3 It is true that alternative routes to the north exist through the Ochil Hills, but their use entails the crossing of the Forth by
ferry. In 1303, when Stirling was held by the Scots, Edward I had timber bridges prepared at King's Lynn for shipment to the
Forth by sea, to enable him to cross the river east of Stirling (Cal. of Docts., ii (1272-1307), No. 1375).
4 Lawrie, Charters, CCIX.
5 On this see a paper by D. B. Morris on "Early Navigation of the River Forth" in T.S.N.H.A.S. (1919-20), 51 ff.
6 Accts. L.H.T., iv, xlvi ff.
7 R.P.C. (1607-10), p. 77.
8 Stat. Acct., iii (1792), 489.

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