stirling-1963-vol-1/05_037

Transcription

INTRODUCTION : GENERAL
Ground classed ¹ as good general-purpose farm-land, well drained and with soils of good
depth, is found on the carse areas in the northern and eastern parts of the county, on the lower
Endrick Water, and in the south-western corner of Campsie parish. In places the well-drained
and easily workable land is bordered by good but heavy land, and in the neighbourhood of
Grangemouth it is mixed with a little first-class land though some of this is heavy and liable
to flooding. It should be remembered in this connection that parts of the alluvial carse have
only been made available in comparatively recent times, through the removal of overlying peat
or reclamation from the sea. ² All the foregoing lands are classed as arable. Medium-quality
farm-land, fairly productive but excluded from the first class by conditions of slope, climate or
soil, covers Slammanan parish in the south-east, the eastern part of the Lennox Hills, the
upper valley of the Endrick Water, and a small area south of Strathblane. Land of this quality
is used for both crops and grass. Poor-quality mountain land, with poor, stony soils and often
showing outcrops of rock and patches of peat, covers the higher-lying parts of the Lennox
Hills, and the whole of the Ben Lomond massif. These mountainous areas comprise acid
grass-lands, heather moors, peat moors, and sub-alpine moors, and at best provide rough
pasture.
As to what lands were under forest at any given period in the past little can be said with
confidence, though it is natural to suppose that much of the better farm-land has been converted
from forest at one time or another. The question is somewhat obscured by 15th-century
allusions to the so-called "Caledonian forest", ³ itself a legacy from Classical literature, which
Boece places, in one passage, in the Southern Uplands and, in another, in the Highlands, while
Lesley confuses it with Tor Wood. ⁴ It is probable, however, that such areas as the lower slopes
of the Ben Lomond massif, which seem naturally well-suited for tree-growth, probably once
carried much more extensive forests ⁵ than the existing oak-woods flanking Loch Lomond,
which are no doubt of natural origin though much modified by management in the 19th
century. ⁶ Tor Wood and Callendar Wood were evidently in existence in the middle of the
12th century, ₇ though their extent at that time is unknown. Six dozen large birch trees from
Callendar Wood were used for scaffolding at Linlithgow Palace in 1534. ⁸
The resources of the land must, however, be considered in conjunction with the local
climate. and of this some idea may be obtained from the local meteorological records. ⁹ The
mean annual rainfall (1921-50) ranges from less than 30 in. on the shores of the Forth to
between 60 in. and 100 in. or more in the Ben Lomond area, the figures for Grangemouth
being 30·9 in., for Stirling 35·9 in., and for a point in the Duchray valley 1500 ft. above sea
level 89·2 in. At Stirling the driest month is April (1·85 in.) and the wettest December (4·05 in.).
The mean annual temperature (1921-50) at Stirling is 48·0° F., the warmest month being

1 The facts quoted in this paragraph have been taken from the O.S. map of Great Britain, sheet 1, 1:625,000, Land Classification,
and ditto, Vegetation Reconnaissance Survey of Scotland, 1945 (explanatory text, 1950).
2 On the draining of Blairdrummond Moss, on the Perthshire bank of the Forth upstream from Drip, see Caddell, The Story
of the Forth, 262 ff.
3 This is discussed by Watson, Place Names, 20.
4 Reference may conveniently be made to Hume Brown, Scotland before 1700, 48 (for Major), 71 and 80 f. (for Boece), 130
(for Lesley).
5 In 1793 the whole north-eastern side of the loch was "one continued wood consisting of some ashes, alders, hazels, but mostly
oaks" (Stat. Acct., ix (1793), 17).
6 On this see General View, 213 ff.; Scottish Forestry, ix, No. 4 (Oct. 1955), 145 ff.
7 Cambuskenneth, No. 190; Newbattle, No. 163.
8 M. of W. Accts., i (1529-1615), 124.
9 For the data given here the Commissioners are indebted to the Meteorological Office, Air Ministry, Edinburgh.

-- 3