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Overview and Brief History of Clackmannan
The following text has been prepared as part of the HES Urban Survey of Clackmannan, 2021-2.
Located to the north of the River Forth, Clackmannan lies nearly 2 miles south-east of Alloa, over 7 miles east of Stirling, and almost 11½ miles north-west of Dunfermline.
Clackmannan developed as a royal burgh in the 12th century, with a castle of some form also having stood on the site now occupied by Clackmannan Tower (NS99SW 1) since the 12th century. The current tower house, however, appears to date from the mid-14th century, after King David II (1324-71) gifted Clackmannan to his kinsman Sir Robert Bruce (d.1403). The tower and surrounding lands remained in the Bruce family until the death of Lady Catherine Bruce in 1791.
The burgh (NS99SW 17) itself grew along the ridge leading east from the Tower and grew in prominence as a result of its access to a port on the River Forth at Clackmannan Pow. This strategic location, its links with the prominent Bruce family, and the associated trade it attracted, all combined to see it established as the county town. The entrance to the Pow from the River Forth was originally closer to the town than it is today, and a tramway ran between the town and the pier, which made Clackmannan a busy, accessible port for trade with the Low Countries and London. The historic core of the town is centred around a wide market place of sorts, formed at the junction of High Street running west to Clackmannan Tower, and the wider Main Street running east. At this] junction too, a road (now Kirk Wynd) headed north towards Alloa, whilst another (Port Street) headed south towards the Clackmannan Pow. In 1592 the tolbooth (NS99SW 2.0) was built in the square, to provide the county court and prison. Only the belfry added in the late 17th century still survives, adjacent to the Mercat Cross (NS99SW 3), which dates from around 1630. Alongside the remains of the tolbooth and the Mercat Cross stands the Stone, or ‘Clack’, of Mannan (NS99SW 6), from which the town takes its name. Named for its association with the Celtic tribe of Manau, the stone originally lay at the foot of nearby Lookaboutye Brae and is said to have connections with Robert the Bruce, also being known as King Robert’s Stone. It was held in Clackmannan Tower for many years before being placed on top of a stone monolith in its present position in 1833.
The development of coal mining in the surrounding area, along with the opening of several quarries in the parish, and the establishment of two distilleries at Kennetpans and Kilbagie, saw the town’s port thriving during the late 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. Despite this, the town didn’t expand much beyond the main street during this period, and much of the housing for mine-workers was established outwith the burgh core, with smaller hamlets and miners’ rows being founded in outlying areas. By 1875, the Clackmannan Colliery Company had built at least three villages to house their miners (Glasgow Herald, 16 February 1875, as quoted on Part XI - Scottish Mining Website (accessed 21st November 2022)): Pottery, formed of three miners’ rows, lying to the north of the burgh between the River Devon and the main road to Alloa; Westfield, a settlement of three long rows comprising 30-40 houses to the south-west of Clackmannan burgh; and the almost conjoined Green and Square, to the south of the burgh, comprising several rows of cottages. The largest outlying mining settlement was Duke Street, just to the west of Green and Square, although there were also a number of workers from the local quarries and textile industry residing there in the late 19th century (based on entries in Lothian’s Annual Register for the County of Clackmannan, 1877). Very often, the women and girls whose menfolk worked in the mines would find employment in the textile mills in the neighbourhood. The nearby Kennet village (NS99SW 100), 1½ miles south-east of Clackmannan, is an excellent example of the mining rows which would have dotted the coal mining landscape of Scotland. This terrace of twenty single-storeyed, three-bayed, stone-built cottages have pantiled roofs with slate lower courses (one entirely re-roofed in slate) and dates from the late 18th century with later alterations. All the miners’ rows around Clackmannan (Pottery, Westfield, Green, Square and Duke Street) were demolished and most of the sites redeveloped in the 20th century.
As a result of the natural flow of the river, over time the entrance to the Pow became silted up, and because of this, trade moved further upstream to the more accessible port of Alloa, which then took over the title of county town in 1822. This also saw the transfer of the courthouse and other civic functions to Alloa, and as a result, Clackmannan did not expand as much as might be expected during the Georgian and Victorian periods. There are only a few small pockets of stone cottages on the roads leading out from the burgh core -Port Street (NS99SW 143), Kirk Wynd (NS99SW 142), and Cattlemarket (NS99SW 162), rather than the development of large suburbs found across other former Scottish burghs around this time. This is undoubtedly due, at least in part, to the shift of county town functions and trade to Alloa in the early 19th century.
In 1850 the railway first arrived, when the Stirling and Dunfermline Railway passed to the north of the town, and Clackmannan Station was built just east of the Clackmannan Brick & Tile Works (where Helensfield Poultry Farm currently stands). This was superseded in 1893 by the Clackmannan & Kennet Station on the Kincardine Branch of the North British Railway, built just outside the town centre on the east side of Alloa Road. The original station was renamed Clackmannan Road at this time, and eventually closed in 1921, with the Clackmannan & Kennet Station also closing shortly after, in 1930. Both stations are now gone, although the latter rail route remains in use as part of the Alloa-Dunfermline line. Unlike most other towns, Clackmannan does not seem to have experienced any accompanying growth with the arrival of the railway, and the original station and associated goods yard seem to have been mostly used as a means of transportation of goods manufactured at the brick and tile works.
While the mining settlements lay outwith the burgh boundary, where most civic and social amenities were, a range of leisure facilities sprang up in their vicinity during the later 19th century. Employers saw the provision of such facilities as a way of keeping their workforce healthy and ‘temperate’ (sober) to distract or divert them from spending their leisure time drinking in public houses. In much the same way that Dunfermline-born steel magnate Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) donated libraries across Scottish communities, John Thomson-Paton (1831-1910), owner of the town’s textile mill on the banks of the Black Devon river (where Cherryton Drive now sits), gifted the library, billiards and reading rooms created within the refurbished Town Hall (NS99SW 103) for the local community to benefit from (1903). Thomson-Paton also donated several other public/leisure buildings in nearby Alloa including the swimming baths, library, and town hall. Clackmannan did not appear to be endowed with many public houses or inns around this period: maps for the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries only show three or four buildings marked as ‘PH’ (public house), ‘Inn’ or ‘Hotel’ within the town boundary (for example, on the 2nd edition of the OS 25-inch map (Clackmannanshire 1900, CXL.5)). Several sports and social clubs were established in Clackmannan around the 1880s. A bowling club (NS99SW 160) was founded on Castle Street in 1886, with a new pavilion erected in 1892 (Peter Drummond Architects (on behalf of Clackmannanshire Council), Clackmannan: Conservation Area Appraisal Consultative Draft, 2016). Curling ponds appeared on maps near Chapelhill during the turn of the 19th/20th century (for example, the 2nd edition of the OS 25-inch map (Clackmannanshire 1900, CXL.5)), and continued to be shown on maps until the early 1950s (marked as ‘Disused’ on the revised edition of the OS 6-inch map (Clackmannanshire 1951, CXL)). Clackmannan also had its own football team, established in 1885 and a ground was built adjacent to the curling ponds in 1886. The team continued to play there until the club folded in 1931. There were also tennis courts in the Chapelhill area around this time, along with a local cricket club.
Despite the availability of many leisure activities on the doorstep, the condition of housing provided for the miners was usually very basic, with no running water, WCs, or baths. Many homes still had earthen floors and suffered from damp, and most only consisted of one or two rooms which might house up to six. This situation prevailed in mining communities across Scotland and the UK right up until the end of WWI, with 60-70% (Clackmannan - Scottish Mining Website (accessed 21st November 2022)) of the houses being provided by the collieries, and the rest being privately rented.
Changes to Clackmannan’s townscape during the 20th century need to be considered within the wider social context that emerged immediately after WWI and continued until the late 1960s/early 1970s. In the early years of the 20th century, it became widely recognised that housing conditions and public health were intertwined. Many attempts at improving housing standards had their foundations in public health movements, and slum clearance schemes were widely implemented across Scotland. The Housing & Town Planning (Scotland) Act of 1919 (also known as the Addison Act after its author Dr Christopher Addison (1869-1951), Minister for Health (1919-21)) was a catalyst for major changes to housing provision in Scotland, and in the UK under the broader Act. The campaign was termed ‘Homes Fit For Heroes’ as it aimed to provide better housing for returning servicemen and their families following the atrocities of WWI. Building costs had increased threefold by the end of WWI, and under the Act, state subsidies were provided to local authorities to help them build new estates with better amenities. However, because of the higher costs for land and building materials, subsequent rents were still often beyond the reach of the intended tenants, and the housing was ultimately occupied by skilled workers and middle classes who could afford the rents.
The town’s main period of expansion took place in the mid-20th century as demand for better housing for workers at surrounding coal mines and other industries (quarries, Paton’s woollen mill, paper mills at Kilbagie, breweries and distilleries in nearby Alloa) increased. Housing erected in the south-east (Izatt Terrace (NS99SW 147)/Dundas Crescent (NS99SW 148)/Zetland Street/Castle Street and Terrace/Bruce Street (NS99SW 139)/Garden Terrace (NS99SW 140)) and north-west (Kersegreen Road (NS99SW 151)/Erskine Place (NS99SW 146)/Woodside Terrace) of the town was originally provided by the coal companies, but the local authority later embarked on a series of schemes beyond the boundary of the former burgh, which increased the town’s population during this period.
In the late 18th and 19th century, various commentators had remarked on the often dilapidated state of the town, from an observation on the town in Sir John Sinclair’s Statistical Account for Clackmannan of 1795 (‘many houses are wretched and mean…Tolbooth and courthouse a heap of ruins and nuisance to the public..’), to Robert Chambers, visiting in 1837, as part of his ‘Picture of Scotland’ volume (‘old, decayed and deserted town… (with) one long unpaved street’) and Francis H Groome’s comments in his ‘Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland’ of 1882 (‘…wide main street, but many poor houses, there is little to admire beyond its ruined Tower and an old Market Cross…’). However, during the mid-20th century, the County Council embarked on a programme of improving living conditions in several of its county towns, including Clackmannan. Most of the High Street, as well as parts of Kirk Wynd, Port Street and Main Street, was demolished and replaced during the late 1950s and 60s, re-using and replicating many elements from the buildings being replaced. This was carried out under the guidance of the County Architect William Higgins Henry (1905-84), following the ‘conservative surgery’ principles of Patrick Geddes (1854-1932).
However, during the 1950s and 60s, many of the mines that had previously supported the town closed, which coincided with the wider trend of commuter expansion, and this the closures did not prevent the continued expansion of the village’s footprint. Some other mines further afield undoubtedly offered employment to Clackmannan residents throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s. In particular, Longannet coal complex near Kincardine (c.4 miles from Clackmannan) operated right up until closure in 2002 and would certainly have provided ongoing employment for coal workers over this period. Other mines in the vicinity were also still operating during the 1980s and 90s: Devon Colliery (1983-9, 1 ¼ miles east of Clackmannan); Gartmorn Colliery (1967-84, c.2 miles north); and Castlebridge Colliery (1978-99, c.2 miles east).
Aside from mining, employment opportunities for Clackmannan residents in the late 20th century tended to move further from the town, particularly to Alloa, which was (and still is, at time of writing in 2022) a major centre for brewing and distilling. Long-standing industries of textiles, weaving and glassmaking also remained big employers in the area. During the latter years of the 20th century, the nature of employment continued to change, and Clackmannan increasingly became a commuter town with residents travelling as far as Stirling, Glasgow and Edinburgh to work. In 2008, the re-opening of Alloa train station and the completion of the Clackmannanshire Bridge better integrated the town and county into the major transport networks, making commuting and new investment in the locality more accessible than before.
The vast majority of development in Clackmannan during the 20th century has been residential. Due to the town’s expanding population by the early 1970s, a new school was needed in the town to accommodate resulting growth in numbers of school-age children. As a result, the new primary school (NS99SW 134) was erected 1971-2 at the junction of Lochies Road and Port Street in the south-west of the town, on what was originally part of the Duke Street mining settlement.
Further societal factors played a part in how Clackmannan developed during this latter part of the 20th century, as both home and car ownership became more widespread meaning people could live further from their workplace, and not rely on public transport to get there. A shift subsequently took place in the town’s development in the late 20th and early 21st century, with private housebuilders erecting homes for owner-occupancy on the outskirts of the town as it became a popular dormitory settlement for those commuting to Alloa, Stirling, Dunfermline and even Edinburgh.
Despite the expansion of the town, developments during the later 20th century and early 21st century have had little impact on the historic burgh core, and the mid-20th-century developments. The distinctive features of earlier periods of the town’s history can still be seen in the townscape today, with any more recent development within more historic areas of the town being in small pockets which have little disruption to their overall characters, by maintaining elements such as scale, street layout and materials.
More in-depth discussion of Clackmannan’s character can be found under each of the three Areas of Townscape Character identified in the town:
-Clackmannan, Historic Core Area of Townscape Character (NS99SW 164)
-Clackmannan, C20 Industrial Expansion Area of Townscape Character (NS99SW 165)
-Clackmannan, C20 and C21 Commuter Expansion Area of Townscape Character (NS99SW 166)
Information from HES (LCK), 23rd November 2022
