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SRP Recording Event
Date March 2008 - May 2010
Event ID 637033
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/637033
Measured survey, site photographs and historical research.
The grass covered stone foundations of Upper Friarton are situated on a small plateau of land about 200m S of Spital Farm (NT15NE 5). Map evidence suggests there was a settlement here in the 1760s but the surviving farmstead was named and built (or rebuilt) by Mr Robert Brown of Newhall probably around 1800. It went out of use after 1861, but the site, which comprises a rectangular building with an attached rectangular enclosure, continued to be shown as an unnamed building on Ordnance Survey maps until 1901.
The building is aligned ENE - WSW and measures c18.5m by c6m across grass covered rubble walls c0.60m thick and standing up to 1m high. It is divided into two unequal sections: a small W end measuring c4.5m by c3.5m internally and a large E end measuring c13m by c4.5m internally. A gap at the mid-point of the N wall was probably an entrance into the E end compartment, but no threshold or door jambs are visible. There is no obvious access into the W end compartment although a dip in the middle of the dividing wall between the two sections may indicate an internal connecting doorway.
The site is probably one of two un-named townships on the shoulder of Spittal Hill which are depicted on John Laurie’s 1763 ‘Plan of the county of Mid-Lothian.’ It is called Friartown on James Knox’s 1812 ‘Map of the shire of Edinburgh’ and is listed in the census records as Frierton Farm in 1841 and Upper Frierton subsequently, occupied by two shepherd families in 1851 and a ploughman in 1861. The Name book compiled for the 1st Edition Ordnance Survey 6-inch map (Edinburghshire 1853-8, sheet xvii) describes it as a cot house that was once a farm and also records that it received its name from the late ancestor of the proprietor of Newhall. Since Knox shows the name Friartown in 1812 the naming must have been done by Mr Robert Brown (d.1833), who purchased Newhall in 1783. He built the village and mills of Carlops (Annals of Penicuik) and presumably built or rebuilt Friarton farm naming it after the now lost Friarton estate.
The original Friarton lands appear to have been contiguous with, but separate from, Spittal. They are probably the Friarton referred to in a 1537 charter between Holyrood and James Forrester (NAS GD21/7/1424), while Sir John Clerk (NAS GD18/785) described them as part of the lands of St Catherine in the Hopes and St Marie Mount Lothian, annexed to Penicuik in 1617.
Robert Brown probably also built the house of Nether Friarton (NT 17471 57454) which is first shown on a map in 1828 (Greenwood Fowler & Sharp’s ‘Map of the County of Edinburgh’) about 500m E of (Upper) Friarton alongside the road to Nine Mile Burn, opposite Whitehill. It is described as a small farmhouse in the OS Name book although the census shows it was occupied by coal mining families throughout the period 1841-1861.
Information from SRP Pentland Hills, February 2011.
