Clackmannan ( ; gd, Clach Mhanainn, perhaps meaning "Stone of Manau"), is a small town and civil parish set in the Central Lowlands of

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

. Situated within the

Forth Valley The River Forth is a major river in central Scotland, long, which drains into the North Sea on the east coast of the country. Its drainage basin covers much of Stirlingshire in Scotland's Central Belt. The Gaelic name for the upper reach of t ...

, Clackmannan is south-east of Alloa and south of Tillicoultry. The town is within the county of Clackmannanshire, of which it was formerly the

county town In the United Kingdom and Ireland, a county town is the most important town or city in a county. It is usually the location of administrative or judicial functions within a county and the place where the county's members of Parliament are elect ...

, until Alloa overtook it in size and importance.

History and toponymy

Name and toponymy

The name ''Clackmannan'' may be of Brittonic origin. The first element is probably ''*clog'', meaning "rock, crag, cliff" (c.f.

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...

''clog''), and the second is the personal name ''Manau'', from the root ''man-'' meaning "projecting''. The name of the town has been said to allude to the Stone of Manau or Stone of Mannan, a pagan monument that can be seen in the town square beside the Tolbooth or Tollbooth Tower, which dates from 1592.

History

The early growth of the town was due in large part to the port which lay on the banks of the tidal stretch of the River

Black Devon The Black Devon is a river in Scotland. It rises in the Cleish Hills, specifically the area known as Outh Muir, north of Knockhill Racing Circuit, around north-west of Dunfermline, Fife, with the gathering of three small streams in branch form ...

at its confluence with the River Forth. There are now no visible signs of the port and Clackmannan now sits over a mile inland from the river. The locals tried in vain to keep their port viable by digging out the silt but to no avail. The silting of Clackmannan's port and the fact that boats could no longer access it meant that the port in Alloa came in to use instead and this led to an increase in the population of nearby Alloa see that town replace Clackmannan as the

of Clackmannanshire in 1822. During the 12th century, the area formed part of the lands controlled by the abbots of

Cambuskenneth Cambuskenneth ( gd, Camas Choinnich ) is a village in the city of Stirling, Scotland. It has a population of 250 and is the site of the historic Cambuskenneth Abbey. It is situated by the River Forth and the only road access to the village is alo ...

. Later it became associated with the

Bruce The English language name Bruce arrived in Scotland with the Normans, from the place name Brix, Manche in Normandy, France, meaning "the willowlands". Initially promulgated via the descendants of king Robert the Bruce (1274−1329), it has been a ...

family, who, during the 14th century, built a strategic tower-house called

Clackmannan Tower Clackmannan Tower is a five-storey tower house, situated at the summit of King's Seat Hill in Clackmannan, Clackmannanshire, Scotland. It dates back to at least the 14th century, when it was inhabited by King David II of Scotland, and David is r ...

and in the 16th Century built a mansion alongside the tower. The mansion was demolished when local branch of the Bruces died out in 1791, although its stones may have been recycled to build the new parish church in 1815. It still stands above the town according to Historic Scotland, but entry is forbidden (because of

subsidence Subsidence is a general term for downward vertical movement of the Earth's surface, which can be caused by both natural processes and human activities. Subsidence involves little or no horizontal movement, which distinguishes it from slope move ...

). The population of Clackmannan in 1841 was 1,077 A crater on

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

253 Mathilde Mathilde (minor planet designation: 253 Mathilde) is an asteroid in the intermediate asteroid belt, approximately 50 kilometers in diameter, that was discovered by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa at Vienna Observatory on 12 November 1885. It h ...

is named after Clackmannan. Because Mathilde is a dark,

carbonaceous Carbon () is a chemical element with the chemical symbol, symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalence, tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent bond, covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to gro ...

body, its craters have been named after famous coalfields from across the world. The

Clackmannan Group The Clackmannan Group is the name given to a suite of rocks of late Dinantian and Namurian age laid down during the Carboniferous period in the Midland Valley of Scotland. Description The Group comprises a lower unit of coarse sandstones, sil ...

is the name given to a suite of rocks of late

Dinantian Dinantian is the name of a series (stratigraphy), series or Epoch (reference date), epoch from the Lower Carboniferous system (stratigraphy), system in Europe. It can stand for a series of rocks in Europe or the time span in which they were deposit ...

and Namurian age laid down during the

Carboniferous period The Carboniferous ( ) is a Period (geology), geologic period and System (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period million years ago (Myr, Mya), to the beginning of the Permian Period, ...

in the Midland Valley of Scotland. The war memorial was designed by Sir Robert Lorimer in 1919.

Archaeological Excavation

Headland Archaeology Headland Archaeology Ltd is a wholely owned subsidiary of the RSK Group. Headland provides archaeological services and heritage advice to the construction industry. Company history Headland Archaeology Ltd was established in 1996. Headquartered ...

completed an excavation of a prehistoric and medieval site at Meadowend Farm, Kennet which lies to the south-east of Clackmannan and was within the corridor for the new road and crossing (the

Clackmannanshire Bridge The Clackmannanshire Bridge is a road bridge over the Firth of Forth in Scotland which opened to traffic on 19 November 2008. Prior to 1 October 2008 the bridge was referred to as the upper Forth crossing while the name was chosen. Background T ...

) over the River Forth near

Kincardine Kincardine may refer to: Places Scotland *Kincardine, Fife, a town on the River Forth, Scotland **Kincardine Bridge, a bridge which spans the Firth of Forth *Kincardineshire, a historic county **Kincardine, Aberdeenshire, now abandoned **Kincardi ...

(this opened in 2008). Over two thousand fragments of prehistoric pottery were recovered from the site, the vast majority from a dense concentration of pits or postholes dated to the middle/

late Neolithic In the archaeology of Southwest Asia, the Late Neolithic, also known as the Ceramic Neolithic or Pottery Neolithic, is the final part of the Neolithic period, following on from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and preceding the Chalcolithic. It is some ...

period. Several structures were identified on site, the most substantial a large roundhouse with an outer ring-groove and an entrance to the south-east with an extended porch. Two large post-built roundhouses were found, and a third post-built structure contained a hearth-pit, which had been filled with fire-cracked stones and charcoal. It was hoped that radiocarbon dating would enable more precise phasing of the structures.Site Record for Garlet House The GarletDetails Details
RCAHMS

References

External links