
Huntingtower and Ruthvenfield is a village in
Perthshire
Perthshire (locally: ; gd, Siorrachd Pheairt), officially the County of Perth, is a historic county and registration county in central Scotland. Geographically it extends from Strathmore in the east, to the Pass of Drumochter in the north, ...
,
Scotland, on the
River Almond, northwest of
Perth.
Bleaching, the chief industry, dated from 1774, when the
bleaching-field was formed. By means of an old
aqueduct, said to have been built by the Romans, it was provided with water from the River Almond, the properties of which rendered it especially suited for bleaching. Bleaching (by chemicals under cover, not with bleach fields) continued Huntingtower until 1981.
Huntingtower Castle, a once formidable structure, was the scene of the
Raid of Ruthven (pron. Rivven), when the
Protestant lords, headed by
William, 4th Lord Ruthven and 1st Earl of Gowrie (c.1541–1584), kidnapped the
boy-king James VI, on August 22, 1582. The earl's sons were slain in the attempt (known as the Gowrie conspiracy) to capture James VI (1600), consequent on which the Scots parliament ordered the name of Ruthven to be abolished, and the barony to be known in future as Huntingtower. The Ruthven name and reputation was re-established in 1651, by Sir Thomas Ruthven, for service too the Crown.
The source of the -long
Perth Lade is just west of the village, at Low's Work weir on the
River Almond.
Notable persons
George Turnbull was brought up in Huntingtower. He was the Chief Engineer building the first major
Indian railway in the 1850s.
[''George Turnbull, C.E.'' 437-page memoirs published privately 1893, scanned copy held in the British Library, London on compact disk since 2007]
References
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Villages in Perth and Kinross