The Allan Water () is a river in central

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

. Rising in the

Ochil Hills The Ochil Hills (; ) is a range of hills in Scotland north of the River Forth, Forth valley bordered by the cities of Stirling, Perth, Scotland, Perth and the towns of Alloa, Kinross, and Auchterarder . The only major roads crossing the hil ...

, it runs through Strathallan to

Dunblane Dunblane (, ) is a town in the council area of Stirling in central Scotland, and inside the historic boundaries of the county of Perthshire. It is a commuter town, with many residents making use of good transport links to much of the Central Be ...

and

Bridge of Allan Bridge of Allan (, ), also known colloquially as ''Bofa'', is a former spa town in the Stirling (council area), Stirling council area in Scotland, just north of the city of Stirling. Overlooked by the National Wallace Monument, it lies on th ...

before joining the

River Forth 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 Scottish Gaelic, Gaelic name for the ...

. It is liable to cause floods in lower Bridge of Allan. It shares its name with a tributary of the

River Teviot The River Teviot (; ), or Teviot Water, is a river of the Scottish Borders area of Scotland, and is the largest tributary of the River Tweed by catchment area. The Teviot is an important river for wildlife, especially the Atlantic salmon, but ...

. The name is similar to the Ale Water in Berwickshire, the River Alness in Ross-shire, the Allander Water in Stirlingshire, the River Alne and the Ayle Burn in Northumberland, the River Ellen in Cumbria, and several names in the south of England, Wales and Cornwall.

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

, who wrote his Geography about 150 AD, gave the names of some of these rivers as Alauna or Alaunos. Ekwall says that Alauna or Alaunos are British .e. Brythonic or P-Celticriver names. Nicolaisen says that the name Allan is of Pre-Celtic Indo-European origin. Its original form was Alauna, from the Indo-European root *el-/ol-, meaning "to flow, to stream". Several European rivers and settlements have names that may come from that root. Others say that Alauna was a Celtic river goddess, also found in Brittany; Alaunus was a

Gaulish Gaulish is an extinct Celtic languages, Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, ...

god of medicine and prophesy. Two

broadside ballads A broadside (also known as a broadsheet) is a single sheet of inexpensive paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations. They were one of the most common forms of printed material between the ...

refer to the "Allan Water". According to one, a Scottish ballad, the "Allan Water's wide and deep, and my dear Anny's very bonny; Wides the Straith that lyes above't, if't were mine I'de give it all for Anny." The other, more familiar, English ballad begins "On the banks of Allan Water" and relates the death of a miller's daughter whose soldier lover proves untrue. This version, popularised by C. E. Horn in his comic opera, ''Rich and Poor'' (1812), is sung by Bathsheba Everdene at the sheepshearing supper in

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Literary realism, Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry ...

's novel '' Far From The Madding Crowd'' (1874). A similar rendition was recorded with church organ accompaniment by Italian singer Ariella Uliano in 2008.

Industry

The river and its tributaries were once extensively used to power mills and factories. The major tributaries, the Muckle Burn and River Knaik, are mainly in hilly sheep farming terrain and no significant industrial use was made of them. The Danny Burn tributary of the Allan, the Wauk Mill N890081
Wauk Mill appears to have been a small corn mill belonging to a local farm. Very little remains. (Pan around the same external link to find the other locations.) Progressing downstream, the mill buildings and weir at Kinbuck NN790051 still exist but are derelict. The weir NN785040 and some large mill buildings NN783038 at Ashfield still exist but are largely derelict. There are two substantial weirs in

, at NN770017, feeding the Springbank Mill NN770016, which still exists but is no longer a mill, and at NN780014. Downstream of Dunblane, a weir at NS785996 fed the long derelict Lower Keir Mill at NS785994. At

there are still in existence three very substantial weirs, the upper of which, NS786981, formerly supplied the Airthrey Mills NS786968, while the middle (NS786977) weir was positioned to collect the outfall from the Airthrey Mills as well as the main flow of the river. The lower weir is at NS788976, and the middle and lower weirs supplied a changing assortment of mills and factories as recently as the 1950s. The area is now occupied by housing but many traces of the mill Leat, lades can still be seen, and the flow of water over the weirs remains impressive.

References

External links

"Forth District Salmon Fishery Board"

"River Forth Fisheries Trust"

"Allan Water Angling Improvement Association"
{{authority control Rivers of Perth and Kinross Rivers of Stirling (council area) Tributaries of the River Forth