Back to main pageThe following passage is taken from the "Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland - New Edition Volume 2" by Francis H. Groome. It was published sometime around about 1892.
The passage details various aspects of the village and parish of Errol and is a very good insight into the state of the parish during the 1890's.
A village and parish in the Carse of Gowrie, Perthshire. The village stands five furlongs from the Tay's North bank, and 1¼ mile South of Errol station on the Dundee and Perth section of the Caledonian, which station is 10¼ miles WSW of Dundee and 11½ East of Perth, and near which is Errol post office, with money order, savings bank, insurance, and railway telegraph departments.
Crowning a gentle eminence that commands a delightful view, particularly towards the South and West, it is under the superiority of Mr and Mrs William Ogilvy Dalgleish; serves as a business centre for much of the Carse district; is inhabited mainly by weavers and operatives; and has a post office of its own under Errol, a branch of the Union Bank, 2 chief inns, a gaswork, a public hall, two schools, a reading-room and library, and fairs on the last Wednesday of July and the Wednesday before Little Dunning.
The parish church, built in 1831 after designs by Gillespie Graham, is a cruciform Norman structure, with a conspicuous square tower, and contains 1450 sittings. There are also a Free Church and a U.P. church, the latter containing 751 sittings.
Pop (1841) 1147, (1861) 1086, (1871) 918, (1881) 890, (1891) 741.
The parish, containing also the village of Leetown, is bounded North by Kinnaird, NE by Inchture, SE and South by the Firth of Tay, West by St Madoes and Kinfauns, and NW by Kilspindie. Its utmost length, from ENE to WSW, is 6 miles; its breadth varies between 1¾ and 3½ miles; and its area is 11,754 acres, of which 2229 are foreshore and 17¾ water.
The shore is everywhere flat, nowhere exceeding twenty feet above high-water mark; and the eastern interior, to the extent of half of the entire area, is all but a dead level - its highest point Middlebank (89 feet). The western district is more diversified having several low ridges extending nearly parallel with the Tay, and attaining, near Mains of Errol, a summit altitude of 156 feet.
Three or four very sluggish streamlets, locally called pows, rise near or beyond the northern and north-western boundaries, and, winding through the interior, carry the drainage to the Firth of Tay. Fossiliferous sandstone and limestone are the predominant rocks. The sandstone is a good building material, and has been largely quarried at Clashbennie; whilst the limestone, though coarse, was formerly worked at Murie.
The soil throughout the flat tracts is carse clay or strong argillaceous loam, on the ridges of blackish earth, and as a whole, is singularly fertile. Scarcely a rood of land is waste; little more than 200 acres are under wood, including hedgerows; and the rest of the land is so richly cultivated and so beautifully enclosed as well to compensate by its luxuriance of aspect for any absence of the picturesque.
Two standing stones are at Clashbennie and near Inchmartin; an ancient artificial mound, the Law-Knoll, rises in Murie Park; and at West-town is a small ruined pre-Reformation chapel.
Considerable commerce, both in export and in import, is done at the little harbour of Port Allen.
The lands of Errol were granted by William the Lyon (1166 - 1214) to his butler William de Haya, whose descendants, the Hays, obtained the hereditary high constableship of Scotland in 1315 and the earldom of Errol in 1452. (See LUNCARTY and SLAINS). By them the estate was sold in 1634, and, after passing through a number of hands, it was purchased in 1872 by the late Francis Molison, Esq., who at great cost, had restored the old mansion, a three-storied quadrangular pile, 100 by 80 feet, with courtyard in the centre, when, upon 10 Oct 1874, it was reduced by fire to a mere shell, the damage being estimated at £9000. Other mansions, separately noticed, are, Murie House, Megginch Castle, and Gourdiehill.
Errol is in the presbytery of Perth and the synod of Perth and Stirling; the living is worth £325. Pitrodie U.P. church on the NW border, 2¼ miles NW of the village, contains 320 sittings; and Errol public, Glendoick public, and Errol female industrial schools, with respective accommodation for 223, 130 and 146 children, had (1891) an average attendance of 120, 86 and 68 and grants of £99, 18s. 6d., £74, 10s., and £59, 10s.
Valuation (1860) £20,089, 5s. 6d., (1882) £22,750, 14s, 11d., (1892) £17,599, 10s.
Pop (1801) 2653, (1831) 2292, (1861) 2759, (1871) 2504, (1881) 2421, (1891) 2158.
Ordnance Survey sheet. 48 1868.
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