When you think of Scotland what do you think of?
William Wallace..., clans..., the lands on which we live?
In this video... we ll look at all three. So if you re interested in the people,
places and events in Scottish history then click the subscribe button at the bottom
right of the screen and ring the notification bell to be told when I upload new videos.
In the meantime, let me tell you a story. This is the second in a series of videos
where I m looking at clan lands... but not with kilt
s and fudge and kitsch
packed in tartan shortbread tins... but the land itself... and what s
happened here down the centuries. This is my story of Clan Wallace lands.
Now there s three things I need to address. First, lands held by groups or
individuals change over time, and that s the same for these
territories so, for better or worse, the reference I ve taken for this series is
the clan map published by History Scotland... and today we re going to look at their
definition of the lands oc
cupied by the most famous name of all
Wallace. The second thing we need to understand
is that having a name isn t the same as belonging to a clan.
Clans are a kinship group descended from an eponymous leader
from whom they take their name... and a bloodline that flows
through the centuries. Of course, the name Wallace means Welshman...
So think of the many Flemish people came to Scotland with different families and histories,
and often adopted the name Flemming, ...they didn t all come fro
m
the same root progenitor. So there surely would have been
many Welshmen called Wallace..., but one that interests us is Alan Wallace,
the father of our patriotic hero William, He was granted lands from the crown
in Ayrshire under the feudal system. The fact that there were later Ayrshire Wallaces
at Cragie Castle, who gained those lands by marriage from the Lindsay clan
demonstrate this second point. But there s the third point to be made.
You see on the one hand we might think of the l
eader of a Highland clan as
the father of the children, in English..., or in Gaelic clann.
A trustee of the land who could be removed or replaced.
The feudal system under which Alan Wallace held lands was very different.
Feudalism isn t kinship, even though the bonds formed
would no doubt be strong. Two separate systems that
at times, and over time have often become blurred and
confused... and sometimes intertwined. Here William grewon Wallace lands...
I ve made a video about 5 things yo
u won t know about William Wallace and you can come
back and click the link top right for that... but this video is not about
William Wallace..., or a Clan, but the lands and the people who lived on them.
Now there s too much to cover in one episode. We could talk about golf, and how in
Prestwick a club was formed in a pub, had a course laid out by the famous Tom Morris,
became the first course to host The Open Championship
and was captained by the Earl of Eglington from whom this park get
s its name.
We could talk about Troon, a course more recently used for The Open.
We could talk about Dundonald, the castle that was home to the Stewart
dynasty and where I ve made a video... top right, top right...
Kilmarnock is the biggest town in the area..., but it s a johnny come lately,
It didnae get its charter till 1592.... So I ve centred most of our
thoughts around Irvine... first granted a burgh charter in 1249.
Ayr might have been slightly earlier, but Irvine is in the centre r
ather
than the edge of Wallace lands... and a dispute about which of the two had
precedence was settled in favour of Irvine by Robert II s charter in 1372...
Naebody had heard o a Killie pie so there s an end to it
Eglington Country park here is on the edge of Irvine.
It s the perfect place to summarise the history of the area.
There are the Sourlie Hill prehistoric standing stones...
...if by prehistoric you mean rubble from modern opencast mining that was
stood on its end when the mine
was played out. But what is real is the village of Dreghorn.
...now subsumed into Irvine, there s been a large settlement
there since 3500BC, down through neolithic, to iron age to medieval. It could be one of the oldest continually
inhabited villages on this island. It s the birthplace of John Boyd Dunlop
who invented pneumatic tyres for bikes, which you can celebrate by enjoying
the cycle paths around this park. Like every self-respecting Scottish tourist
attraction, the park has a ruine
d castle... Ruined now, but once this place
was the location for the biggest and most inspirational medieval
re-enactment pageant ever! You see in the 17th Century
Ayrshire had seen battles fought between Covenanters and the crown,
but the first half of the 19th century saw Whigs and Tories fight out the
political landscape of Westminster. If you were a Whig
you were for modernity, frugality and enlightenment.
Tories were much more likely to celebrate the gothic, romantic and the traditio
nal.
It was amidst the tension of these ideas that Queen Victoria was to be crowned in 1838.
Lord Melbourne, the Whig Prime Minister announced that the coronation wouldn
t include the traditional medieval banquet in Westminster Hall.
Gasps of horror, gadsukes, forsooth and jings crivens help ma boab.
The Earl of Eglinton, announced that he d put on a lavish extravaganza in the
grounds of his castle here. Armour was made, men were trained, tents
were sewed, pavilions were readied and 100 0
00 people
came from far and wide, including Prince Louis,
France s future Napoleon III. There was an arena for tilting, knights to joust,
eclectic visitors dressed in medieval garb. It was lavish, it was indulgent,
it was the greatest show on earth and it pished it doon...
...but it became the inspiration for other medieval celebrations and knightly
tournaments in the Victorian era... and where better than the lands
that had borne our William Wallace. Wallace lands were surely a place for
warriors.. a place of military might... and in those Victorian times
they would be that again. Much of the area s fortunes had been
based on the harbour at Irvine... There s not much activity there now,
but the Irvine site of The Scottish Maritime Museum gives an idea of the
hubbub of activity back in the day. It had been ideal for trade...
close to Irish Sea and later Atlantic waters. This had encouraged ship building.
When Rabbie Burns lived in Irvine he famously became great friends wi
th
a sailor called Richard Brown..., but by Victorian times both
trade and shipbuilding had been moving up the Clyde Estuary
to Glasgow, Port Glasgow and Greenock. But Wallace lands were about to
get an unexpected new birth. You see on 3rd September
1864 there was an industrial accident across the North Sea in Stockholm.
Five people were killed when a shed used in the production of nitro-glycerine blew up.
One of the victims was Emil Nobel, whose family ran the business.
His elder brothe
r Alfred was determined to find safer explosives...
and by mixing liquid nitro-glycerine with a solid substance
he created something that was dynamite. Nobel wanted to open a factory in Great
Britain, but the earlier Gunpowder Act of 1860 didn t anticipate nitro-glycerine or dynamite!
and its rules were too restrictive to allow for Nobel s project.
Even when London passed a new Act it didn t quite solve the problem.
It just wasn t practical to set up a factory in England.
Then a bunch of g
uys from Glasgow said: You want to blow shit up ye say?
Have you thought of Saltcoats? Strings were pulled, wheels were oiled
and before you know it, across there, Nobel Industries was formed in 1870.
The Ardeer Peninsula was perfect for Nobel s factory.
Right on the coast and accessible for shipping in the Firth of
Clyde, close to Scotland s industrial heartland, relatively isolated on a sandy peninsula
where embankments could be raised to form a natural protective sandbag.
Business boom
ed. That s right, the Scotto-Sweedish
enterprise blasted its way to success. First with dynamite, then with new products
like, gelignite, guncotton and cordite. The original 400 000 square meter factory
site grew to over a square kilometre by 1882. By 1902, the factory covered 1.5 square
kilometres with 1,200 people working there the biggest explosives factory
and exporter in the world. At its peak 13 000 people worked on a site
of more than eight square kilometres that had its own bank, i
ts own travel agents,
its own dentist its own bus and train stations shipping workers in and out to well paid
jobs that fuelled the area s economy as explosives products were
shipped out from Irvine s harbour Of course no boom lasts forever...
and in the post industrialised world much of the site lies desolate,
and the whole area suffered. There are always attempts at redevelopment.
The 1960s saw Irvine designated as the last of Scotland s new towns,
aimed at improving social conditions a
nd housing.
Bright new futures were, no doubt imagined..., but sixty years later The Magnum
Centre has come and gone... and the innovative science
centre, called The Big Idea built on the wasteland left by the explosives
factory, generated thousands of visitors until a science centre was built
further up the Clyde in Glasgow. Now The Big Idea lies empty.
Of course Lord Eglington s big idea of medieval pageantry proved to be a washout too,
but today the castle ruins and parklands give us a
n environment for modern day leisure...
and Wallace lands aren t completely done with technology and blowing shit up.
On the edges of Wallace lands... ten miles to the south,
Prestwick has an airport that might have needed saving
by the Scottish Government, but it s home to Scotland s largest aerospace hub
with advanced manufacturing and engineering... and don t forget
Elvis visited there before he flew to the moon. On the northern edge of Wallace
Lands is Beith Munitions Depot. If you ve
followed the war in Ukraine you
ll have heard of Storm Shadow missiles, you might have heard of Tomahawk
missiles, Spearfish torpedoes... assembled, stored, serviced and handled at Beith.
We started with Scotland s most famous warrior...
and I suppose, over the years, the people of the Wallace lands have constantly
been fighting to reinvent and reimagine... to deal with the challenges that economic
cycles and technological change throw at them and they re still here.
In Scotland s 2014 inde
pendence referendum only four of the thirty-two council
areas voted in majority for freedom. Irvine was one of the places that did...
so who knows... maybe they ve thrown off the shackles of feudalism
and it s that blood of a glorious Wallace ancestor that runs in their veins.
Maybe they re a clan after all. Of course there are other clan lands that have
seen change over the centuries and I have a video with a fantastic example.
You really should watch it. Just click the video link coming
up on screen.
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