The Bo’ness Hippodrome is Scotland’s oldest purpose built cinema, with construction beginning in 1911 and the cinema opening on 11 March the following year. ‘Hippodrome’ (literally ‘horse course’) was the name given to a stadium for horse or chariot races in ancient Greece, with its Roman equivalent being a circus, and the Bo’ness Hippodrome’s distinctive …
Balmerino Abbey was a Cistercian monastery founded in 1229 (or perhaps 1227) by Ermengarde de Beaumont (c. 1170 – 1233 or 1234), wife of William the Lion. Just as the date of the abbey’s founding isn’t 100% clear, neither is Ermengarde’s precise title. Several online sources describe her as a queen of Alba, others a …
I wrote about Jim Clark when I visited the Motorsport Museum in Duns that bears his name, although admittedly this was back when my entries were considerably shorter; this entry is really just an addendum to that previous one. Although most associated with Duns and nearby Chirnside Clark was born and spent the first six …
The return in 1992 of the polar expedition ship RRS Discovery to her hometown was a marketer’s dream. Dundee was soon rebranded as “the City of Discovery”, a cleverly ambiguous slogan that was later superseded by “One City, Many Discoveries”. Both inextricably linked city and ship, and the latter became one of Dundee’s key tourist …
My recent entries were on a series of caves – St. Fillan’s Cave, Constantine’s Cave and the Caves of Caiplie – but what brought to Fife was Dunino Den, a place that I hadn’t heard of but which had been popping up regularly on my Facebook feed over the past few months. It certainly looked …
Typical. You wait six months for a cave and then three come along at once. I wrote about St. Fillan’s Cave in my last entry, but on the same day I also visited the Caves of Caiplie and Constantine’s Cave. To be honest I actually stopped at St. Fillan’s Cave last, but I wrote about …
St. Fillan (c.695 to c.770) was an Irish-born missionary whose vocation to convert the Picts to Christianity took him to Fife in Scotland. His stomping ground ranged from Aberdour on the banks of the Forth (the church behind Aberdour Castle is named for him) to Wormit and Newport-on-Tay on the River Tay, and one of …
It is the kind of non-descript environment that could exist in any town, anywhere. A small housing estate lies next to a timber yard; across the road, a McDonald’s and a PureGym. But it was here in 1929 – 1930, just off Main Street at the point Milngavie runs into Bearsden, an alternative future was …
I had planned on including Douglas Castle in my entry on St. Bride’s Church but I went on a bit there, so here it is getting an entry all its own. Not that there is much to Douglas Castle, as we shall see. The castle is a short walk – around 0.75 of a mile, …
When I was at primary school one of our subjects was Scottish history, albeit a somewhat subjective history that revolved around just four ‘heroes’ – William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots, and Bonnie Prince Charlie (‘heroes’ in inverted commas because even as a kid those last two seemed suspect). Tied in with …
