signed inscribed and dated
If we could travel back in time to 1800, we would see a very different Crieff and Strathearn. In the days before cars and trains and tourists, people generally didn’t travel very far from home. Crieff was a small, but growing town with many thatched cottages and a population of 2,071 (in 1792). Commissioner Street had been recently created and a number of new houses built. However, according to the Old Statistical Account, many of these houses ‘would lie waste’ were it not for the town’s location on one of the principal roads into the Highlands. Because of this, Crieff was one of the first places reached by people cleared off the land to make way for sheep-farms and who had no other employment and nowhere else to go.
The huge annual Crieff Tryst had moved to Stenhousemuir and became the Falkirk Tryst in 1785 and Crieff, with much of Strathearn, became reliant on agriculture and weaving and there were also mills in the area which provided employment. There were corn and barley mills, lint mills (these prepared the fibres of flax plants for spinning into linen), an oil mill which pressed lintseed to extract oil, a paper mill, and two mills for carding and spinning cotton (the carding mill prepared wool for spinning by aligning the fibres).
{Milnab Mills are Crieff’s oldest mills and consisted of grain mills and waulk mills, both worked off the lade which now runs through MacRosty Park. (Culture Perth & Kinross Collection)} These mills employed a considerable number of adults and children. A tambouring manufacture recently established, employed 30 girls from 8-12 years of age to do embroidery. There were also two distilleries, a brewery and two tanneries. Despite this, many local people worked in their own homes as weavers – some as a full-time job, while many farmers used their gains from weaving to pay their rents. The Old Statistical Account states that, ‘Until recently the weavers worked mainly in linen and course woollens’, but some have moved ‘to work on a coarse linen and some on weaving cotton cloth. This cloth is all sent to Glasgow where it is whitened and printed.’(Unfortunately much of this material was likely bound for the slave plantations).
From this it can be seen that Crieff was a relatively prosperous place and was providing employment and services for people not only in the town, but also for those who lived and worked in the surrounding area and further afield.
To serve these weavers, mills and farms there were around 29 carters who travelled to and from the larger cities. The Old Statistical Account records that, ‘the exports are coarse-linen, pack-sheeting..; tanned leather; paper; lintseed oil; linen and cotton yarn; and some cotton cloth…. The imports are black cattle and sheep for slaughter; butter and cheese; whisky, porter, and wine; lintseed; lint, wool and raw cotton; linen and woollen yarn; wood and iron….For conveying these goods and manufactures, 2 carts go regularly once a fortnight to Edinburgh; 2 carts or more once a fortnight to Glasgow; 4 carts twice a week to Perth; and 2 or 3 carts twice a week to Stirling.’ On top of this there were carts driven to the nearest coal mines at Bannockburn and Dollar. (In 1793 coal was 2-3x more expensive in Crieff and Comrie compared to Perth, although for a while apparently still cheaper than peat or wood.)
Crieff (/kriːf/ (listen); Scottish Gaelic: Craoibh, meaning "tree") is a Scottish market town in Perth and Kinross on the A85 road between Perth and Crianlarich, and the A822 between Greenloaning and Aberfeldy. The A822 joins the A823 to Dunfermline. Crieff has become a hub for tourism, famous for whisky and its history of cattle droving. Attractions include the Caithness Glass Visitor Centre and Glenturret Distillery. The nearby Innerpeffray Library (founded about 1680) is Scotland's oldest lending library. St Mary's Chapel beside it dates from 1508. Both are open to the public: the library is run by a charitable trust; the chapel is in the care of Historic Scotland. Star Wars actors Ewan McGregor and Denis Lawson were raised and educated in Crieff and have featured in several movies from the franchise.
For a number of centuries Highlanders came south to Crieff to sell their black cattle, whose meat and hides were avidly sought by the growing urban populations in Lowland Scotland and the north of England. The town acted as a gathering point for the Michaelmas cattle sale held each year, when the surrounding fields and hillsides would be black with the tens of thousands of cattle, some from as far away as Caithness and the Outer Hebrides. (In 1790 the population of Crieff was about 1,200, which gave a ratio of ten cows per person.)
During the October Tryst (as the cattle gathering was known), Crieff was a prototype "wild west" town. Milling with the cattle were horse thieves, bandits and drunken drovers. The inevitable killings were punished on the Kind Gallows, for which Crieff became known throughout Europe.
By the 18th century the original hanging tree used by the Earls of Strathearn had been replaced by a formal wooden structure in an area called Gallowhaugh – now Gallowhill, at the bottom of Burrell Street. What is now Ford Road was Gallowford Road which led down past the gallows to the crossing point over the River Earn. In such a prominent position, Highlanders passing along the principal route would see hanged bodies dangling overhead, prompting from them the words, "God bless you, and the Devil damn you." Lord Macaulay's history talks of a score of plaids hanging in a row, but the remains of the Gallows – held in Perth Museum – suggest the maximum capacity was only six. Crieff's parish church kept a strong Episcopalian dominance from the Reformation in 1560 until the Revolution of 1688. In 1682 William Murray ignored the Presbytery and brought Episcopalian format into worship, including the Lord's Prayer and the Doxology. The Apostles' Creed was also used at baptisms. After the Jacobite victory at Killiecrankie, Murray quoted the 118th Psalm: "This is the day God made, in it we'll joy triumphantly".
Rob Roy MacGregor visited Crieff on many occasions, often to sell cattle. Rob Roy's outlaw son was pursued through the streets of Crieff by soldiers and killed. In the second week of October 1714 the Highlanders gathered in Crieff for the October Tryst. By day Crieff was full of soldiers and government spies. Just after midnight, Rob Roy and his men marched to Crieff Town Square and rang the town bell. In front of the gathering crowd they sang Jacobite songs and drank a good many loyal toasts to their uncrowned King James VIII.
In 1716, 350 Highlanders returning from the Battle of Sheriffmuir burned most of Crieff to the ground. In 1731, James Drummond, 3rd Duke of Perth, laid out the town's central James Square and established a textile industry with a flax factory. In the 1745 rising the Highlanders were itching to fire the town again and were reported as saying "she shoud be a braw toun gin she haed anither sing". But it was saved by the Duke of Perth – a friend and supporter of Prince Charles. In February 1746 the Jacobite army was quartered in and around the town with Prince Charles Edward Stuart holding his final war council in the old Drummond Arms Inn in James Square – located behind the present abandoned hotel building in Hill Street. He also had his horse shod at the blacksmith's in King Street. Later in the month he reviewed his troops in front of Ferntower House, on what is today the Crieff Golf Course.
In the 19th century, Crieff became a fashionable destination for tourists visiting the Highlands and a country retreat for wealthy businessmen from Edinburgh, Glasgow and beyond. Many such visitors attended the Crieff hydropathic establishment, now the Crieff Hydro, which opened in 1868.[4] Crieff still functions as a tourist centre. The large villas stand as testaments to its use by wealthy city-dwellers.
Crieff was once served by Crieff railway station, which linked the town to Perth, Comrie and Gleneagles.[5] The station was opened in 1856 by the Crieff Junction Railway, but closed in 1964 by British Railways as one of the Beeching cuts.