The Placenames of Midlothian

THE PLACENAMES OF MIDLOTHIAN ____________ A thesis submitted to the UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, May 1947, for the degree of Ph.D. by NORMAN DIXON, M.A. (Edin. 1933) ____________ 2 THE PLACENAMES OF MIDLOTHIAN INTRODUCTION The county of Midlothian, formerly called Edinburghshire, resembles in shape an irregular Australian boomerang with its convex side to the north and with its ends turned to the south-east and south-west respectively. It is bounded on the north by the Firth of Forth, on the east by East Lothian, Berwickshire and Roxburgh, on the south by Selkirk, Peebles and Lanarkshire, and on the west by West Lothian. Its limits are partly natural boundaries and partly artificial lines suggested by natural features: the east is bounded by the long ridge of hill-ground commonly called Roman Camp Hill and by the Linn Dean and Brothershiels Burns; the south-east by the fall of the hill- country on either side of the Gala Water; the south by the ranges of the Moorfoots and Southern Pentlands; and the west by the almost continuous water-boundary (broken in the parish of Mid-Calder to include part of Drumshoreland Moor) of the Breich Burn and its parent-stream, the River Almond. The seaboard is about twelve miles in length and the area thus enclosed is roughly 370 square miles. The surface contours of the county show a gradual rise from the coast inland towards the hill-ranges in the south. A coastal plain of a width varying upwards /p. 2/ from three miles in the east is part of a continuous belt of coastal plain stretching through the three Lothians as far west as Stirling, and providing from earliest times one of the chief means of ingress to Lothian and Edinburgh from the south. The plain is broken immediately to the south of Edinburgh by the ridge of the Braid and Pentland Hills, a ridge that stretches some sixteen miles to the southwest into the neighbouring counties of Peebles and Lanark and that divides Midlothian into two distinct basins. The eastern basin is gently undulating, and with only three outstanding eminences: the Castle Rock, Arthur’s Seat and the Calton Hill; but in the western the physical contours (apart from those of the fairly continuous agricultural plain between the City and Kirkliston) are much more irregular, with successive ridges running from east to west and sharply broken in places by such steeper hills as Allermuir, Blackhill, East Cairn, West Cairn and Craigengar. Another hill-range – the Moorfoots – lies to the south-east of the county. It forms two broken lines of isolated hills of undulating outline and moorland character that reach at their highest to over 2000 feet and form with the Pentlands pastoral ground in sharp contrast to the arable land of the northern coastal plain. The geographical character of the county is also partly /p. 3/ determined by its streams, all of which – with the one notable exception of Gala Water – follow the general slope of the ground and flow roughly from south-west to north-east. The Almond, the Water of Leith and the Esk rise in the hill-ground of the south and find outlet to the sea on the northern coastline, so that it is possible that early penetration from the coast was made along the line of these rivers; the East Lothian Tyne also rises in the county and flows in a north-easterly direction; Gala Water alone flows south from the Moorfoot watershed to join the Tweed. Access to the county from ancient times has in turn been dependent upon topography and it is evident that the modern communication system is very little different from that of earliest days. Four main avenues of incursion from the south are indicated by the approaches taken by the four modern lines of railway leading into Edinburgh. The first follows the coastal plain from Berwick to Dunbar and rounds the eastern end of the Lammermuirs to enter the City from the east. That this line of advance must have formed the principal route of Anglian infiltration into the Lothians is reasonably certain from the occurrence along it of such early Anglian names as Coldingham, Tynningham and Whittingehame (-ingaham names) and of the almost as early, neighbouring Auldhame /p. 4/ and Morham (-ham names). The second main avenue follows the course of the Gala Water from Tweeddale and enters the county in the extreme south-east by the Gala valley lying between the Lammermuirs and the Moorfoots; in so doing, the line traverses ground that the Anc. Hist. Mon. Com. Rep. p. XVIII notes from the archaeological evidence of arrowheads and flint and chert implements as one of the earliest parts of the district to be effectively occupied by man. The later importance of this line of approach from the south is apparent, too, from the evidence of placenames which indicates by the strong survival of Welsh names in the Gala valley that the district probably long continued a centre of human activity while the rest of the county remained sparsely populated. A third line of access lies through Leadburn in the valley between the Moorfoots and the Pentlands and a fourth by a moorland route from Clydesdale that swings east towards Edinburgh round the western end of the Pentlands. From the fact that this fourth route provides almost direct communication between Carstairs and Cramond, two well-established Roman stations, and that it passes very close to Castle Greg in MidCalder, a fort that is regarded from its shape and the Roman remains found in it as probably Roman (see A.H.M.C. Rep. p. 141), it is reasonable to suggest, as does A.H.M.C. Rep. p. XXVIII, that it was used by the Romans /p. 5/ for troop movements. It is upon these lines of approach that the modern road and railway systems within the county have been built. A fifth line, however, must have existed from Roman times down to at least the 13th Century in Dere Strete. The course of Dere Strete has been traced as far as Soutra by Curle: A Roman Frontier Post and Hardie: Roads of Mediaeval Lauderdale, both of whom in attempting to trace its course north of Soutra have discredited the findings of General Roy, the18th Century historian of the Roman remains in Scotland. The A.H.M.C. Rep. pp. XXVIII and XXIX, notes: “General Roy and other 18th Century writers were of opinion that the Roman road had probably swung to the left in descending Soutra Hill and had run past Borthwick Castle to Dalhousie and Mavisbank and so to the eastern end of the Pentlands, from which it had headed direct for Davidson’s Mains and Cramond. For this theory there was no substantial foundation. But Roy’s views were long regarded as carrying almost pontifical authority, and in this connection a trace of their influence still survives in the 6-inch Ordnance Survey Map where the highway between Lothian Burn and the Buck Stone is marked as ‘Roman Road’….. So far from there being a probability that Dere Strete had swung to the left, there is a virtual certainty that it ran straight on. We have already referred to the /p. 6/ charter evidence. That of the earth-house at Crichton Mains (constructed of Roman- dressed stones taken from a neighbouring despoiled fort of Roman origin) though different in character, is at least as convincing.” That Dere Strete did continue in a straight line from Soutra along the course it had taken from the south is proved from charter evidence by Hardie who has attempted to determine its track near Newbattle on an almost direct line to the Roman settlement at Inveresk. The references to Derestrete in the Newbattle Charters (Bann. C1. 89) are conclusive on this point. At the same time Roy’s views have been dismissed perhaps too arbitrarily if we may rely upon the evidence of a placename. He traces the line thus: “Beyond Borthwick Castle some appearances of an old causeway have been observed pointing towards Dalhousie and leaving the Roman fort situated on the height between Creighton and Dalkeith considerably on the right. The river South Esk it probably passed about Dalhousie, and the North Esk near Mavisbank, where many Roman antiquities have been found. Thence it seems to have led by Lonehead and Straton, names in all likelihood derived from its course, to Bowbridge, situated near the east end of the Pentland Hills. At this last place 4 evident vestiges of it were to be perceived some few years ago before the present turnpike was made, leading through the old intrenchments at the Buck /p. 7/ Stone and pointing by the east end of Bruce-Hill towards a place called Muttonhole near the corner of Barnton Park wall. From thence to the station at Cramond, standing on the bank of the Forth, till of late years the traces of it were very entire and may even now be discerned.” Unfortunately much of this contention is based upon an erroneous assertion by Sir John Clerk that a fort at Mavisbank was Roman (see A.H.M.C. Rep. p. 116). The significance of the name Straiton, however, which Roy noted, (the name is recorded as early as the th 12 Cent. as Stratun, and appears to mean ‘tŪn on the Roman road’) suggests the need for further archaeological research into the possibility of establishing with certainty the course of a Roman road through Straiton from Cramond to the main south-north Dere Strete to Inveresk. In his Introduction to The Placenames of West Lothian Macdonald has discussed the main territorial divisions in Scotland of the shire and the parish, ascribing the origin of both to the Norman influence which began to make itself apparent in the reign of David I.

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