Old milestone in Craigendoran

Image: © Lairich Rig Taken: 13 Apr 2012

← DUNBARTON CROSS 7 MILES → HELENSBURGH 1 MILE The milestone stands beside Cardross Road, the main road through Craigendoran: Image A mile to the south-east is another milestone built to the same pattern (Image), and there is another Image All of these stones were set up before 1860. They feature the spelling Dunbarton (rather than Dumbarton) because the Commissioners of Supply, and the Trustees for the Turnpike Roads, who had oversight of such matters, were drawn from the country gentry, who appear to have been attracted to the mock antiquity of the spelling (although they were not entirely consistent: Image). [Much earlier, the minister James Oliphant (Image) had given the "Dun-" variant an air of respectability by employing it (for both the burgh and the county) in the Old Statistical Account (1792).] However, it was only considerably later (in the 1930s) that a County Clerk persuaded the OS to use the "Dun-" spelling for the county name [see pages 47 and 92-94 of I M M MacPhail's "Lennox Lore" (1987)]. Not far away, an old Image is, despite appearances, essentially the same. The metal part has simply been set in front of a wall rather than in front of a stone structure built specially for it.

Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0