Site of Whitecraighead, Cleland

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 18 Dec 2023

Whitecraighead was a farm and must have only been recently demolished, as it is still shown on the current Ordnance Survey map, surveyed in 2010 (and nominally revised five years later). The picture was taken from what was once the edge of the central courtyard within the farm buildings; the two green trees are situated where one of the buildings once stood. An area of raised ground usually indicates the presence of a former building. This is perhaps only the case when looking for traces of settlements that were abandoned generations ago, as here the opposite was the case. Assuming that my OS app was working as it should, the raised area here was actually the only area on which nothing had ever been built. So the land which once had buildings on is now lower than the old courtyard. This is no doubt due to the thoroughness of modern-day demolition jobs, which I always think will take the fun out of archaeology for future generations. There was nothing to be found online about the demolition, which is surprising considering how recent it was. The main thing that kept popping up was a very long poem in often indecipherable Scots about a barn dance, written by a woman who lived on the farm immediately after her divorce in the 1910s. She had been having an affair and it seems one of the things that gave her away was some indiscreet sleep-talking. Or so the papers said!

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