IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Church Street, DUMBARTON, G82 1QA

Viewed from Dumbarton Central station. The train is entering Platform 2 and is bound for Oban and Fort William (it will split at Crianlarich).

Strathleven Place.

Funded by Andrew Carnegie, designed by William Reid, opened in 1910. The carbuncle extension to the right opened in 1968, architect unknown.

Railway bridge just east of the platforms at Dumbarton Central Station.

The wide low bridge carries the platforms of Dumbarton Central station.

For the whole building, see Image and Image The stone is set above a fire exit on the eastern side of the building. [UPDATE, AUGUST 2016: I found that Dumbarton Library had a pile of printouts, featuring only my picture from this page, and a very much cut-down version of my accompanying text from this page, with no credit to me for either. I choose to mention this here because library staff, if anyone, ought to be thoroughly acquainted with the legalities of copyright and licensing, and should be setting a better example.] The stone bears the text "Tu Des Corona Decus", and the dates 1732 and 1790. The stone came from the Mackenzie House (the townhouse of the Mackenzies of Caldarvan, on whom see Image). The Mackenzie House stood in the High Street, and 1732 and 1790 are the dates when it was built and enlarged, respectively. It was demolished in 1907; see Image for more information. The stone is said to have originally come from St Mary's Collegiate Church, of which the most prominent remnant is Image Smaller fragments of the Collegiate Church survive; some, like the one shown in the present photograph, have been incorporated into the fabric of later buildings; see Image for other examples (that item contains a link to a page with a picture of the Mackenzie House; in that picture, the stone shown in the present photograph can be seen above the central dormer window). A good description of this stone can be found in Donald MacLeod's "Dumbarton Ancient and Modern" (1881), a large-format book, of which only 200 copies were printed. In the section entitled "Old Tolbuith and Mackenzie's House", the book discusses the three dormer windows of the Mackenzie House. Of these, it says that "over the one to the left there is as finial a somewhat grotesque figure of a diminutive man or boy in sitting posture, having a round flat bonnet on his head. Over the imposing central window there is a Latin cross, crowned by a mitre, on one side of which there is a Scotch thistle, and on the other side a fleur-de-lys, all admirably sculptured, beneath which there is this inscription:– "Tu des, corona decus"(*), "Do thou give me glory for a crown". The eastmost of the dormer windows has for finial a small globular shaped stone, which looks as if it had formed a portion of a pinnacle of the 'Auld Colledge'." [(*) A personal observation: that Latin phrase seem ungrammatical.] By "Auld Colledge", the author means the Collegiate Church. The facing page of the book features an illustration of the Mackenzie House, with this stone visible above the central dormer window. The old tolbooth appears in the same illustration; the Mackenzie House was on the north side of the High Street, and the old tolbooth was immediately next to it on the left (west). Readers can examine the same picture online: see the "Ancient stones, Glencairn's Greit House" link given above; that item has a link to the picture.

On Bankend Road, between Dumbarton East and Dumbarton Central stations.

According to a Dumbarton Heritage Trail leaflet, these Burmese cannon, which are sometimes nicknamed "'McFarlan's Hurdles', were presented to the town by Provost MacFarlan on the opening of the Municipal Buildings". For reasons that I elaborate on below, I was sceptical about their having been presented on that day. [July 2016 update: For my part, I was unable to find out more about their origin. However, a newly-published article, cited at the end of this description, provides further details.] Another mention is in Margaret Sterndale Dilke's "The County of Dunbarton" (1959): "Objects of interest include three old Burmese cannon in the grounds of the municipal buildings". No further information about their origins is given there. Image themselves (completed and opened in 1903) are shown in the background. For the middle cannon, see Image; for the one that is on the right in the present picture, see Image Robert MacFarlan was born at Glendaruel (c.Image), Kyles of Bute. He was a lawyer, and he also served as Provost of Dumbarton for a total of 13 years, an unusually long time. It was in that town that he was last seen alive, on a blustery night in January 1921; his body was found in April of the same year, near Image A personal note on the claims that the cannon were presented on the opening of the Municipal Buildings: I have been unable to find any corroboration for this information elsewhere. I am doubtful about their having been presented on the day of opening. Contemporary accounts of the opening of the Municipal Buildings mention the giving of several gifts (for example, Provost MacFarlan is recorded as having made, on the day, the gift of a stag's head with twelve points), but no cannon. Had they been presented on that occasion, this would be an unusual detail to omit (the contemporary account runs to several pages, and contains many much less significant details). Nor does the Provost's obituary shed any light on how he might have come to acquire such items. (The article cited below places their presentation to the Town Council "shortly after" the opening of the Municipal Buildings; that would account for their not being mentioned in the account of the official opening.) July 2016 update: although some mystery remains about these cannon, more light has been shed on the matter by H.D.V.Prendergast, in his well-researched article "'Memorials And Trophies' – Cannon in Britain from the Third Anglo-Burmese War", appearing on pages 107–128 of the Summer 2016 issue of the "Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research". That article provides as much information about the provenance of these three cannon as is known at present, and, as its title suggests, it discusses their acquisition in a much broader context. On a related point, a nearby building that is now Image used (at the start of the twentieth century) to have a cannon set prominently in front of it. Large-scale (town) mapping labelled it "Russian Trophy". I have not come across any mentions of it, let alone what happened to it.

This is the middle one of a group of three beside Image For the one on the left, partly out of shot, see Image See Image for context and for further information.

This is the most northerly one of a group of three beside Image For another one, just out of shot to the right, see Image See Image for context and for further information.