PARISH OF BALDERNOCK

PRESBYTERY OF DUMBARTON, SYNOD OF GLASGOW AND AYR.

THE REV. JOHN POLLOCK, MINISTER.

II.-CIVIL HISTORY

The proprietors are numerous, and the soil has often changed its landlord. The principal heritors at present are, Messrs Glassford of Dougalston; Hamilton of Bardowie; Marshall of Levrockhill; Stirling of Keir; Gray of Glenorchard; Lennox of Woodhead; Hendry of Barraston; Gordon of Craigmaddie, &c. &c.

Parochial Registers.-The records of session bear date 1690. They have been very irregularly kept.

Antiquities.-On the heights of the parish, and towards the north-west, the ruins of a tower of unknown size and antiquity, and once the mansion-house of the Galbraiths of Bathernock, lie behind Craigmaddie, the seat of H. Gordon, Esq. On the farm of Blochairn, are several oblong and circular cairns, memorials of ancient feuds, where, tradition says, in a battle with the Danes one of their princes was slain. These cairns consist of heaps of loose stones thrown on a circumference, sometimes of eighty yards, beneath which are parallel rows of flags upon edge, three or four feet wide, and divided into cells, six or seven feet long, lidded with flags; and some of them contain, when opened, large coarse urns, with pieces of human bones. Near this, a mile north from the church, on the same property, are the Auldwives Lifts, consisting of three stones of similar size, standing on a flat of about 100 paces in diameter, surrounded by an amphitheatre a few yards in height. The two under stones are of a prismatic form, placed along, close by each other, on the earth. The third, probably at first a regular parallelopiped, and still approaching that figure, is placed on the top of the other two, and is eight feet long, eleven broad, six deep, lying nearly horizontally with a small dip to the north. On a sequestered eminence, once surrounded by a grove of oaks, the stumps of which are still visible, these stones are said to resemble, in figure and position, other Druidical monuments, and their name to correspond with that of the Lifted Stone in Ireland, mentioned by Cambden, and those in Poitiers in France called pierres levées.