LARBERT AND STENHOUSEMUIR - PART 2

One historic building which did not survive is Stenhouse, the early 17th century home of the Bruces which was a splendid Scottish baronial building. It survived until the 1960s before being demolished despite being a listed building. It stood to the north of Carron Company who were its last owners in the vacinity of the present Lodge Drive, just yards from the site of the Roman monument, Arthur's O'on, demolished by Bruce of Stenhouse in 1743. The Bruce family also owned Kinnaird House and the present building is the third to stand on the same site - it was two of the Kinnaird Bruces who figured most prominently in the subsequent story of Larbert and Stenhousemuir.

Stenhouse

Robert Bruce of Kinnaird was both lawyer and churchman who had suc­ceeded to the pulpit of John Knox himself in St Giles by 1590. At first his relations with King James VI were very close and some observers regarded him as the most powerful man in the Kingdom. Later, on a point of principle, these two determined and dogmatic men disagreed so profoundly that Bruce found himself in exile abroad and then, after some years, confined to a three-mile area around his Kinnaird home. From this base he continued to defend what he saw as the fundamentals of the protestant reformation and hundreds of people flocked to the parish to hear him preach. He restored the broken down church at Larbert and until his death in 1631 continued to attract the attention of Scotland to the little country parish. 
 
          
Robert Bruce and the inscription on his grave stone in Larbert Old Parish Church

He was without doubt one of the most famous men of his generation and as 'Bruce the Covenanter' is still remembered as one of the founding fathers of the Church of Scotland.

A century later it was Robert's descendant James Bruce of Kinnaird who attained international fame as the great 'Abyssinian Traveller'. James was an intrepid adventurer who crossed the swamps, forests and deserts of Africa in the process discovering the source of the Blue Nile. His own account of these travels was thought by some to be so incredible that he was accused of fabricating the whole amazing tale. But enough people were con­vinced and Bruce became a living legend enjoying the favour of both royalty and Government alike. Standing over six feet, four inches tall and with a mastery of thirteen languages, it is not surprising that he impressed all the people he met - in 1773 Dr Johnson's friend Fanny Burney said that "Mr Bruce's grand air, gigantic height and forbidding brow awed everyone into silence - he is the tallest man you ever saw ...... gratis?."

     

Even today when men walk on the moon or sail singlehandedly across the world's oceans, Bruce's two-hundred year old account remains an enthralling read. But despite the survival instinct which protected him in various foreign scrapes, he died at Kinnaird falling down the stone steps while helping a lady to her carriage! Like Robert Bruce he is buried in Larbert Old Kirkyard and the handsome cast-iron memorial he erected for his wife remains to remind the present generation of his own great prowess.

It was during James Bruce's time at Kinnaird that the greatest change in Larbert's status came about. The arrival of Carron ironworks in 1759 had an enormous impact on the whole of the Falkirk district but it was Larbert parish which bore the immediate brunt of the great enterprise and was inevitably changed beyond recognition. The centre of gravity of the parish moved eastwards and Stenhousemuir began to grow in size and importance. Workers flocked. to the village and to the neighbouring settlement of Quarrol, later Carronshore, and the social tensions began to show. In 1762 just three years after the arrival of the company the Kirk Session of Larbert recorded that there was "a report going round of Robert Tumbull, Innkeeper at Quaroleshore, his endeavouring to seduce some young girls into the Company of some Rude people belonging to the Carron Company."

 As the years passed more and more of the offenders called to answer for their misdemeaners were described as hands or wrights or even sailors working for the Company. But these minor moral lapses were as nothing compared to the widespread poverty and suffering which followed the rapid expansion of iron founding and coal mining in the area. At Quarrol and Kinnaird for example, the Dundas and Bruce lairds took advantage of Carron's high demands to secure their fortunes at the expense of the wretched colliers tied to their backbreaking labours.

It was a problem that neither church nor state seemed willing or able to tackle - in Larbert as in every other part of Scotland as industrialisation increased the profits of the few, their great wealth stood in sharp contrast with the misery of those who laboured at their pits and furnaces. Instead the money went to build or improve fine mansions for both entrepreneurs and ancient local families and, in 1820, to a fine new church at Larbert, designed by David Hamilton of Falkirk Steeple fame, which has continued to grace the parish for the best part of two centuries. As with Carron Company, the establishment of the great Falkirk Trysts at Stenhousemuir in 1785 increased further the dislocation which such enormous events must have had on a small parish and the additional work and money which they brought into the area.

The early history of education in Larbert mirrors the experience of most rural parishes in the days following the Reformation. At some stage the national church's demand that a school be provided in every parish was answered in Larbert by the establishment of classes for children in the church building itself. Later there was an inadequate schoolhouse built on the site of the present church halls and the Kirk Session records, which survive from 1690, report early difficulties with the heritors in providing enough money for both school and master. There was trouble too with the teachers and at least two were dismissed for immorality or being "slothful, negligent and drunk to the detriment of the children's learning."

By the middle of the 18th century the parochial school, legally maintained by the heritors, had moved to Stenhousemuir, while the Kirk Session supported the second school in Larbert village. The money for this came from funds gathered at the church door on Sundays or from the fines levied on Larbert offenders whose regular appearances for fornication, Sabbath breaking and drunk­enness ensured no shortage of cash for a worthy cause! by the 1790s there were additional schools at Kinnaird colliery and Carronshore and nearly 200 children in a rapidly expanding parish of four thousand people were attending for at least part of the week.

Half a century later the numbers were more than doubled but the Minister of the parish was less than happy about the support given by some of the parents who withdrew their children at an early age because "colliers, moulders and others are enabled to turn their childrens labour to profitable account at the age of twelve years." It was just one more facet of the new industrial world into which the people of Larbert and Stenhousemuir were catapulted from the beginning of the 19th century. Developments mirrored those taking place elsewhere in Falkirk district with agricultural reform followed by improvements in communications.

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