History

Prehistoric, Pilate, early Christians

Glen Lyon’s earliest name was “Gleann-dubh” (the Dark Glen) and later known as “An Crom Ghleann”, (the Bent Glen)[1]. The original inhabitants of the Glen were the Fienne “who have twelves castles in the dark crooked glen of rough stones” and who were ruled from Cashlie.  Soon after the Norman Conquest the de Leons came north to fight with Prince Edgar, son of Malcolm III, against his uncle, Donald. After their victory, a grateful Edgar gifted the de Leons what was to become Glen Lyon. There is a story that Pontius Pilate was born at Fortingall.  At first sight, this seems unlikely as he was born around 20BC.  The Romans arrived in southern Britain in 55BC but only briefly.  They returned to invade what is now England in AD43 and only reached Scotland in AD80.  Yet according to an article published in the New York Times on 15th January 1899, between the Roman’s first incursion and their later invasion, Caesar Augustus dispatched envoys to establish diplomatic relations with some of the important British and Caledonian chieftains.  These included Metallanus, whose stronghold was at the head of Glen Lyon.  A member of the Roman delegation to Metallanus’s tribe fathered Pontius Pilate with a Caledonian woman, and Pilate returned to Rome with his father (and possibly his mother) shortly after. From Neil Oliver’s History of the British Isles in 100 Places: “The glen beyond Fortingall and the yew (the one beneath which Pontius Pilate might have sat as a boy) is Glen Lyon.  Celtic folklore has it that the glen was home to the creator goddess.  Not  creator goddess.  They called her Cailleach, the Celtic word for an old woman.  On Schiehallion –  the Fairy Hill, the Hill of the Constant Storm, where Nevil Maskelyne first weighed the world – the Cailleach rode the winds of inter, her face grey blue and her lips thin and white as snow. “When St Adamnan found his way to Glen Lyon in the late seventh century to convert the locals to Christianity, he likely knew the place was already sacred, and for older reasons than his own.  Below the hill called Creag nan Eildeag is a tall upright stone, twice the height of a man.  It is split in two and has the look of hands brought together in an attitude of prayer.  They call it “the Praying Hands of Mary” but it is older by far than Christianity or any other religion we could name.  Elsewhere is a little stone structure called Tigh na Cailleach, ‘the old woman’s home’.  Inside it, between autumn and spring, are kept a set or stones worn and shaped by river water.  These representations of the Cailleach, the Bodach (‘the Old Man’) and their children.  Every May they are taken out of their house and left in the open until November, around the time of Samhain – the first day of November, marking the beginning of the Celtic winter – then they are put back inside.  The is the oldest pre-Christian ritual still performed anywhere in the world.  Glen Lyon has mattered to people for the longest time.”

Campbell ownership c.1500s – c.1700

From around the 1500s, Chesthill was owned by the Campbell clan. Robert Campbell the fifth Laird of Glenlyon (1630–1696) inherited large parts of the Glen and set about improving Meggernie Castle. This, along with heavy drinking, gambling and a string of unwise investments, pushed him to the brink of bankruptcy. In a last effort to clear his debts, he sold all the woods of Glen Lyon which were part of the old Caledonian forest. Workmen arrived from the lowlands to fell the trees, which were sent floating down the Lyon, choking the river, causing widespread flooding and worsening his financial position further.  He sold almost all of the estate to the Earl of Tullibardine in 1684, moving from the grandeur of Meggernie Castle to the much more modest house owned by his wife at Chesthill[2].  In a surprising co-incidence, Campbell’s wife was a cousin of Sir Charles Ramsay, 3rd Bt. of Balmain, an ancestor of the Ramsay family who currently own the house. In 1689, on their return from the Battle of Dunkeld, the MacIains of Glencoe (a sept of Clan MacDonald), together with their Glengarry cousins, looted Glenlyon, stole his livestock, and razed his last remaining holdings, increasing his financial problems from gambling debts. In his subsequent appeal for compensation, Campbell showed he clearly believed the Glengarry men to be the more culpable, making no mention of Glencoe. In a final effort to support his wife and family, Robert Campbell, at the age of fifty nine, joined the Earl of Argyll’s Regiment of Foot and led the detachment of government troops responsible for the infamous Glencoe Massacre, of the MacDonalds of Glencoe in 1691. Some element of planning may have been undertaken from Chesthill House. The fact of the stolen cattle and Glenlyon’s involvement in the massacre were used by the English in an attempt to thinly veil the massacre as simply the outcome of thievery and clan rivalry. The available evidence, including an appeal for compensation, shows that this was not the case. The Argyll Regiment was sent to fight in Flanders, in the War of the Grand Alliance, but was defeated by the French armies at Diksmuide in 1696, and Campbell died in Bruges on 2 August 1696.[3]

Blaeu 1654 Atlas of Scotland showing “Sestel”: