Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland

GAKVOCK
ter since 1698, the successive incumbents having all had
assistants and successors ordained before their death.
The stipend is returned as £189; the manse (built in
1866) is valued at £25, and the glebe at £15. The
church (built in 1778) is seated for about 300 people.
The churchyard has a few old gravestones; and on the
manse offices there is the fragment of one with date
1603. The church was dedicated to St James; and a
well in the den near the manse, called St James's Well,
had the reputation once of working miraculous cures.
St James's Fair, now at Laurencekirk, was long held
near the church on Barnhill, where the site may still
be traced by the turf seats which did service in the
various tents. The parish has always been well pro-
vided with the means of education. The public school
(built in 1866) has accommodation for 92 pupils, with
an average attendance of about 50, and a government
grant of over £60. The valuation of the parish, in
1856, was £4215. In 1883 it had reached £6270, 13s.
lid., but in 1892 it had fallen to £4548. The popula-
tion, in 1755, was 755; in 1801 it was 468. The highest
point it has reached since was 485 in the year 1811;
the census of 1881 reduced it to 428; and in 1891 it
was 415.— Ord. Sur., shs. 66, 57, 1871-68. _
Garvock, an estate, with a modern mansion, in Dun-
ning parish, Perthshire, 1 mile ENE of the town of
that name. Its owner is Robert Graeme, Esq. (1841;
sue. 1859).
Gascon Hall, an ancient castle, now a ruin, in the
SE corner of Trinity Gask parish, Perthshire, on the N
bank of the Earn, 1J mile WNW of Dunning station.
Tradition makes it the place where Sir "William "Wallace,
according to Blind Harry's narrative, encountered the
ghost of Faudon; but it must have been built long
after "Wallace's day. The real Gascon Hall appears to
have stood about 1J mile NE of this castle, on a spot
amid the present woods of Gask.
Gask or Findo Gask, a hamlet and a parish in Strath-
earn district, Perthshire. The hamlet lies 1J mile SSE
of Balgowan station, and 2^ miles N by "W of Dunning
station, this being 9J miles "WSW of Perth, and 4J
NE of Auchterarder, under which there is a post office
of Gask.
The parish, containing also Clathy village, and hav-
ing Balgowan station on its north-western border, is
bounded NW by Madderty and Methven, E by Tibber-
more and Forteviot, S by Dunning, SW by Auchter-
arder, and "W by Trinity Gask. Its utmost length, from
N to S, is 4 miles; its utmost breadth, from E to W, is
2| miles; and its area is 5227J acres, of which 42 are
water. The river Eabn, winding 3Jj miles eastward
roughly traces all the southern boundary ; and the sur-
face, sinking along it to close upon 30 feet above sea-
level, thence rises gently to 382 feet near Charlesfield,
and 427 near the manse, from which point it again slopes
softly down to 190 feet along Cowgask Burn, flowing 1-|
mile south-westward on the boundary with Madderty.
Sandstone and grey slate have both been quarried, and
marl occurs in several places. The soil is partly argil-
laceous, partly a fertile loam. More than 1200 acres
are under wood. A Roman road, traversing the summit
ridge, on the line of communication between two camps
in Scone and Muthill parishes, has a breadth of 20 feet,
and consists of compactly-built rough stones. It is
flanked, at intervals, by traces of fortified posts, each
to be garrisoned by from 12 to 19 men. One of these
posts has from time immemorial been called the "Witch
Knowe, and is said to have been the scene of executions
for the imputed crime of sorcery. William Taylor,
D.D. (1744-1823), afterwards Principal of Glasgow Uni-
versity, was minister of Gask; and natives were Thomas
Smeaton (1586-83), an early Presbyterian divine, and
the sculptor, Lawrence Macdonald (1798-1878). So,
too, was Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne (1766-1845),
who was author of The Laird o' Cockpen, The Zand o'
the Leal, The Auld Souse, and others of Scotland's
choicest songs. Her ancestor, Sir William Oliphant,
about the beginning of the 14th century, acquired broad
lands in Perthshire from Robert the Bruce, and became
GATEHOUSE
the Lord of Gasknes and Aberdalgie ; and Lawrence
Oliphant, his descendant, was in 1458 created Lord
Oliphant. The fifth of the title, ' ane base and unworthy
man,' soon after 1600 sold all his great estates but Gask,
which in 1625 was purchased by his cousin, the first of
the 'Jacobite lairds.' On 11 Sept. 1745, Prince Charles
Edward breakfasted at the 'auld house,' and a look of
his hair is still a family heirloom; in the following
February Gask was ransacked by the Hanoverians. The
present mansion, begun in 1801, stands 9 furlongs SW
of the hamlet, amid finely-wooded grounds, and is the
seat of Mr T. L. Kington Oliphant. Gask is in the
presbytery of Auchterarder and synod of Perth andi
Stirling; the living is worth £193. The church, afc
the hamlet, was built in 1800. A public school, witb-
accommodation for 75 children, has an average attend-
ance of about 50, and a grant of nearly £60. Valuation-.
(1882) £5119, 3s. 6d., (1892) £4277, 13s. lOd. Pop.
(1801) 601, (1831) 428, (1861) 399, (1871) 369, (1881)'
364, (1891) 361.— Ord. Sur., shs. 47, 48, 1869-68. See
T. L. Kington Oliphant's Jacobite Lairds of Gask (Gram-
pian Club, 1870).
Gask Hill. See Collessie.
Gask House, an old mansion in Turriff parish, Aber-
deenshire, If mile S by E of the town. From the
Forheses it passed through several hands to the fourth
Earl of Fife early in the 19 th century, but now is merely
a farmhouse.
Gasstown, a village in Dumfries parish, Dumfries-
shire, 14 mile SSE of Dumfries town, under which
it has a post office. It was founded about 1810 by
Joseph Gass. Pop., with Heathery Row, (1871) 521,
(1881) 467, (1891) 363.
Gatehead, a collier village in the S of Kilmaurs parish,
Ayrshire, near the right bank of the river Irvine, 2j
miles WSW of Kilmarnock. It has a station on the
Kilmarnock and Ayr section of the Glasgow and South-
western railway.
Gatehope, a burn in Peebles parish, Peeblesshire, ris-
ing at an altitude of 1750 feet on the southern slope of
Cardon Law (1928), near the meeting-point with Inner-
leithen and Eddleston parishes. Thence it runs 4^
miles south-south-westward, till, after a total descent of
1245 feet, it falls into the Tweed 5 furlongs ESE of
Peebles town.— Ord. Sur., sh. 24, 1864.
Gatehouse, a town of SW Kirkcudbrightshire, on the
Water of Fleet, 9 miles WNW of Kirkcudbright and 6
SE by S of Drumore, with both of which it communi-
cates twice a day by coach. Comprising Gatehouse
proper on the left bank of the river in Girthon parish,
and Fleet Street suburb on the right bank in Anwoth
parish, it has picturesque environs, that ascend from
luxuriant valley to an amphitheatre of distant hills, and
commands navigable communication 1 J mile down Fleet
Water to that river's expansion into Fleet Bay or estuary,
and so to Wigtown Bay and the Irish Sea. It sprang,
about the middle of the 18th century, from a single house
situated at the gate of the avenue to Callt House —
hence its name Gatehouse-of- Fleet — and rapidly rose to
manufacturing importance, so as to have, at the begin-
ning of the 19th century, four cotton factories, a fair
proportion of cotton-weaving hand-looms, a wine com-
pany, a brewery, a tannery, and workshops for nearly
every class of artisans. It made a grand effort, too, by
deepening Fleet Water to the sea and otherwise, to
establish a great commercial trade, and seemed for a
time to menace the Glasgow of the West with the
energetic rivalry of a Glasgow of the South. Somewhat
suddenly it suffered such arrest to further progress as
has made it from 1815 stationary or retrograde ; and
now its only industrial works are 2 bobbin works, and
several sawmills. Still, it consists of neat and regular
streets, and presents, in its main body or Gatehouse
proper, a sort of miniature of the original New Town
of Edinburgh, being one of the handsomest towns in
Galloway, equalled indeed by very few in Scotland.
The town-hall, erected by subscription in 1885 at a cost
of about £1000, is in the old Scotch style, with a front
gable surmounted by saddle - backed crow -steps and
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