Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 5

PERTH, DISTRICT OF
directories, etc. ; David Octavius Hill, R.S. A. (1802-70) ;
Charles Mackay, LL.D. (b. 1814), journalist and poet ;
and the Kev. George Clark Hutton, D.D. (b. 1825), a
prominent U. P. divine. The Reformer, John Row (1525-
80), whose two sons have been noticed above, was mini-
ster of Perth from 1560. John Ruskin, as a child, spent
every alternate summer at Perth. His father's sister,
he tells us, ' lived at Bridgend, and had a garden full of
gooseberry bushes, sloping down to the Tay, with a door
opening to the water, which ran past it clear-brown over
the pebbles, 3 or i feet deep, an infinite thing for a child
to look down into. '
The parishes of Perth are the East, Middle, West, and
St Paul's, and until 1807 formed only one parish, as in
some respects they are still treated. They are bounded
N by Tibbermuir and Redgorton parishes, E by Scone,
KinnouU, and Kinfauns, SE by Rhynd, S by Dunbaruey
and a detached portion of Forteviot, and W by Aber-
dalgie and Tibbermuir. The greatest length, from NNW
to SSE, is 4| miles, and their greatest breadth 2 miles.
The West Kirk, Middle Kirk, and St Paul's lie almost
entirely within the town ; but the East Kirk parish
includes the landward portion, with the villages of
Dovecotland, TuUoch, Craigie, Cherrybank, Pitheav-
lis, Craigend, and Friarton ; and it measures 4J
miles long, though its breadth is variable and slight.
The landward district has various hills of a ridgy
character, but soft in outline in the S and W ; the
highest is Monoreiffe Hill, and the others vary from
300 to 600 feet. The rest of the surface gradually
slopes down into the fertile plain which extends along
the Tay, and is largely covered with highly cultivated
arable land and wood. Among the beautifid woods
which adorn the neighbourhood of Perth are Craigie
Wood and St Magdalene Wood. The famous Perth
nurseries are on the E bank of the Tay, adjoining the
richly wooded Kinnoull Hill. The Almond divides the
parish from Redgorton, and the Tay forms the entire
eastern boundary. Greenstone, basalt, and other trap
rocks form the higher hills ; there is a large bed of eon-
glomerate, chiefly porphyritic trap, in the SW ; and Old
Red Sandstone, dipping towards the NW, lies beneath
most of the rest of the area. The soil on the higher
grounds is mostly a rich loam ; on the lower, a clayey
alluvium upon gravel. The chief proprietors are the
Earls of Mansfield and Kinnoull, Lord Gray, Lord
Elibank, and the city of Perth. The valuation for the
parish of Perth, beyond the burgh, in 1883-84 was
£7067. Pop. (1881) Middle parish, 4902 ; West, 6223 ;
St Paul's, 4902; and East, 12,102, of whom 520 were
landward.
These parishes are in the presbytery of Perth and the
synod of Perth and Stirling ; St Leonard's quoad sacra
parish comprises parts of the East and West Kirk
parishes. The details of the parishes have been already
noted. The presbytery of Perth comprehends the
quoad civilia parishes of Aberdalgie, Abernethy, Collace,
Dron, Dunbarney, Errol, Forgandenny, Forteviot, Kil-
spindie, Kinfauns, Kinnoull, St Madoes, St Martins,
Methven, Moneydie, the four Perth parishes, Redgorton,
Rhynd, Scone, and Tibbermuir ; the gaoarZ sacra parishes
of Logiealmond and St Leonard's in Perth ; and the
chapeliies of St Stephen in Perth and Stanley. The
Free Church and the U.P. Church have also presby-
teries of Perth. The synod of Perth and Stirling com-
prehends the presbyteries of Dunkeld, Weem, Perth,
Auchterarder, Stirling, and Dunblane. The Free
Church has also a synod of Perth and Stirling.
See Perth Memoralia (1806) ; J. Maidment's Olironiclc
of Perth from 1210 to 1668 (Edinb., Maitland Club,
1831) ; George Penney 's Traditions of Perth (Perth,
1836) ; David Peacock's Perth : its Annals and its
Archives (Perth 1849) ; John P. Lawson's Book of Perth
(Edinb. 1847) ; John Wilson's Preshyterxj of Perth (Perth,
1860) ; R. S. Fittis' Ecclesiastical Annals of Perth to the
Period of the Reformation ; and other works cited under
Perthshire.— OrtZ. Sur., sh. 48, 1868.
Perth, District of, is one of the districts into which
Perthshire was divided by Act of Parliament in 1795
190
PERTHSHIRE
for the statutory jurisdiction of justices of peace in small
debts. It includes the parishes of Aberdalgie, Aber-
nethy, Arngask, Dunbarney, Dron, Forgandenny,
Forteviot, Findo-Gask, Kinnoull (excluding the lands
of Inchyra and Balthayock), Methven (excluding the
lands of TuUybeagles), Moneydie, Perth, Redgorton,
Rhynd, Scone (excluding the lands of Kinnochtry),
Tibbermuir, the lands of Clevage and Inverdunning in
Dunning, the lands of Logiealmond in Monzie, and the
lands of Friarton in St Martins. Perth district, one of
two into which the sherifiFdom of Perthshire is divided,
comprehends all the above parishes (Aberdalgie to
Tibbermuir), besides those of Abernyte, Alyth, Auchter-
arder, Auchtergaven, Bendochy, Blackford, Blair
Athole, Blairgowrie, Caputh, Cargill, Cluny, Collace,
Comrie, Crieff, Coupar- Angus, Dull, Dunkeld, Dunning,
Errol, Fortingall, Fowlis-Easter, Fowlis-Wester, Glen-
devon, Inchture, part of Keumore, Kilspindie, Kin-
claven, Kinfauns, Kinloch, Kinnaird, Kirkmichael,
Lethendy, Little Dunkeld, Logierait, Longforgan,
Madderty, Meigle, Moneydie, Monzie, Monzievaird,
Moulin, Muthill, Rattray, St Madoes, St Martins,
Trinity-Gask, and part of Weem.
Perthshire is a large inland county in the centre of
Scotland, consisting of a main body and a small detached
portion. The latter comprises the parishes of Culross
and TuUiallan, and is separated from the former by a
belt of Clackmannanshire and Fife, which is only If mile
wide at its narrowest part ; it is 6 J miles long from E to
W, and 4^ miles broad from N to S, and contains an
area of 11,170 acres. There is also a minute detached
portion of Kippen lying S of the Forth. The main
body of the county is bounded NW by Inverness-shire,
N by Inverness-shire and Aberdeenshire, E by Forfar-
shire, SW by Fifeshire and Kinross-shire, S by Clack-
mannanshire and Stirlingshire, SW by Stirlingshire
and Dumbartonshire, and W by Argyllshire. The
boundary is in great part natural and well-defined, but
in some places it is quite artificial. From a point on
the SW within about 3 miles of the head of Loch Fyne
to a point at the base of Mount Blair between Glenshee
and Glenisla in the E, a distance of 117 miles at least,
the boimdary line along the W, IST, and most of the E
of the county, follows the watershed or summit-lines of
some of the loftiest and most elongated mountain-chains
in Scotland. The only exceptions to this are at the
points where the Moor of Rannoch places Loch Lydoch
and the little Lochanachly on the W border, and where
the S half of Loch Ericht forms part of the NW boundary.
From Mount Blair the boundary follows southwards for
2 miles the river Shee, then for 12 miles runs along
secondary watersheds and watercourses W to the course
of the Isla, which it follows to the confluence with the
Dean. After turning NW for 3J miles along the Dean,
the boundary again bends S, and making a considerable
loop westwards, strikes the l?irth of Tay at Invergowrie,
3 miles above Dundee, after an irregular course of 27 or
28 miles. Thence it continues along the N bank of the
Tay for 11 miles, crosses to the S bank at Mugdrum
island, and runs 36 miles to the SE in a sinuous and
irregular line along the ridges and streamlets of the
Ochils to a point upon the South Devon, J mile S of
Solsgirth. Thence it recedes for nearly 5 miles up the
South Devon, 17 miles W and SW across the Ochils and
Strathallan, till it falls upon the river Forth just at its
confluence with the Teith. Thence, except for cutting
off a few farms in Kippen parish S of the Forth, the
boundary follows the Forth and its head-stream, the
Duchray, for 30 miles to a point within 3f miles of Ben
Lomond ; thence NW by Lochs Arklet and Katrine,
along Glengyle Water and the heights round the N end
of Loch Lomond ; and so up a tributary of the Falloch,
through Lochanlarig to Crochrechan, the point whence
the boundary was first traced. The outline thus traced
presents the appearance of an irregular circle, described
with a radius of about 32 miles from a centre near the
head of Glenalmond. The extreme length of the county,
from E to W, is 77 miles ; its extreme breadth, from N to
S, is 68 miles ; and its total area is 2601 square miles or