Strathendrick, and its inhabitants from early times

CHAPTER XIV.
PARKHALL.
The lands of Parkhall, formerly called Mollanhead, being the wester half of the
town and lands of Meikle Boquhan.
Mollanhead was sold by Walter Buchanan of Boquhan in 1727 to John
Buchanan, W.S., Edinburgh, and in 1733 it was acquired from him by Thomas
Park, one of the Macers of Exchequer, and son of the Rev. George Park,
minister of Killearn.
Mr. Park changed the old name of the property to Parkhall, married a lady
of the name of Jane M'Farlane, and was succeeded by his son, Charles Park,
who is designed in a deed, dated 28th July 1797, "Lieutenant Charles Park."
On the 3rd December 1802, there is a disposition by Lieut. Charles Park
of the lands of Parkhall (with the exception of some 20 acres called Drummikipp,
which he had sold in 1792 to • Robert Dunmore of Ballindalloch) to John
Monteith, manufacturer in Glasgow, and he, on the 24th August 1804, with
the consent of the said Charles Park for all rights he had in the subjects, sold
Parkhall to Archibald Fletcher, advocate, Edinburgh.
Archibald Fletcher, who was a well-known member of the old Edinburgh
Whig party, and father of Miles Angus Fletcher, had married in 1791 Eliza
Dawson, a charming and clever young Englishwoman, whose interesting auto-
biography was published in 1875. She tells in it of the planting and improve-
ments which were the pleasures of her husband's life at Parkhall, and of the
inconveniences of the "small and most incommodeous dwelling" when they were
living there in 1813. "We were twenty miles from post and market, and I
remember in the summer of 1813 a man used to go round among the car-
nivorous inhabitants of the parish to ask if they would bespeak a quarter of
lamb or leg of mutton before he ventured to kill the animals in question.
There was a carrier once a week from Glasgow who brought our bread, our