Gargunnock Walks
Gargunnock Village
The village of Gargunnock lies six miles west of Stirling, nestling to the north of the steep terraced hills which take its name and rise in places to over 1500 feet.
The earliest known settlement in the village is an Iron Age farmstead on Keir Hill now in the care of the National Trust. Legend has it that William Wallace set out from here to successfully capture the Peel of Gargunnock, a fortified strongpoint held by the English, guarding a crossing point on the River Forth. By the time Bonnie Prince Charlie passed through in 1745, on his journey south to Derby, the village was well established supporting a population of four hundred weavers, masons, joiners, a shoemaker and a tailor.
In the days before digital alarm clocks, the villagers neatly solved the problem of an early call at the end of the eighteenth century, by employing a drummer, paid for by public subscription, to go round the village at 5 o’clock each morning to rouse the early workers. Not only did they get the time but a weather forecast, as he used a horn on a wet morning and his drum on a dry one!
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the village had another connection with an adversary of the English as Captain James Stirling, whose family owned Gargunnock House, commanded H.M.S. Ferret, one of the ships in the squadron which took Napoleon into exile on the island of St Helena, in 1815. The youngest daughter of the family, Jane Stirling, was both beautiful and gifted and in the 1830s became a pupil of Frederic Chopin, who some years later is reputed to have visited Gargunnock at her invitation. During the latter half of the 19th century the records show a population of nearly five hundred - new employment being provided by a successful basket weaving trade, a quarry operation, distillery and grain mill. Sadly, by the 1920s nearly all this was gone. In a poignant article written for the Daily Record in the early 1930’s the villagers were described as ....near town and main roads, yet safely tucked away in their own backwater. The world slips by them, for their main street leads to nowhere.”
All this changed in the 1950s with the population rising again as a result of new house building, which continues today. This has given us the lively village we see, with its active Church, excellent pub and restaurant, well stocked shop and thriving primary school.
