This volume in the Buildings of Scotland series explores the rich architectural diversity of Dundee and Angus. Dundee, the fourth-largest city in Scotland, boasts some of the country's finest ecclesiastical, public, industrial, and commercial buildings, including the unique Maggie's Centre designed by Frank Gehry. Beyond Dundee lies the predominantly rural county of Angus, where visitors can see stunning Pictish and early Christian monuments, castles, country houses, and the famed Bell Rock Lighthouse, the world's oldest surviving sea-washed lighthouse.
Angus is the historical heartland of Scotland, a county where the past has left an indelible mark on the present. This book features 40 walks, combining exploration of the county's stunning coastline where rocky cliffs and coves reveal swathes of golden sand, with gentle inland trails and more adventurous forays into the celebrated Angus Glens.
Angus is a landscape of dramatic glens and rich farmland, ancient weaving towns and fishing villages, from the city of Dundee in the lee of the Sidlaw hills in the south, and the Grampian mountains in the north. The tales of Angus are as varied as the landscapes they are tied to, told through the years in castles, bothies, tenements and Travellers' tents. Here, historical legends tell of Caterans roaming the glens, Jacobite intrigue in Glenisla and pirates roving the stormy waters off the Arbroath coast. Kelpies, broonies and fairies lurk just out of sight on riverbanks and hillsides, waiting to draw unsuspecting travellers into another world. The land bears memories of ancient battles, and ghosts continue to walk the old roads in the gloaming. In this collection, storyteller and local historian Erin Farley brings you a wealth of legends and folk tales, both familiar and surprising.
Stirling and Central Scotland straddles the divisions between Highland and Lowland, rural and industrial Scotland. Castles range from Stirling, its fortifications enclosing a Renaissance palace of international significance, to the strongholds of medieval magnates at Doune, Blackness and Castle Campbell, from tower houses at Clackmannan and Alloa to the Georgian barracks complex of Dumbarton. Many buildings fully explained for the first time include Kinneil House, which developed from tower, to palace of the Regent of Scotland to Restoration showhouse; and the huge spread of Callendar House, aggrandized over four centuries with many changes of dress. Other major houses include Bannockburn House, with its superb plasterwork, and the eighteenth century mansions of Strathleven House, Touch House and Robert Adam's castellated villa of Airthrey Castle. Dunblane Cathedral and Stirling's Church of the Holy Rude magnificently represent medieval churches while post-Reformation successors range from the rural simplicity of Baldernock to the sumptuously fitted Alloa West Church. The buildings of the many towns and picturesque villages are just as varied, from Stirling's medieval Old Town, to the Victorian townscapes of Alloa and Falkirk, the prosperous villadom of Bearsden and Lenzie, and the redevelopment of blitzed Clydebank. Industrial memories of the collieries, mills, shipyards and ironworks are also recalled, not least by the contrast between the workers' housing and the industrialists' mansions. Notable twentieth century buildings include the boomerang-shaped Bannockburn High School, the University of Stirling's lakeside campus and the evocative development of Lomond Shores while the twenty-first century has opened with construction of the Millennium Wheel at Falkirk.
