Of these villages, Camelon has most
exercised the imaginative power of antiquaries and local historians over the years. A
mighty Roman harbour, a great Pictish city with twelve brass gates, battles galore
involving Pict and Scot, Angle and Briton and, of course, the Camelot and round table of
King Arthur himself - all have had their champions and such theories continue to appear
regularly even in this more sceptical age. Alas for romance, the evidence for such past
glory is scant or non-existent and this is not the place to reinforce such fancy. The
truth is interesting enough by any standard.
It was on the sloping land above the River
Carron that the Romans built a great fort during their brief but eventful occupation in
the first and second centuries A.D. The military road which crossed the Antonine Wall at
Watling Lodge passed the fort before crossing the Carron at Larbert and it is certainly
possible that the river was navigable as far as Camelon during the Roman period and may
well have been used as the point of entry and departure for men and materials during the
years of occupation and campaigning. But whether there was a harbour or not the north road
was important enough to demand a heavily garrisoned fort in its defence and if Roman
positions were indeed attacked by tribal enemies then Camelon would have been an obvious
target.
After the Romans withdrew from the area for
the last time the place we now know as Camelon disappeared from the record for close on
fifteen hundred years. Only with the coming of the new age of iron and the cutting of the
Great Canal in the 18th Century does the village emerge from the darkness and have an
existence which we can identify and describe with any certainty. The stretch of the canal
from Bainsford through the farmland of Camelon was completed in the early 1770s and soon
attracted manufacturers and traders who recognised the benefits of a swift and dependable
transport system. The Lock 16 area, and the junction point where the road from Falkirk
dipped under the canal, quickly became growth points and there were no doubt storehouses,
loading basins and stables serving the growing canal traffic from quite an early stage. By
the beginning of the 19th century the village population was reported to be close to 600
and growing with a considerable number engaged in the manufacture of nails.
It is William Cadell, son of the founder of
the famous Carron Company and himself the first manager of the works, who is credited with
the establishment of the earliest nailmaking concern in Camelon. In 1790, more than twenty
years after he gave up a direct interest in the works at Carron, Cadell brought a group of
skilled nailmakers from England to begin manufacturing in the village. The Cadells had
bought out Carron's interest in this particular activity in the 1770s and had already
established workshops in Bannockburn and Laurieston as well as places much further afield.
In Camelon the trade expanded steadily and young men were drawn to the area and
apprenticed to masters who taught them the secrets of a hard, heavy and ill-rewarded
trade. Houses, workshops, tools and nailrods were supplied by Cadell to the men and to the
boys, often no more than nine or ten years old, who slaved for twelve or more hours each
day to turn out the thousands of nails that were required to earn a living wage:
Round the central fire hammered away four
nailers - no rest, no breathing space for them. From hour to hour the bent back and steady
quick stroke, for the nailer must strike when the iron was hot and he had to pay for
heating the iron. In the morning they hied to the warehouse for their bundles of rods
which were converted into nails ranging in length from ½ inch to 12 inches.
Four nailer's rows or squares appeared in
Camelon - the Wee Square at the west end, Fairbairn's Square, owned by George Fairbairn, a
leading nailmaster of the early 19th century, George Square, close to Lock 16 on the
canal, and Gunn's Square in the same vicinity. Living conditions were extremely poor and
the nailers and their families developed a reputation for hard living and hard drinking,
which survived until mechanical nailmaking robbed them of a living from the middle of the
century on. One observer in 1840 thought things were improving:
The morals of the nailmakers have been
improved within the last few years. In particular drunkenness and habits of improvidence
are greatly on the decrease.
By then a visit of the dreaded cholera in
1833 had brought many deaths to the nailer's rows with Mr Harrison paying £40 to assist
with the burial costs 'which has been repaid from the earnings of survivors. After this, a
penny-a-week death fund was established to offer the vulnerable nailers some protection.
The completion of the Union Canal in 1822
confirmed Camelon's status as the fulcrum of the new communication system and soon new
inns, workshops, storage facilities and houses appeared along the banks and basins of Port
Downie. By 1831 the population was over 800 rising within a decade to 1,340. Sometime
around 1840 two brothers from Airth, James and Andrew Ross began building boats in a yard
near Lock 16; after only five years Andrew was dead and young James who had discovered the
value of pitch as a commodity in the boatyard moved into chemical manufacture at Limewharf
just a few hundred yards west of Port Downie. Crude tar from various gas works was
shipped. to Camelon where it was converted into naphtha, pitch and refined tar. Business
boomed and James Ross directed the expanding company for thirty years until 1878 when
Robert Sutherland and Robert Orr assumed control. New products multiplied - sulphate of
ammonia, benzine, creosote, and toluene, a key ingredient in the manufacture of TNT
explosives-and prosperity followed. The firm did well during the years of war but in 1929,
the same year as the sore pressed iron foundries were forming the Allied, the Lime Wharf
Chemical Works became part of Scottish Tar Distillers. It survived until a disastrous fire
in 1973 destroyed the works and soon afterwards all production on the site came to an end.
By the end of the Victorian era a number of
chemical companies had followed James Ross into business in Camelon and were employing
hundreds of men in the manufacture of sulphuric acid, iodine, and dozens of other
compounds by then in high demand in the rapidly expanding Scottish economy. The Hurlet
Works (1851), Camelon Chemical Works (1878) and Crosses (1900) flourished briefly but
never attained the prosperity of Lime Wharf though they did help bring the infant chemical
industry to the Falkirk district where it would reach its full flowering in the
Grangemouth developments of the present century
From the start the people of Camelon
village looked for the services which confirmed their status as a new community. As part
of Falkirk Parish they depended on the Minister there for their spiritual needs and on the
heritors for the provision of education. In 1786 a rented house paid for by subscription
among the villagers, was converted to a schoolroom and five years later a 'thatched but
and ben' was built on land feued from Forbes of Callendar. Thus in 1797 the Minister of
Falkirk could report that 'in the village of Camelon there is a dwelling house and
schoolroom for the encouragement of a schoolmaster, but no salary'. The establishment of
the 'School and Well Committee' in 1799 to maintain what were seen as the community's
principal or only assets, was another example of the villagers' willingness to band
together to fight for the common good of all, a tendency which has marked the people of
Camelon in all the years since then. The Committee appointed seven 'stint-masters' from
their number and while they found it as difficult as their opposite numbers in Falkirk to
raise the sums due, the school did continue to grow and the teacher's salary was usually
paid. Sometimes though, their poverty was to his disadvantage as in 1847 when the
Committee resolved that 'all the panes of glass awanting in the school to be replaced by
the teacher', later clarified as 'such glass as is broken in school hours'. A new school
building was provided in 1874 but it proved to be too small and a much larger building,
the present Carmuirs primary was opened by the Parochial Board in 1901.
The explosion of iron founding in the
district in the second half of the 19th century had a major impact on Camelon and again
the Forth and Clyde canal had a great deal to do with the choice of site. The first was
established in 1845 near Lock 16 and was known variously as Port Downie or Camelon Iron
Works. It survived until the 1950s. It was followed by the Union (1854-1879), the Forth
and Clyde (1870-1963), R and A Main's Gothic Works (1899-1964), Grange (1900-1960s),
Carmuirs (1899-1968) and Dorrator founded in 1898 which survived until very recent times -
it finally closed in the late summer of 1994. At their height in the years before the
first war the Camelon foundries employed over 1,300 men manufacturing the familiar range
of domestic and industrial ironware including grates, stoves, pipes, cookers, gates,
fences and mantelpieces.
The rapid growth in the population
increased demands for a church in Camelon and, with the support of the Minister of Falkirk
William Begg and William Forbes of Callendar who provided a site free of charge, a new
building was erected at the west end of the village to the design of Edinburgh architect
David Rhind. It was opened in August 1840 and a few weeks later William Branks from
Lanarkshire became the first Minister. After the great disruption in 1843 the charge was
vacant for six years as the established church struggled to find ministers for the
hundreds of deserted congregations throughout the land. In 1849 John Oswald was inducted
as the second Minister and due to his perseverance Camelon was erected into a Parish in
its own right in 1853. The life of Victorian communities was very closely tied to that of
their Parish Church and the long ministry of the Rev John Scott (1867-1918) in many ways
symbolised the true coming of age of Camelon. He was a leading figure not only in Camelon
but in the wider Falkirk district and it was during his time that the village, with a
population of nearly 6,000, and the town joined together in 1900 when Camelon became part
of the Burgh. Since then, the 'mariners' as the sons and daughters of the village call
themselves, have played a very full part in the life of the larger community and the list
of the institutions which serve the area from a base in Camelon is long and impressive.
There are firms like Alexander's, both bus building and driving, and Barr's; the Mariner
leisure centre and the cemetery and crematorium; the new Sheriff Court and Falkirk Golf
Club. Since 1900 no fewer than nine out of twenty four Provosts of Falkirk have come from
the village. |
