volcanic rock, lava and ash of the Devonian period.
The heart of the Pentlands is formed from the folded sedimentary rocks of the Silurian age (435 million years), mainly marine shales and sandstones. This core is only exposed at three places: North Esk, Green Cleuch (Walk 8) and Loganlea. But it is the rocks of the succeeding Old Red Sandstone period (400 to 350 million years old) that have contributed to the form of the Pentlands we see today. After a period of erosion, coarse conglomerates and sandstones were laid down, and at this time volcanic activity also increased, and lavas and tuffs (volcanic ash) were deposited.
Geology at the Howe (Walk 8)
The rocks are classified according to the minerals they contain. Basalts and andesites are richly charged with iron oxides such as haematite, and are seen in the characteristic dark-red screes and outcrops found beside the lower part of Flotterstone Glen road (Walk 24). Rhyolytes and trachytes tend to be pink or pale orange in colour. Rhyolyte can be seen on the summit of Caerketton Hill (Walk 1) and trachytes are best seen on Torduff Hill (Walk 4). Tuffs, pale in colour and often containing distinct fragments of other rocks, can be found on the summit of Carnethy Hill (Walk 21).
The rocks of the Upper Old Red Sandstone age are found around West and East Cairn Hills (Walks 11 and 15). Earth movements during the Lower Carboniferous period created the Pentland Fault (the A702 follows the line of the fault), which separates the Pentlands from the Midlothian coalfield.
Mendick Hill from the Roman road (Walk 13)
The rounded profiles of the hills, the deposits of boulder clay and striated (scratched) rock surfaces, are evidence that an ice sheet scoured the Pentlands. In the last two million years, warmer spells between ice ages caused the ice to melt, and vast quantities of meltwater cut out channels to lower ground. Green Cleuch (Walk 9) and the area to the west of Carlops (Walk 16) are excellent examples of these meltwater channels.
The hard, volcanic rocks have been used to construct cairns, dwellings, dykes and roads around the hills. The shape of the land, with its valleys and relatively non-porous rock, has been well utilised for water catchment.
Visit www.edinburghgeolsoc.org/downloads/lbgcleaflet_pentland.pdf for a leaflet about the geology of the Pentland Hills.
Cultural heritage
There is an impressive range of archaeological sites and remains in the Pentlands. These include the early Bronze Age cairn on Carnethy Hill (Walk 8), the souterrain (an underground chamber or passage) at Castlelaw (Walk 5), and forts at Clubbiedean (Walk 4), Braidwood and Lawhead (Walk 22). Other places, such as Cairns Castle (Walk 11) and the site of the Battle of Rullion Green (Walk 22), are testament to some of the area’s more turbulent times. More recently, Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott have been inspired to base stories and characters on the area’s past events (see Walks 2, 4 and 28, for example).
Place names and dialect words
Place names
Today, a place name may seem merely a convenient label to attach to a location, but when it was originally applied to that place, the name must have had a particular significance. Place names can give us an insight into the past and those who populated it, and included in this book is background to some of the place names in the Pentlands.
Place names are evidence of the languages used by the succession of different peoples who lived in the Lothians. Celtic, the language of the early Iron Age British Celts, survives in Pentland names such caep, ‘pointed hill’, as in West Kip (Walk 3). The British Celts saw the Romans arrive and were largely trading allies. In the 7th century the area was conquered by the Northumbrian Angles, and Anglian is reflected in laecc, ‘boggy stream’ (Walk 5). Gaelic names appear later, around the 10th century, as a result of political change. A Pentland example is cloch mead, ‘the stone at the middle of the pass’ (Walk 4). From the 11th century to the 18th century estate and farming names began to dominate, although they often reflect earlier origins.
I have drawn heavily on Stuart Harris’s The Place Names of Edinburgh, Their Origins and History (see bibliography), and some research was undertaken by the Scottish Place-Name Society, so if this is an area of interest for you, it may be worth looking at www.spns.org.uk.
Dialect words
A number of words in the text may be unfamiliar to readers, so a brief glossary is included as Appendix C. These are local terms used for places and wildlife. The word ‘cleuch’ (or sometimes ‘cleugh’, used chiefly by map makers) is used often and means a narrow valley. ‘Bealach’ is a pass or saddle between two hills, sometimes termed a col. I have used the local phrase ‘drystane dyke’ to describe a wall built without mortar.
‘Peewit’, ‘whaup’ and ‘laverock’ (lapwing, curlew and skylark respectively) are birds you will probably encounter on a walk in the Pentlands. Personally, I like these names, and encourage their continued use.
Old maps
The British Isles are very well served in terms of maps. The practise of making maps stretches back centuries, with a variety of reasons for their production – military, land holding, legal and fiscal, and so on – and the late 19th century saw a rise in the use of maps as an aid to walking and recreation. The earliest maps referred to in this book are: Adair’s maps of Midlothian and West Midlothian, from 1682; A and M Armstrong’s Map of the Three Lothians, surveyed in 1773; Roy’s 1753 Military Survey of Scotland; Knox’s 1812 Edinburgh and Its Environs. After this the Ordnance Survey provides the basis for today’s cartography, with foundations laid by the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps from 1852 onwards.
The National Library of Scotland has an excellent digital library of maps, and their website is www.nls.uk.
Previous Pentlands guidebooks
A number of guidebooks have been written about the Pentland Hills, mainly in the last century, and they are an eclectic mix. George Reith’s The Breezy Pentlands (1910) is a lovely blend of heritage and walking routes, with humour laced throughout. Pentland Walks with Their Literary and Historical Associations (Robert Cochrane, 1908) describes a series of routes combined with cultural background and details of the literary connections of the hills (this book formed the basis of DG Moir’s Pentland Walks, Their Literary and Historical Associations, published in 1977). William Anderson’s The Pentland Hills (1926) – not written as a guidebook but as an appreciation – makes interesting reading.
Probably the best known of the Pentlands guidebooks is Will Grant’s The Call of the Pentlands (1927), and another of Grant’s books, Pentland Days and Country Ways (1934), is an anthology of stories about and reflections on the hills.
The publication of these books reflected the growing interest in walking and the countryside among ordinary people during the 20th century, as more leisure time became available and travelling became easier.
The early 1990s saw a further two Pentlands books published: The Pentlands’ Pocket Book by Albert Morris and James Bowman in 1990, and Jim Crumley’s Discovering the Pentland Hills a year later. Ian Munro’s The Birds of the Pentland Hills also makes fascinating reading, reflecting the changing weather, the character of the people, and Ian Munro’s own love of the area.
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