Feuing plan of Bridge of Allan, c. 1850 – Post by James Marshall, Archives Volunteer
This mid-19th century map of the Bridge of Allan and Sunnylaw areas immediately grabs any onlooker with its pageantry and detail. Dated to around c.1850 and commissioned by Major Alexander Henderson; the map serves as an advertisement for the landowner’s offer of lands for feuing. These advertised plots, picked out in painstaking detail across the map, were feued to their owner to build a property on site. Though requiring considerable investment from potential buyers, the offer may well have been enticing given all that was occurring around Bridge of Allan at the time.
With the finished construction of the town’s railway station in 1848, Bridge of Allan was well connected to the surplus of tourists regularly visiting Scotland in the period. The availability of rail was significant to the map creators as well, as they note in its offer section that from Bridge of Allan; ‘By Rail, London can [**] reached in 13 hours, Edinburgh and Glasgow in 2 hours’. Travelers were drawn to the area with the upswell of interest in Scotland during the period, but also specifically to visit the mineral waters of Bridge of Allan.
The 1840s was a boom period for the construction of bath houses, spas, and hydropathics across Scotland, as the healing powers of fresh mineral water was widely praised. The town itself already had baths by the time of this map’s creation, while a hydropathic centre would be constructed by 1855. It no wonder then, that the lithograph title piece of this map displays a range of visual references to the aquatic; from the lounging fish people at its top, to the flowing river at its bottom. The interest generated by mineral water treatment helped Bridge of Allan grow rapidly as investment flowed in. In this, Henderson’s map stands out as a signifier of the developing value of the area.
As a research piece, the map provides an excellent snapshot of the ongoing development of Bridge of Allan during a period of rapid growth. Existing features and proposed constructions are clearly demarcated, with the latter displaying the stately villas Henderson expected to be built on the feued lands. Many of them were, with much of Henderson Street built up with new homes by the 1860s. Other proposed features like the Fountain of Nineveh would be finished in 1853 and still stand today. While the craze for mineral water bathing has long since ebbed, the modern Bridge of Allan still displays the marks of the expansion it brought about during the 1850s