Biggar, South Lanarkshire
Encyclopedia
Biggar is a town and former burgh
Burgh
A burgh was an autonomous corporate entity in Scotland and Northern England, usually a town. This type of administrative division existed from the 12th century, when King David I created the first royal burghs. Burgh status was broadly analogous to borough status, found in the rest of the United...
in South Lanarkshire
South Lanarkshire
South Lanarkshire is one of 32 unitary council areas of Scotland, covering the southern part of the former county of Lanarkshire. It borders the south-east of the city of Glasgow and contains many of Glasgow's suburbs, commuter towns and smaller villages....
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. It is situated in the Southern Uplands
Southern Uplands
The Southern Uplands are the southernmost and least populous of mainland Scotland's three major geographic areas . The term is used both to describe the geographical region and to collectively denote the various ranges of hills within this region...
, near the River Clyde
River Clyde
The River Clyde is a major river in Scotland. It is the ninth longest river in the United Kingdom, and the third longest in Scotland. Flowing through the major city of Glasgow, it was an important river for shipbuilding and trade in the British Empire....
, around 30 miles from Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
along the A702
A702 road
The A702 is a major road in Scotland, that runs from Edinburgh to St. John's Town of Dalry in Dumfries and Galloway. It is the last section of a sometimes recommended route between London and Edinburgh, the English and Scottish capitals, which now follows the M1, M6, A74 and A702 roads, rather than...
. The closest towns are Lanark
Lanark
Lanark is a small town in the central belt of Scotland. Its population of 8,253 makes it the 100th largest settlement in Scotland. The name is believed to come from the Cumbric Lanerc meaning "clear space, glade"....
and Peebles
Peebles
Peebles is a burgh in the committee area of Tweeddale, in the Scottish Borders, lying on the River Tweed. According to the 2001 Census, the population was 8,159.-History:...
, and as such Biggar serves a wide rural area. The population of the town is around 2,000.
Details
The town was once served by the Symington, Biggar and Broughton RailwaySymington, Biggar and Broughton Railway
The Symington, Biggar and Broughton Railway Company was a railway in southern Scotland. It was later absorbed by the Caledonian Railway, and is now closed...
, which ran from the Caledonian Railway
Caledonian Railway
The Caledonian Railway was a major Scottish railway company. It was formed in the early 19th century and it was absorbed almost a century later into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, in the 1923 railway grouping, by means of the Railways Act 1921...
(now the West Coast Main Line
West Coast Main Line
The West Coast Main Line is the busiest mixed-traffic railway route in Britain, being the country's most important rail backbone in terms of population served. Fast, long-distance inter-city passenger services are provided between London, the West Midlands, the North West, North Wales and the...
) at Symington to join the Peebles Railway at Peebles. The station and signal box are still standing but housing has been built on the line running west from the station and the railway running east from the station is a public footpath to Broughton, part of the Biggar Country Path network.
Biggar has several museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
s, including the Moat Park Heritage Centre, Gladstone Court Museum, Greenhill Covenanter
Covenanter
The Covenanters were a Scottish Presbyterian movement that played an important part in the history of Scotland, and to a lesser extent in that of England and Ireland, during the 17th century...
s Museum, and the Biggar Gasworks Museum, the only preserved gas works in Scotland. Many of the museums are run by the Biggar Museum Trust
Biggar Museum Trust
Biggar Museum Trust consists of several museums based in and around the town of Biggar in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. It was largely started on the initiative of several individuals, notably Brian Lambie, some years ago, and is both non-profit and independent of local government; indeed,...
. Additionally, Biggar has Scotland's only permanent puppet
Puppet
A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....
theatre, Biggar Puppet Theatre, which is run by the well known Purves Puppets family.
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...
spent his later years at Brownsbank, near the town. Ian Hamilton Finlay
Ian Hamilton Finlay
Ian Hamilton Finlay, CBE, was a Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener.-Biography:Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas of Scottish parents. He was educated in Scotland at Dollar Academy. At the age of 13, with the outbreak of World War II, he was evacuated to family in the countryside...
's home and garden at Little Sparta
Little Sparta
Little Sparta is a garden at Dunsyre in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh, created by artist and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay and his wife Sue Finlay....
is nearby in the Pentland Hills
Pentland Hills
The Pentland Hills are a range of hills to the south-west of Edinburgh, Scotland. The range is around 20 miles in length, and runs south west from Edinburgh towards Biggar and the upper Clydesdale.Some of the peaks include:* Scald Law...
. The fictional Midculter, which features in Dorothy Dunnett
Dorothy Dunnett
Dorothy Dunnett OBE was a Scottish historical novelist. She is best known for her six-part series about Francis Crawford of Lymond, The Lymond Chronicles, which she followed with the eight-part prequel The House of Niccolò...
's Lymond Chronicles
Lymond Chronicles
The Lymond Chronicles is a series of six novels, written by Dorothy Dunnett, which were first published between 1961 and 1975. The series is set in mid-sixteenth century Europe and the Mediterranean and tells the story of a young Scottish nobleman, Francis Crawford of Lymond, from 1547 through...
novels, is set here. The town hosts an annual arts festival, the Biggar Little Festival. The town has traditionally held a huge bonfire at Hogmanay
Hogmanay
Hogmanay is the Scots word for the last day of the year and is synonymous with the celebration of the New Year in the Scottish manner...
.
In 2007 a group of Biggar residents launched the Carbon Neutral Biggar project, with the stated aim of becoming the first carbon neutral town in Scotland. The launch of the project, covered in both local and national media, took place at the town's annual eco forum in May 2007. The group has formed links with the town of Ashton Hayes
Ashton Hayes
Ashton Hayes is a village and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It is located about 8 miles east of Chester on the B5393 road. The nearest villages are Mouldsworth to the north east and Kelsall to the south east...
in Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
, who have a similar group working toward carbon neutral status for their town.
This town has two schools, one primary, and one secondary. The secondary school, Biggar High School
Biggar High School
Biggar High School is a secondary school located in the town of Biggar, South Lanarkshire. It is a mixed secondary school of non-denominational religion. The current headteacher is Mr David J. Chalmers. The school was most recently inspected by HMIe in November 2007, and generally performed well...
, takes in pupils from surrounding small towns and villages. Many of these pupils (roughly 30 to 40) are from Carnwath Primary School. Biggar Primary is a small school on the same road, Johns Loan, as Biggar High. Because the primary is so small and the high school is so close, the primary pupils have lunch and some lessons at the high school.
History
Biggar occupies a key location close to two of Scotland's great rivers, the Clyde flowing to the west, and the TweedRiver Tweed
The River Tweed, or Tweed Water, is long and flows primarily through the Borders region of Great Britain. It rises on Tweedsmuir at Tweed's Well near where the Clyde, draining northwest, and the Annan draining south also rise. "Annan, Tweed and Clyde rise oot the ae hillside" as the Border saying...
flowing to the east. The area has been occupied since Mesolithic
Mesolithic
The Mesolithic is an archaeological concept used to refer to certain groups of archaeological cultures defined as falling between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic....
times. The present day A702 follows the route of a Roman road
Roman roads in Britain
Roman roads, together with Roman aqueducts and the vast standing Roman army , constituted the three most impressive features of the Roman Empire. In Britain, as in other provinces, the Romans constructed a comprehensive network of paved trunk roads Roman roads, together with Roman aqueducts and the...
, which linked the Clyde Valley with Musselburgh
Musselburgh
Musselburgh is the largest settlement in East Lothian, Scotland, on the coast of the Firth of Forth, six miles east of Edinburgh city centre.-History:...
.
In the 12th century, a motte and bailey castle was constructed by the Normans
Normans
The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...
, and the first permanent crossing of the Biggar Burn was built. It is thought that there has been a church at Biggar since the 6th or 7th century, although the first stone kirk
Kirk
Kirk can mean "church" in general or the Church of Scotland in particular. Many place names and personal names are also derived from it.-Basic meaning and etymology:...
was built in 1164, on the site of the existing kirk.
In the 14th century, the Fleming family were given lands in the area by Robert the Bruce, whose cause they had supported. The Flemings built Boghall Castle, visible as a ruin until the early 20th century, but now only represented by a few mounds. The town continued to grow as an important market town, and in 1451 the town became a burgh
Burgh
A burgh was an autonomous corporate entity in Scotland and Northern England, usually a town. This type of administrative division existed from the 12th century, when King David I created the first royal burghs. Burgh status was broadly analogous to borough status, found in the rest of the United...
. The market place remains the central focus of the town. The kirk was rebuilt as a Collegiate church
Collegiate church
In Christianity, a collegiate church is a church where the daily office of worship is maintained by a college of canons; a non-monastic, or "secular" community of clergy, organised as a self-governing corporate body, which may be presided over by a dean or provost...
in 1546 for Malcolm, 3rd Lord Fleming
Malcolm Fleming, 3rd Lord Fleming
Malcolm Fleming, 3rd Lord Fleming , was Lord Chamberlain of Scotland to King James V, from 1524.He was the son and heir of John Fleming, 2nd Lord Fleming, who was killed in a feud with the Tweedie of Drumelzier family in 1524....
, the last to be established before the Reformation
Scottish Reformation
The Scottish Reformation was Scotland's formal break with the Papacy in 1560, and the events surrounding this. It was part of the wider European Protestant Reformation; and in Scotland's case culminated ecclesiastically in the re-establishment of the church along Reformed lines, and politically in...
of 1560. The Flemings found themselves on the wrong side in the 16th century, when they supported Mary, Queen of Scots, and their lands were given over to the Elphinstone family.
Biggar Gas Works opened in 1836, producing gas from coal. In 1973, with the introduction of natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
, the works closed. Biggar had its own railway
History of rail transport in Great Britain
The railway system of Great Britain, the principal territory of the United Kingdom, is the oldest in the world. The system was originally built as a patchwork of local rail links operated by small private railway companies. These isolated links developed during the railway boom of the 1840s into a...
station between 1860 and 1953.
John Brown
John Brown (physician)
John Brown FRSE FRCPE was a Scottish physician and essayist. He was the son of the clergyman John Brown , and was born in Biggar, Scotland. He is best known for his 3 volume collection Horae Subsecivae—"Leisure Hours" , including essays and papers on art, medical history and biography...
the physician and essayist was born in a house in the South Back Road in 1810 which was at that time a manse. He is commemorated with a plaque on the front wall of the municipal hall.
In early 1900 a farmer located in Biggar founded Albion Motors
Albion Motors
Albion Automotive of Scotstoun, Glasgow is a former Scottish automobile and commercial vehicle manufacturer, currently involved in the manufacture and supply of Automotive component systems....
as a small business which eventually grew into the largest truck company in the British Empire. The company still exists as part of the Leyland DAF group. The archives of Albion motors can still be found in Biggar.
In the summer of 1940 several thousands of Polish soldiers were stationed here, having been evacuated after the collapse of France. Later they moved to the east coast of Scotland to defend the coast and to train for their deployment as the 1st Polish Armoured Division in Normandy, Belgium and the Netherlands.