This cache is one of three in a short series at Deanburn Glen, Bo'Ness. The series consists of one Letterbox Hybrid and two Traditional caches. The other two caches in the series are:
- Little Bridges No. 2158 - Deanburn Glen (GC95ERR)
- Deanburn Glen East (GC95ETC)
The series is quite compact (spaced an average of roughly 250m apart) and it forms a triangular walk along Deanburn Glen and back through footpaths skirting a nearby housing estate.
The Bo'Ness Green Belt
Deanburn Glen's southern tip approaches the site of original settlement of Borrowstoun Mains, one of several small farm settlements that were effectively swallowed by the growth of Bo'Ness, and are now just districts of the town. By the time the town was in the middle of the industrial revolution, the Kinneil Estate's eastern boundary was ringed by quarries, chemical works, a distillery and mines, all sitting on the west side of Bo'Ness where it touched the much older settlement of Kinneil. Dean House (formerly located at what is now the Provost Road mobile phone mast at the north tip of Deanburn Glen) was often used as the Estate Manager's house for the Kinneil Estate. You can read more about Dean House in the cache description for one of the other caches in this series - Deanburn East (GC95ETC).
As described below, industrial sprawl in the 18th and 19th Century consumed most of the parts of Bo'Ness that lay within a kilometre of the shoreline as that was the focus of the transport links in and out the area - the ports (Bo'Ness and the smaller harbour at neighbouring Bridgeness), freight basin and the two train stations (at Bo'Ness and Kinneil). A tramline ran east/west along the 200ft contour up the hills roughly where the Newton area of the town is now, a kilomtere from the shore. In that 3km strip of land were crammed an array of industrial establishments. However that densely-packed industry (and the housing to support it), was firmly bracketed to the east and west by two large private estates - Kinneil Estate in the west and Carriden House Estate in the east. These early versions of a green belt were supplimented in the west the by natural green feature of Deanburn Glen - so steep that it acted as a firebreak on the industrial sprawl in this area.
Pitpropolis
Bo'ness's wealth first began to build up via trade when it became one of Scotland's leading ports in the early 18th Century. This was a consequence of the area customs house moving there from nearby Blackness. The port exported coal and slag to the Low Countries and Scandinavia, and imported timber from the Baltic.
A look through the various maps of Bo'Ness in the period 1750-1920 reveals that after the port was established, waves of industry swept through the town for 180 years. Mining always figured prominently here in any of those periods, and there were hundreds of coal shafts dug in what we now call Bo'ness - coal mining was conducted for at least seven centuries here. The results were that much of the current town has been mined underneath at some point. However beyond mining, the sheer breadth of different industries that sprang up in the town is remarkable - from traditional industries such as saltmaking, quarries, shipbuilding, and pottery manufacture, through to some of the more advanced iron foundries and sawmills of the industrial revolution. The Bo'Ness distillery churned out spirit from its position inland from Kinneil Kerse, looking across the Firth of Forth, and beer production was also a significant employer. But it was mining that was the constant in the town's commerce throughout its history, from Carriden in the east to Kinneil in the west, mining riddled the land under the feet of the townsfolk. Such was the extent of the honeycomb of mines beneath Bo'Ness that demand for pit props escalated to staggering heights, and huge stores of them formed along the timber basin and coastal warehouses in the north east of the town. As a result, locals during the industrial era nicknamed the town 'Pitpropolis'.
A Fine Ness
There were several shipbuilders in Bo’ness as one might expect for a location where a natural headland (or 'Ness') that had been augmented with a substantial harbour. One of the shipbuilding claims-to-fame for Bo'Ness shipyards were their connection to one of the greatest acts of hubris in Scottish history - The Darien Scheme. Two of the five ships sent to Darien (now in modern Panama) in the famous failed colonial expedition in the 1690s, were built in the town. In the late 1700s the standing of the port of Bo'Ness grew when whale fishing started, and at one stage there were at least seven whaling ships sailing from the harbour. By the mid-18th century the town was said to be Scotland’s second most important port, and had strong links with Baltic traders. Bartholomew's 1887 Gazeteer of the British Isles describes Bo'Ness as follows:
"It lies in a rich mineral district, and has mfrs. of salt, vitriol, soap, malt, and earthenware. A new wet dock (7¼ ac.) was opened in 1881; a considerable coasting trade is carried on."
The Deanburn Bridge
As industry expanded and expanded in the town, Deanburn Glen remained largely unchanged, a dam was added and several footbridges, but it was just easier to move goods and people through the flat coastal transport links (roads, trains and harbour) than build what would have been major bridges across the steep glen, for purposes of commerce. The only such large bridge across the Dean Burn's steeper drops was an ornamental one which was part of the formal entrance into the Kinneil Estate itself, leading into the grand drive up to the House. It's not close to the cache, but still worth a look if you are in the area, and is a dozen yards away from the Kinneil Estate Artwork near Denburn Gate Gardens, nearer to cache GC95ERR in this series.
Industry began to recede in Bo'Ness during the earliest part of the 20th Century, and by that point most of the industrial land had returned to farmland or converted to housing, per the map below.
Western Bo'Ness - 1921
