DUMBARTON NOTEBOOK BY BILL HEANEY

IN Dum­bar­ton, where the kings of Strath­clyde once sur­veyed their ancient realm, Scot­land’s gnarly his­tory lives still in castle, hill and river. On a walk­ing tour of this town, hid­den treas­ures beckon you to come near and a nation’s flower­ing is revealed: slowly at first and then in a spate.

This is one of Scot­land’s most his­toric towns, with a dra­matic his­tory to rival and sur­pass the pol­ished and cul­tiv­ated nar­rat­ives of St Andrews, Edin­burgh and Stirl­ing. You quickly form the impres­sion that gen­er­a­tions of town hall pan­jandrums have under­sold this town and failed to advoc­ate for its cul­tural import­ance to the nation.

At Dum­bar­ton Lib­rary, where I’m to meet local his­tor­ian and com­munity volun­teer Florence Boyle, I tarry a little and get rewar­ded for doing so.

The lib­rary has stood here since 1910, hand­some in that Edwar­d­ian fash­ion when a town’s built her­it­age was regarded as an exten­sion of local pride and ambi­tion: a place rein­forced by low­land Scot­tish rectitude: for­mid­able, upright, noth­ing too fancy.

It’s been many dec­ades since I’ve explored the inside of a clas­sic old lib­rary like this and it reminds me of child­hood school vis­its when you would mar­vel at the sheer know­ledge gathered under its beams and how they’d man­aged to get their hands on such eso­teric gems from around the world.

The friendly staff take turns to greet me and tell me of the events going on that day if I care to return later. I’m drawn to a suite of inspir­a­tional quotes on the walls above the book­cases.

“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syl­lable that is spelled out is a spark” – Vic­tor Hugo.

Here, I dis­cover The Imper­ial Gaz­etteer of Scot­land (Vols I and II), while round the corner is Filthy Rich about Jef­frey Epstein, writ­ten by James Pat­ter­son in 2016: “The shock­ing true story of the bil­lion­aire’s sex scan­dal. It couldn’t be pub­lished in the UK … until now.”

Dum­bar­ton Lib­rary deliv­ers everything you once expec­ted from these muni­cipal reliquar­ies. On the out­side, though, it seems to deter you. The grass is unten­ded and the exter­ior is fray­ing. It fol­lows a depress­ing tra­ject­ory that you’ve seen in other old towns when the local author­ity decides to put another hal­lowed piece of its built her­it­age out to seed.

Later this year, it will be replaced by a £7.2m facil­ity in the refur­bished Glen­cairn House in the town centre, the old­est build­ing in Dum­bar­ton, dat­ing back to the 17th cen­tury. This old pile has been lying empty for years, wait­ing for another moment.

Yet there are local con­cerns that it can’t accom­mod­ate all that was prom­ised. “It’s simply not big enough,” says Florence

Boyle. “When Glen­cairn opens, Dum­bar­ton Lib­rary will close, yet it’s a big stal­wart build­ing with good park­ing and easy access for dis­abled people and par­ents with bug­gies.” Dum­bar­ton High Street will be ‘a rammy’.

Dum­bar­ton Lib­rary will become a stor­age facil­ity for the excel­lent art col­lec­tion it houses and will allow ‘on-demand pub­lic access’ to see items in the col­lec­tion. She and her fel­low com­munity volun­teers won­der why a pur­pose-built gal­lery for an import­ant art col­lec­tion, fea­tur­ing many prom­in­ent women artists, has never mater­i­al­ised.

I’m keen, though, to make a long over­due visit to Dum­bar­ton Castle and so we duly make our way there. There it is, perched on its rock, a massive part of Scot­land’s ancient his­tory interred in its stones and the River Clyde flow­ing quickly by its side. This is a place where cor­acles used to come and go and the rot­ting rem­nants of wooden piers tell tales of a busier time.

Of the 336 sites admin­istered by His­toric Envir­on­ment Scot­land, Dum­bar­ton Castle has the longest recor­ded his­tory, dat­ing back to circa 450 AD in the form of a let­ter from St Patrick to the king of Alt Clut, the name that pred­ated Strath­clyde.

“Dum­bar­ton has a genu­ine claim to be the birth­place of St Patrick and it’s not a trivial claim,” says Boyle. “It was also a place of pil­grim­age and I don’t think its medi­eval his­tory or its Roman his­tory has been prop­erly explored archae­olo­gic­ally.

“The ‘kils’ around here – Old Kilpatrick, Killer­mont, Kilma­hew (from Old Gaelic for chapel or burial place) – point to a pil­grims’ route that we believe would have been under­taken by St Patrick.” She and her friends and col­leagues plan a re-enact­ment of the ancient 7.7-mile walk from Dum­bar­ton to Old Kilpatrick.

Her friend and fel­low local his­tor­ian Elspeth Crock­ett have accu­mu­lated a treas­ury of unmatched know­ledge about Dum­bar­ton Castle. She’s also a vol­un­tary tour guide there. “It’s unlike the other so-called ‘royal’ castles in the cent­ral belt, not­ably Stirl­ing and Edin­burgh. It gets a frac­tion of the money spent on these.

“West Dun­bar­ton­shire Coun­cil is des­ig­nated a deprived area and you have to won­der if the national agen­cies ignore the tour­ism poten­tial of the area because of this. Owing to its stra­tegic import­ance, Dum­bar­ton Castle played a pivotal role in many peri­ods of Scot­tish his­tory: the Vik­ing inva­sions, the Wars of Inde­pend­ence, the reign of Mary Queen of Scots and the Napo­leonic Wars.

Maybe they think nice things are too good for us

“It has very strong links to the Auld Alli­ance. The gov­ernor of Dum­bar­ton Castle trav­elled to Paris to sign it in 1295. The largest army ever to leave Scot­land in the Middle Ages set sail for France in two batches – 1419 and 1424 – to fight against Eng­land in the Hun­dred Years War.”

The French con­nec­tion to Dum­bar­ton Castle is an intense one. The castle’s French prison held sol­diers and one of Napo­leon’s gen­er­als in the early 19th cen­tury and the Brit­ish gov­ern­ment ser­i­ously con­sidered hold­ing Napo­leon here too. The castle’s Mary Queen of Scots con­nec­tion is per­haps its most widely known one. But there are strong con­nec­tions to Bruce and Wal­lace.

“Wal­lace is believed to have been brought here briefly after his cap­ture by Sir John Men­teith, then gov­ernor of the castle,” says Crock­ett. “Wal­lace’s sword was here for cen­tur­ies until it was removed to Stirl­ing’s Wal­lace Monu­ment in the 1880s, a move which led to angry protests in Dum­bar­ton.

“The castle was very import­ant dur­ing Mary Queen of Scots’ early years, a stra­tegic import­ance recog­nised by Henry VIII and his daugh­ter Eliza­beth of Eng­land. Mary lived here for six months before going to France.”

She and Boyle men­tion one of the three Bruce graves at the old St Serf’s Church in beau­ti­ful Leven­grove Park and the Wal­lace Cave at Havoc, men­tioned in Blind Harry’s 15th-cen­tury Life of Wal­lace. “West Dun­bar­ton­shire Coun­cil hasn’t even thought to mark this anoin­ted place with a plaque,” adds Crock­ett.

Dun­bar­ton­shire’s part in Scot­land’s bloody polit­ical and royal his­tory was fol­lowed by its rich indus­trial his­tory, which included the world-fam­ous tex­tile man­u­fac­tur­ing in the Vale of Leven, glass­mak­ing, Denny’s shipyard and Singer and John Brown’s in Cly­de­bank.

Both women are pos­sessed of for­mid­able banks of local know­ledge of a type unknown to what they describe as an army of “non-res­id­ent local gov­ern­ment decision­makers”. It’s a com­plaint I’ve heard often in less afflu­ent parts of Scot­land. “Open­ing up Dum­bar­ton’s future poten­tial, to my mind, lies in his­tor­ical tour­ism and its ima­gin­at­ive exploit­a­tion,” says Crock­ett.

We move on up the road to Bowl­ing and its exquis­ite micro-har­bour which, in loc­a­tion and nat­ural design, rivals any­thing you’ll find on Italy’s cel­eb­rated Amalfi Coast. Bowl­ing is at the end of that cut-off that no one ever takes on the A82, Great West­ern Road out of Glas­gow.

You hap­pen upon the har­bour and its canal locks and a small mar­ina back­ing on to the old rail­way line. Under­neath this are a row of units includ­ing a splen­did cafe. Yet there are also three other empty spaces along­side them. A lot of money has been spent kit­ting them out. That was around 10 years ago, I’m told. They look ideal for artists’ stu­dios, but will soon lapse into famil­iar decrep­itude.

“West Dun­bar­ton­shire is the place ima­gin­a­tion goes to die,” says Boyle. “There’s a nat­ural, grassy amphi­theatre beside the har­bour and my dream has always been that it could become a sum­mer venue for open-air con­certs.

“But the coun­cil has told me it’s too close to the water for people to be served drink.” Another top-down rebuke by absentee coun­cil pan­jandrums for people they clearly believe can­not be trus­ted.

Back up at Dum­bar­ton Castle, at the base of the rock, is a rust­ing ring of metal fen­cing to con­tain any rock­falls.

It’s been there for almost 20 years and dis­fig­ures the approach to one of Scot­land’s most dis­tin­guished ancient cit­adels. “Wel­come to one of our top tour­ist attrac­tions,” says Boyle.

Beside it is an unsightly stretch of waste ground that’s being primed for another brick shoe­box of lux­ury £300,000 apart­ments. The developer’s sales and mar­ket­ing cabin sits where other old castles would have a vis­it­ors’ centre and pic­nic tables. “Maybe they think nice things are too good for us,” says Boyle.

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