Auchterarder

History

The name "Auchterarder" derives from the Scottish Gaelic roots uachdar, àrd, and dobhar; it means ‘upland of high water.’ South West of the settlement close by to the Gleneagles train station is a pair of Pictish standing stones, one of the two depicts a carved image of a bird on it. Auchterarder Castle stood to the north of the town in the area now known as Castleton. It is said to have been a hunting seat for King Malcolm Canmore in the 11th century and was visited by King Edward I in 1296. It was made ruinous in the 18th century and only fragments remained at the end of the 19th century. In the Middle Ages, Auchterarder was known in Europe as 'the town of 100 drawbridges', a colourful description of the narrow bridges leading from the road level across wide gutters to the doorsteps of houses. The name appears in a charter of 1227 in a grant of land transaction to the Convent of Inchaffray. The Jacobite Earl of Mar's army torched the town on 25 January 1716. In 1834, a controversy over the selection of a parish minister, following the recent passing of the Veto Act, allowed the parishioners of Auchterarder to reject the chosen minister, Rev. Robert Young. Whilst this might have ended with the selection of an alternative, Young took the issue to the High Court. The court's decision concluded a link between state and church, directly contradicting the church's own view, and causing the first in a chain of events which would ultimately lead to the 1843 schism in the Church of Scotland. The remains of this church – the tower – have recently been renovated, and there is a plaque explaining what the church used to look like. As a result of the troubles of 1834, Auchterarder became one of the first towns in Scotland to build its own independent Free Church,…