Pitcairngreen
Pitcairngreen
Human settlement in Scotland
Pitcairngreen (pronounced 'Pit-cairn Green') is a hamlet in the Scottish council area of Perth and Kinross which is more or less adjoined to the much larger village of Almondbank. It lies 4 miles (6 kilometres) northwest of Perth.[1] As its name would suggest, two features of the settlement are a green and a cairn.
In the 18th century the nearby River Almond was used to power textile mills and the local nobleman Lord Lynedoch created the village to provide housing for mill workers.[1] The village's layout was designed in 1786 to have a green at the centre of it by James Stobie, a factor to John Murray, the 4th Duke of Atholl. The presence of a village green is unusual for a Scottish village as these are more commonly associated with traditional English villages. Stobie designed Pitcairngreen to be an industrial textile manufacturing village for Thomas Graham, a textile manufacturer.[2] Its rivalry with the Manchester textile factories is set out in the poem "The Scottish Village, or Pitcairngreen" by Hannah Cowley which starts with the lines:
- "Go Manchester and weep thy slighted loom
- its arts are cherished now in Pitcairne Green."[2]
There is a prehistoric burial cairn to the north-east of the village which is made from boulders from the River Almond.[1]
