Pettinain, a village and a parish in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire. The village is 3 miles S by E of Carstairs Junction (only 15/8 mile in a straight line), and 5¾ miles E by S of Lanark, under which it has a post office.
The parish is bounded N by Carstairs and Carnwath, E by Libberton, SE by Covington, SW by Carmichael, and W by Lanark. Its utmost length, from E to W, is 3½ miles; its utmost breadth, from N to S, is 27/8 miles; and its area is 39972/3 acres, of which 98 are water. The Clyde winds 2¾ miles north-north-westward along all the eastern, 4½ miles west-south-westward along all the northern, and 11/8 mile southward along all the western, boundary. It thus has a total course here of 8 1/8 miles, though the point where it first touches and that where it quits the parish are only 3½ miles distant as the crow flies. A result of various changes of its channel is that five little pendicles of Pettinain parish are now situated on its right bank. A considerable tract of haugh land, about 615 feet above the sea, adjoins the river, so low and level as to be covered with water at the time of freshets, and then having the appearance of a lake. The ground rises by a gentle acclivity, and with unequal surface from the haugh; and a ridge of hills extends across the SW district, from the vicinity of the river into Covington, rising to an extreme altitude of l131 feet, and having three summits called Cairn Grife, Westraw Hill, and Swaites Hill. The rocks of this hill-ridge are porphyry and sandstone, the former an excellent road-metal, but the latter illsuited to building purposes. The soil of the low grounds is variously recent alluvium, rich loam, sharp gravel, and poor sand. That of the higher grounds is generally of a moorish character, incumbent on till. About 2435 acres are in tillage; 1107 are pastoral; and 366½ are under wood. Thirteen-fourteenths of the entire rental belong to Sir Windham Carmichael Anstruther, Bart. of Carmichael, whose uncle in 1817 inherited the estate from the last Earl of Hyndford. Its mansion, Westraw House, 5 furlongs W of the village, was that Earl's favourite residence, and was probably built by his ancestor, the first Lord Carmichael, towards the middle of the 17th century. A hundred years ago the ruins of a house were pointed out at Clowburn, in which tea is said to have first been introduced to Scotland. It was brought from Holland, according to tradition, by Sir Andrew Kennedy, whose wife succeeded to the lands of Clowburn in 1677, and who, being 'Conservator of the Scotch Nation' at Campvere, had received it as a present from the Dutch East India Company. On the highest ground in the S of the parish are vestiges of an ancient British fort, Cairn Grife, whose two concentric ramparts, 5 to 7 yards apart, enclose an area of 100 square feet. Pettinain is in the presbytery of Lanark and the synod of Glasgow and Ayr; the living is worth £203. The chapel of 'Pedynane,' originally dependent on Lanark, was granted to Dryburgh Abbey by David I. about the year 1150. The parish church, on the site of the ancient chapel, has a belfry bearing date 1696, with the inscription, 'Holiness becomes God's House.' As repaired in 1820, it contains 234 sittings. The public school, with accommodation for 66 children, had (1883) an average attendance of 52, and a grant of £46, 7s. Valuation (1859) £3216, 3s. 6d., (1884) £4800, 10s. Pop. (1801) 430, (1821) 490, (1841) 416, (1861) 407, (1871) 366, (1881) 360.—Ord. Sur., sh. 23, 1865.
Note: This text has been made available using a process of scanning and
optical character recognition. Despite manual checking, some typographical
errors may remain. Please remember this description dates from
the 1880s; names may have changed, administrative divisions will certainly be
different and there are known to be occasional errors of fact in the original
text, which we have not corrected because we wish to maintain its integrity.
This information is provided subject to our standard disclaimer
