Cairneymount Church

A short History of Maddiston

MADDISTON: the name seems to derive from MAUDSTON, (but I don't believe we will ever find out who MAUD was), the accent was not always on the MADD part of the name but on the centre IS which makes more sense in spoken Scots (The toun belonging to Maud)

The village was made up out of smaller constituent parts, which have joined up over the years.

CAIRNYMOUNT: The first time it appears on any map I've seen is Grassoms map of 1817. It's at the extreme south of the village where the church was built in 1904.

QUARRELLHEAD: on the hill above the bus stance (now The Forgie Crescent area) First appearance on a map is in Timothy Ponts map of 1583.

MADDISTON: (which was once described as a lovely place to visit, with all the single storey thatched cottages nestling on the side of the hill, was remodelled in 1899, when many of the excellent stone buildings were erected (Maddiston Inn now being all that's left of that area) Maddiston is in Timothy Ponts map of 1583.

MANUALRIGG: where the school was (still remarkably intact on the school side) Manual rigg is also in Ponts map of 1583

SMITHY or CITY HILL: (where the old police station is), where the blacksmith smiddy was until it moved up to the centre of the village. Where the new school has been built.

GREENWELLS: there was a large gap between Smithy Hill and here until it was filled by the building of Carronview - the old Blocks in 1910 and the new Blocks in 1924 by Carron Company, and St Catherines built to house the some of the people from the village of Blackbraes which was being demolished.

The next village, RUMFORD now takes over, the name is a corruption of GARDRUMFORD, the ford over the Gardrum burn. Rumford too has its own constituent parts Rumford itself where the chapel is and the Craigs, North and South. Craigs comes from Brightonscraigs (or crags), the hills above Brightons, the area along Ercall Road was considered Rumford as well this was called Wallacelea. Roughhaugh (pronounced Ruchaw) dates way back to the 16th Century.

Maddiston and Rumford at one time seems to have had a great many Masons (mostly in one family, the Bairds), more than one would usually find in such small villages and many of the stone buildings in the two villages are attributed to them, much of the stone was quarried locally - quarries were located at the back of Lawson Place, Cairnymount Avenue area, Manualrigg (the quarry was behind what is now the Fire Brigade Headquarters) then later at Haining (this area is now landfilled, the quarry used to be in the field before the canal on the Whitecross Road) as well as the many smaller quarries dotted around the villages, and of course at Brightons.

Coal was the main industry and contributed much to the growth of the villages, coal was mined locally at Manualrigg Pit, which closed in the 1920's, Craigend Pit, which closed in the early 1930's (both owned by Carron Company) and many other smaller independent mines until the 1960's.

When the local pits closed the many of the miners moved on to other local Pits and to the other coalfields in the UK, but many moved further afield and tried their luck in America, Canada and Australia, in fact all of the English-speaking former colonies.

Only the grim reminders of the former king coal were left when the pits closed, the spoil heaps or bings which towered above the village until the 1960's when they were removed for roadmaking, that site is now occupied by the Polmont Golf Club.

One of the sidelines of both the quarrying and mining industries was brickmaking and it was at Manualrigg that the biggest of the local brickworks was situated, next to the quarry for easy access to the clay and near to the pit as the spoil from the pithead was used for this purpose as well.

The name Maddiston was carried far and wide by the road haulage company Smith of Maddiston whose headquarters, and main garage was opposite Maddiston school. The company moved to Grangemouth and was eventually swallowed up by mergers and takeovers.

The first school in Maddiston was in the centre of the village but not much is known about it (except that it was well attended !) the children had to travel to Muiravonside school until 1897 when the north part of the old school was built to take the infants, not until 1911 was the full front built (because of the expected rise in the population of the village due to the building of Carronview).The back five classrooms and dinner hall were built in 1929 giving a 10 classroom school round a central hall.

By the 1960's the villages had become all but dormitories for the Falkirk/Grangemouth industrial complexes.