Stenhousemuir

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stenhousemuir is a small town in the district of Falkirk, Scotland, situated to the north of Falkirk. In 2001 the population was reported as being 10,351.

The town adjoins Larbert to the West and to a lesser extent Carron & Carronshore to the East.

It has a football team (Stenhousemuir F.C.) (the Warriors), a cricket club and a golf club. The Tryst Golf Club, built in 1885, has its clubhouse in Burnhead Road, which is arguably in Larbert. The town is also home to McCowan’s toffee factory, who make both traditional toffee, and also WHAM and Irn-Bru bars.

All these lie just of Tryst Road a 3/4 mile North out of the village, through the present-day Tryst Golf Course and past the Cricket Club. The street is so called because it was the site of the annual Tryst gathering of livestock farmers and buyers came from all over Scotland. On the anniversary of the Tryst in September a travelling funfair comes to the site.

The "stone house" from which the village took its name was a Roman building on the north of the Carron River Valley valley known in later centuries as "Arthur's O'on," i.e. King Arthur's oven. This building fits the description of the "rotunda tabulata" described by Wace in his Roman de Brut of 1155, which may by mistranslation have given rise to the legend of the round table. It is no longer to be seen, having been demolished to rebuild a dam on the River Carron by Sir Michael Bruce of Stenhouse in 1743. The stones were swept away in a flood soon after. However, detailed drawings had been made in the 1720s and a replica was made in 1763 to serve as a dovecote on the roof of the stable block of Penicuik House in Midlothian, and this remains. The site of the original building has been localised to the garden of a modern house on a housing estate, apparently by the American academic Norma Lorre Goodrich (1917 – 2006).

The locally well-known Circular bus service linking Falkirk by two different routes, operated by First.