Dollar
Dollar,
a town in old Clackmannanshire, is beautifully situated, and
contains several handsome stone villas occupied by families
attracted to the town by its educational facilities. The academy,
housed in a fine mass of buildings of the Grecian order (opened
about 1819), was foundedby CaptainJohn McNab (1732-1802),
a native who began life as a herd boy, and afterwards became
a rich shipowner.
From
the burn of Dollar, which runs through the ravine of Dollar
Glen, the town drew its old water supply. On an isolated hill
above the junction of the parent streams, named Sorrow and
Care, stands the ruin of Castle Campbell, known also as Gloom
Castle, an old stronghold of the Argyll family. The castle
was burned by the Macleans in 1644, in the interest of the
marquess of Montrose, and not again restored. Although a ruin
it is carefully preserved.
The
Rev. Dr James Aitken Wylie (1808-1890), the historian of Protestantism,
was a minister in Dollar for several years. Patrick Gibson,
the etcher and landscape-painter, was drawing-master at the
academy from 1824 to 1829, and William Tennant, the author
of Anster Fair, was a teacher of classics from 1819 till 1834,
when he was appointed to the chair of Hebrew in St Andrews
University. Harviestoun Castle, about midway between Dollar
and Tillicoultry, once belonged to the Tait family, and here
Archibald Campbell Tait, archbishop of Canterbury, spent some
of his boyhood.
