McLAGAN & CUMMING, LITH, EDINR
SIR GEORGE HAY OF MEGGINISH, KNIGHT,
THE IRONFOUNDER OF LOCH MAREE,
FROM A PORTRAIT BY FERDINAND,
IN DUPPLIN CASTLE.
All the ancient Gairloch ironworks are in the vicinity of burns. This fact raises a strong inference that the older ironworkers, like their historic successors, utilised the water-power afforded by adjoining streams for the purpose of working machinery. The Rev. D. M'Nicol's statement, already quoted, that hammers were used to produce malleable iron confirms the inference; and the remains of dams or weirs, and other expedients for augmenting the water-power, convert the conjecture into an established fact. It appears certain, then, that heavy hammers worked by machinery, with water for the motive power, were used in remote times,—another testimony to the ingenuity and mechanical skill of the ancient inhabitants of the Highlands. The tuyere for a furnace-blast found at Fasagh (see [illustration]) is another evidence of that skill.
The reader must please remember that the ancient ironworks referred to in this chapter are quite distinct from the historic series to which our next is devoted.
Chapter XVIII.
The Historic Ironworks of Loch Maree.
To the lonely and romantic shores of the queen of Highland lochs belongs the curiously incongruous distinction of having been the scene where the new departure in iron-smelting processes, which commenced the present series of Scottish ironworks, was inaugurated. How wonderful it seems, that the great iron industry of Scotland, which to this day enriches so many families and employs so many thousands of workmen, should have sprung from this sequestered region! The claim to the distinction is based on the facts, that up to the present time no records of any earlier manufacture of iron have been discovered, and that the iron industry established here early in the seventeenth century became, as we shall shew, of such national importance as to call for special legislation. It appears to have been in 1607 that Sir George Hay commenced ironworks at Letterewe, on Loch Maree, which were continued for at least sixty years. It is true that in 1612 a license previously granted by the king to "Archibald Prymroise, clerk of his maiesties mynis, his airis and assignais quhatsomeuir ffor making of yrne within the boundis of the schirefdome of perth," was ratified by Parliament, but the date of the license is not given, and we hear no more of these Perthshire ironworks.