CARLUKE: THE BACKGROUND TO A CHILDHOOD

The Clyde, the great river of western and central Scotland, rises on the eastern flanks of the Lowther Hills, deep in the Southern Uplands, and flows north-westwards, past the county town of Lanark and through the great city of Glasgow, slowly broadening to form the Firth of Clyde. In the parish of Carluke, about six miles downstream from Lanark, the valley is broad and open, but within half a mile of the river the land drops sharply down to a narrow floodplain. On the broad shoulder above the eastern bank stood a small house called Miltonhead. It was there, on 4 May 1726, that William Roy was born. From his home the horizon to the south-east was dominated by the swelling dome of Tinto, less than fourteen miles away; formed of igneous rock, this is the highest summit in Clydesdale, the elevation of which William would later measure during experiments on barometric pressure. However, it is the view to the north-west of the house that must have excited his imagination and curiosity: there the distant backdrop is formed by Ben Lomond and the ‘Arrochar Alps’, mountains on the southern edge of the Highlands that rise to more than 1,000 m above Loch Lomond and the sea-lochs of southern Argyll. Snow-capped in winter and catching the sunlight in summer, that was a world altogether different from the landscape around him, and one that invited exploration and discovery. A need to understand his surroundings, and the relationship between one place and another, would dominate his life.

Carluke had been dignified with the status of a Burgh of Barony in 1662. In the eighteenth century the village had a prosperous rural setting in which ‘… the numerous orchards, natural woods, and modern inclosures … afford a pleasant prospect of cultivation’. There were tall trees in the hedgerows around the limestone pastures, but much of the land was under the plough. This was – and is – fruit-growing country: the Statistical Account of Scotland of 1793 listed about fifty varieties of apples that were grown in those numerous orchards, and more than thirty types of pear. Even with these natural advantages, good husbandry demanded careful management, and land management was the Roy family’s speciality.