the Forth Naturalist Historian - Forth Naturalist and Historian ...

Forth Naturalist and Historian, volume 22 107
THE SHERIFFMUIR ‘ATLANTIC WALL’:
AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY ON PART OF THE WHITESTONE
MILITARY RANGE
David C. Cowley, John A. Guy and Diana M. Henderson
Few would credit that part of Hitler’s coastal defences could have been built
in Scotland, and yet, on moorland north of Stirling, a section of the Atlantic
Wall was constructed and survives to this day (NGR NN 8379 0367). This was
recorded in the course of mapping an area of Sheriffmuir, on the western flank
of the Ochils, by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical
Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS). For the most part the archaeological
remains in the area were of post-medieval date, comprising braided trackways,
enclosed patches of straight cultivation ridges and smaller stock enclosures, but
they also included a series of much more recent military training works. These
lie on a terrace pockmarked by shell craters at about 295 m OD and were
formerly part of the Whitestone Range. The importance of recording 20th
century military remains such as these archaeologically is now widely
recognised (e.g. Lowry, 1995), in particular because they are often regarded as
eyesores and are prone to being ‘tidied-up’ without any form of drawn or
written record. Notwithstanding the aesthetics of such sites, they are important
historical monuments which are often poorly documented, if at all.
Consequently, they are little understood despite dating to such a recent period
of our history. This is certainly the case at Whitestone Range, which was in use
for about 100 years.
Between about 1860 and 1906 Whitestone Range was one of ten Militia and
Volunteers ranges and training grounds in the Tillicoultry-Dollar area. In 1907
the annual training camp of The Argyll and Sutherland Brigade of the
Volunteers took place on Sheriffmuir and a four lane rifle range at the south
end of the area that has been mapped may date to this period. An aerial
photograph taken in 1946 (106G/SCOT/120, No. 4250, 20.06.1946) records its
layout as patches of lighter vegetation some of which can still be traced on the
ground, presumably indicating the locations of supports for a target
superstructure. A scatter of small emplacements and slit trenches, dug into the
hillside and fronted by an upcast bank, lie across the hillside around the rifle
range, but these probably date to WW II.
During WW I the 52nd (Lowland) Division trained on the range before
going to Gallipoli in 1915. They are likely to have started what is evidently the
earliest system of trenches on the terrace. This system may have been extended
by Second Line or Reserve Battalion drafts of men destined for France
throughout WW I and was subsequently tailored to the WW II training
operations. Some of the shell holes on the hillside to the east (Figure 1) may
originate in this period, as the 4th Lowland Howitzer Brigade Royal Artillery of
52nd (Lowland) Division were stationed in Stirling and Tillicoultry in 1914/15.