Crossroads and Characters

6. SHORT-CUTS AROUND CROSSROADS.

For some people, Dunning's crossroads have been a problem to be avoided.

Just above the village, Dunning Burn descends through an attractive wooded den where there are the remains of a small footbridge. It is known as the Tory Brig (Scottish for bridge) but why is unclear.

Various explanations are offered locally, usually based on notions of the rivalry between Tory and Whig parties in the 18th and 19th centuries. One version is that the village itself was largely Whig and the farmers Tory, and the bridge was built by Tories to go around the village to vote - just where is not explained. A more plausible story is that local farmers, Tories, fell out with village weavers when they chose to grow more profitable crops than the flax on which the linen weavers depended. (The collapse of the linen industry may have occurred before the rise of local work in cotton). To avoid the wrath of village weavers, the farmers built a footbridge for their families to visit.

Totally unconnected with the Tory Brig is the tale of another shortcut which bypassed Dunning, in this case for religious reasons.

Scotland's Protestant church congregations have been noted for a readiness to break away and form new churches. Dunning has not been exempt. The most recent split in the village occurred in 1975 when the Church of Scotland decided to close St. Serf's. Instead of moving to the remaining Church of Scotland, some of the congregation broke away amid considerable acrimony to form a Congregationalist group meeting in the village hall.

This recent event has echoes of what happened two centuries ago. A breakaway denomination called the AntiBurghers split from the Burghers and built a church in Dalreoch north of Dunning. To get to this new church and avoid meeting their sectarian rivals of Dunning's Burgher Church, the AntiBurghers from Forteviot devised an elaborate shortcut past Kincladie Wood, bypassing Dunning and its troublesome crossroads.