Baillieston History | Fact and Fiction

The Rumbro Fallacy Exposed

Baillieston's History - The Fiction and the Facts.

Part One

Let this be considered the first of a series of articles that closely examine extraordinary claims on aspects of the history of the Baillieston district.

The Roman Period

A keen enthusiast of the local history of the area seems to have a fixation with theories of a Roman garrison and surrounding town in the present Baillieston and Garrowhill neighbourhoods. These theories well written and readable as they are, have the aroma of the Da Vinci Code and a storyline akin to Indiana Jones about them. Not a miniscule grain of any kind of evidence to support the fiction.

I should make it clear that I take no pleasure in the following exposure but do so only in the interest of the truth and one undeniable fact is that no one can prove that the Roman army was anywhere near this district. The nearest conclusive evidence of a Roman presence is at Mollins[burn] at the northern terminus of the present M73 motorway, a good 9 miles from Baillieston. The so-called Roman road called Watling Street at Birkenshaw and Calderbraes is still completely theoretical as no competent authorities have ever taken the trouble to excavate any part of the area to confirm whether there actually are physical remnants of a road buried in the locality.

Readers can view the article at:

http://geocities.com/baillieston@btinternet.com/romans_baillieston.html

Now while I’m not one to criticise well meaning and constructive speculation on matters historical - it has to be done sometimes in the absence of the full facts - it is difficult to include these Roman theories in that category as they consist of the sole ideas of one person who has massaged the writings in previous well intentioned fairly well researched accounts by respected authors and has invented some other statements that were never made by anyone. If it weren’t for those liberties I’d have few objections to the base theory of a Roman presence on the fringes of the district, and in fact I once gave broad support to that before the author started bending known facts to suit the growth of the theory. No apologies but unresearched fiction is totally unacceptable, and more importantly it is really a deceptive form of history from a talented person that distorts the truth and leads people without a detailed knowledge of the subject into believing something about their home district that never happened.

Let us deal firstly with a written entry on the Dutch firm W & J Blaeu's engraved atlas of Scotland (Atlas Novus) which was published in Amsterdam in 1654. The word in question is “Rumbro” and in Blaeu's atlas it would appear to be positioned around the approximate area of where the modern Baillieston is sited. I have previously investigated this somewhat mysterious name and could find no other reference of it anywhere in historical documents of the period. It is surely unusual that every other settlement in the area is recorded but not this place named as Rumbro by a Dutchman!
Before proceeding it should be known that Blaeu's atlas was entirely based on the manuscripts (which were actually maps but are referred to as manuscripts) of Timothy Pont, who surveyed the whole of Scotland in the late 16th.century. Luckily his map of the local area is one of the few which he actually dated - September 1596. Pont is rightly celebrated and remembered as the first cartographer to map Scotland in detail, but it should also be said that he made mistakes, quote; “Rough and untidy, presumably owing to the scarcity of materials and the difficulty of the conditions under which he worked and care should be taken when interpreting the accuracy of the work”. Despite that statement it just so happens that Pont’s survey of the Baillieston area is pretty well an accurate record of the place names of the time and he again pretty much placed them in a way that is easily converted into the present situaution. Except one …. and that of course is, “Rumbro”. However a close examination of the Clydesdale plate shows that Pont never recorded that name on his 1596 map. Out of all the places he named - and were transferred to Blaeu's atlas in 1654 - only this one - “Rumbro” does not feature on Pont.
There would appear to be a reason for the inclusion of a place name that never existed on the original map, and that is that a chap named Robert Gordon of Straloch who sketched Pont’s map in 1636 (on which he recorded the name ‘Rambro/n/Rumbro/n’!) and his son James Gordon of Rothiemay - both cartographers in their own right were the ‘go-betweens’ from Scotland to Amsterdam and travelled back and forth across the North Sea trying to hurry completion of the atlas and assisted with ‘queries’ that Blaue had over Pont’s entries. The obvious and only reason that Gordon may have advised on this particular name of ‘Rumbro’ (amending it from Rambro or Rambron) is that he knew little about the area and second guessed a ~~scored out~~ name by Pont, that place name was actually Pont’s attempted recording of the modern Burntbroom.
The writer of the claim asserts that these guys were there [at the time] and therefore they couldn't have got anything wrong, in fact neither Joannes Blaeu or anyone from his firm ever visited Scotland, they lived and worked in Amsterdam - they were contracted to draw up their atlas in their workshop, they relied entirely on Robert Gordon and his son to advise them on the maps, and it should be noted that this meant the whole of Scotland, all of Pont's 38 sheets. It is doubtful then that either of these Gordons would have, or could have taken much interest in one name very remote from where they lived and worked and in an area of which they likely knew little. It is far more realistic to judge that they would have decided themselves on what to make of Pont's defaced entry. They got it wrong and this article emphatically proves it.
Burntbroom was missing from Pont’s map but there is, as mentioned above, a scored out name on the manuscript. This is identifiable as the word ‘Burn’ and then some letters immediately below it scored out but the letters ‘o’,‘r’ and ‘n’ are identifiable under a magnifying glass. It is also worth mentioning that the entry of Windyedge (the modern Mount Vernon) is immediately next to it.
It would seem very odd that every placename other than Burntbroom be recorded and when the place is entered in the rental book of the Diocese of Glasgow in 1529 and 1563 as ‘Bwrnbrwm’ and ‘Brwntbrun’ respectively. It is therefore an indisputable fact that Burntbroom was an established dwelling or settlement in the area and as the Archbishopric of Glasgow were the owners of the temporal lands in the district it is inconceivable that there would be no record of a place called “Rumbro/Rambron” or Romano/Brythonic/Medieval linguistic variations thereof recorded. The question also has to be asked of why Pont changed his mind about the Burntbroom entry and why he partially deleted it and here I will have to resort to some reasonable speculation. My opinion is that he found the name a tongue twister and couldn’t come up with a phonetic spelling of a name (that is on record of being spelt in a multitude of variations) and after making an entry he changed his mind and decided to delete it, there is no other rational explanation.

Below is a textually enhanced text version of Pont’s map. For comparison the original can be seen at the

National Library of Scotland Pont Web Page

The defaced entry in which the partial name can be seen is directly below Kenmuir (Kenmorr) and to the left of Windyedge. The word 'Burn' is clearly evident and can only allude to a version of Burntbroom.

Below is Robert Gordon of Straloch's interpretation of Pont's manuscript which he took to Amsterdam in 1636.

‘Rambron’ (or Rumbron) is postioned below O’Balgedy and to the right of ‘Clyds’ - itself another error as there was no such place, it is in fact taken from Pont’s entry for the name of the river Clyde, an error made by Pont when he recorded the name of the river twice because he re-aligned his drawing of it but omitted to erase an entry. (that'll be 'Castle Clyds' taken care of) Observant readers will also notice how Gordon re-aligned the position of places.

The similarity to Gordon’s sketch is obvious and Blaeu continued the errors, especially the misinterpretation of Blackyairds as Blackyand.

We then come across the statement - which is written as if the formula came from a classic scholarly reference manuscript - that the name Rumbro if reversed to Orbmur as in a mixture of Latin and Brythonic languages, it is meant to equate to circular defensive wall, which apparently refers to a castle or fort. However like everything else about the article there is no authoritative links or reference works quoted to support this claim. So what does Mr. Hamilton base these claims on? How can he make such statements without supporting opinions or written fact from academic authority ? Maybe because he has made it all up .......... Try and google it ...............

The author makes the bold statement that the theory can’t be proved but that neither can it be disproved, I think this article disproves the story in its entirety ………. because apart from the thoughts of the author he has not provided a minute grain of any type of credible evidence to convince anybody otherwise. That makes it disbelieveable - in fact unbelievable, hysterical history in fact............

to be continued …………someday ................