Looking Back with Ian Scott: The man who dinged doon the Falkirk steeple

Back then, the graveyard had been cleared and many fine stones were consigned to the dustbin of history; actually they were smashed up and used as bottoming for the road into the crematorium! Most of the new discoveries were in poor condition but one was near perfect, a marble stone which declared: THE BURIAL GROUND OF WILLIAM GLEN OF FORGANHALL JP WHO DIED 24 AUGUST 1808 AGED 64.

William Glen of Forganhall! – one of Falkirk’s most infamous characters who was credited with seriously damaging the then town steeple. This so upset the Falkirk "bairns” that his name has forever been associated with this vile deed. As Willie Shakespeare reminds us; “The evil that men do live after them, the good is oft interred with their bones”. That is certainly true of William Glen.

That he did some good in his early activities in Falkirk is not in doubt. He seems to have made his money in the West Plean area as a distiller of some kind and purchased an estate in Dalderse which he called Forganhall. He served as a Road Trustee and a Justice of the Peace. During the Napoleonic Wars he famously offered a guinea to any man from Stirlingshire willing to enlist in the navy to fight for King and Country. This was no small amount back then and suggests that William was doing fairly well financially. How many brave hearts collected their bounty is not recorded.

In the early 1800s he turned his attention to the town steeple and the little square tolbooth building standing next to it. Surviving illustrations show that the steeple had a clock and an unusual shaped spire. It had been built in 1697 to replace an even earlier one. Now both it, and the tolbooth which held the jail cells, were in a poor condition with the steeple leaning slightly to the east. Glen decided to purchase the tolbooth and replace it with new shops.

In the written agreement with Forbes he was forbidden to dig around the foundations or do anything that would threaten the steeple next door but, of course, he did just that. As a result the lean became more pronounced and there was now a large crack in the stone work. After the intervention of the law lords, the famously penniless Stentmasters who owned the steeple, were ordered to "cast it to the ground” to save the “bairns” from disaster! They demanded compensation and after years of legal claims and counter claims Glen was found liable in 1811 and made to pay £450 towards the cost of a new steeple. Actually he didn’t pay anything because as the gravestone tells us he died in 1808. His heirs had to find the cash and the Stentmasters raised the new steeple which still graces our town centre.

When we celebrated the 200th anniversary of the present spire back in 2014 we remembered William Glen and his part in its birth though he did not live to see it. His gravestone was re-erected and stands as a reminder that without his carelessness we might not have anything to celebrate!