Layout and Location - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 140

continued into the hours of darkness. Since the original profile
of the Summerhill has been destroyed it would be difficult to
determine the exact viewpoint of the Theatrum Scotiae draw-
ing, but it seems quite possible that the midsummer Sun would
either have gone down the common slope of the two hills, or else
set behind them and had a momentary reappearance at the foot
of the notch. It would have been fascinating to know whether
Summerhill marked the equinox sunrise, seen from Knappers,
and whether its summit lined up with the ritual fires there. But it
seems a reasonable guess that the revelers might originally have
left the hill before sunset for another procession, down Dobbie's
Loan to where the Cathedral now stands.
In recorded times up until 1590 the festival was held on Sun-
days, as if it had been 'Christianized' like Easter and midwinter sol-
stice, but in 1577 there was added a 'wapynschawing,' the annual
muster and inspection of men under arms in the district, “to be
held on the day of the Symmerhill,” and in 1590, mild though the
program seems to have been with its early bedtime, it ceased to be
held on Sundays “for the better observation of the Sabbath day.”
Could that have been because the Grummel Knowe had been gone
for more than a generation and another kind of “observation” was
no longer seen by the Church as a threat?
The subsequent history of the hills was a race between the
agricultural and industrial revolutions. They remained common
grazing until the general fencing of lands around Glasgow in
1770, then becoming part of the 'Lands of Broomhill' attached to
Broomhill Farm, whose buildings were on the hilltop just north
of where the circle is today, and whose southern boundary was
Dobbie's Loan. The 1782 map shows this situation, with the name
'Simmerhill' now relegated to a small patch of ground contain-
ing a powder magazine south of New City Road. Its alternative
name had moved bodily south to 'Meikle Cowcaldanes' and 'Little
Cowcaldanes,' farmlands attached to Cowcaddens Farm (with
the modern spelling) on Garscube Road, from which the modern
Cowcaddens district, street and underground railway station have
presumably taken their name.
Other things were happening meantime, however. Proposals
for a canal joining the rivers Forth and Clyde had been in circu-
lation since the 1760s, with a great deal of argument about the