History
The area has long been a popular destination for visitors. The Wordsworths, Coleridge and Sir Walter Scott all visited the Falls. In 1802, William Wordsworth immortalised Corra Linn, the largest of the waterfalls, in verse. Corra Linn has also been painted by a number of artists, including J. M. W. Turner. The name comes from the Gaelic 'currach', a marshy place. A legend gives 'Cora' as a daughter of King Malcolm II, who lept to her death here whilst trying to escape imagined danger.
Near Corra Linn is the Pavilion, built by Sir John Carmichael of Bonnington, probably in 1708. The Pavilion had mirrors on its back wall, and when the doors were opened visitors had the illusion of standing beneath the falls. The 15th century Corra Castle is next to Corra Linn. It is now home to a family of rare bats. Corra is Gaelic for "weir", and as Corra Castle's early history is vague, some historians believe it was an early possession of the Weirs, the principle landowning family in the County after the dukes of Hamilton from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries. Corehouse, built in 1844, the home of the Cranstoun family, is nearby. At Stonebyres Linn the ruins of 15th century Stonebyres Castle may be seen.
Read more about this topic: Falls Of Clyde (waterfalls)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)