From prehistoric times to the present day, artefacts, documents and photographs illustrate the history of Dollar. A brief description of some of what may be seen is given below.
A Neolithic carved stone ball and local finds from Bronze Age burials on loan from the National Museums of Scotland give an insight into early inhabitants of the Hillfoots. Aerial photographs and maps show where the archaeological finds were made.
Later inhabitants of Dollar lived in the shadow of Castle Gloum, renamed Castle Campbell, the lowland dwelling of the Earls of Argyll.
The Castle was burnt in 1654, and the ruin was sold along with the local Campbell lands around 1800. Early travellers and artists have left evidence of how the castle and village looked at this time, and these may be seen in the museum.
The small village with a woollen mill and a bleachfield changed after local boy John McNabb left a fortune which was used to found Dollar Academy in 1818. Dollar grew as the New Town was built to accommodate teachers, boarders and the families who moved to Dollar to take advantage of the low fees paid by residents of the village. Dollar Academy has gone on to become one of the top independent schools in Scotland.
The Old Kirk of 1775 became too small to accommodate the congregation and in 1842 the New Church was built. The Disruption led to the building of the Free Church (the West Church, now private housing) and the 19th century also saw the building of the U.P. Church (now the East Burnside Hall) and the Episcopal Church, St James the Great.
By the end of the 19th century Dollar had its own Town Council, and in 1913 the honour of having the first Lady Provost in Scotland: Lavinia Malcolm. Dollar Town Council disappeared with local government reorganisation in 1976, but a record of all the Provosts, together with photographs and other items are on display in the museum.
The railway came to Dollar in 1869. From the 1950s until closure to passengers in 1964, Peter Wilson attempted to document all aspects of the Devon Valley Railway. He took photographs of the stations from Alloa to Kinross and recorded many bridges, signals, gradient signs, etc. He also collected timetables, tickets and leaflets. We have built on his collection and some interesting donations are on display. With the help of Awards for All, a completely new exhibition was mounted in 2009 and all 750 photographs taken by Peter Wilson can be seen in a slideshow. These are also documented in a searchable database.
With generous donations from Dollar people, we have been able to furnish our Granny's Kitchen with an array of household items from washing dollies and wooden pulleys to butter pats and flat irons. Children will be particularly interested to see how a Dollar kitchen might have looked at the end of the 19th century.
Dollar Museum’s new exhibition for 2011 is A Century of Dollar Farms.
This looks at the development of farms around Dollar since the beginning of the 20th century. This was a period of great change. A Royal Commission on Labour in 1893 reported that “Farm work was a rough, dirty, badly paid job with long hours.” Employers reacted by introducing labour saving machinery, leading to a huge reduction in the number of farm workers. Tractors, however, did not entirely replace horses as there were still some in use locally in the 1950s. In Dollar Parish at that time there were, according to the Third Statistical Account, “six full-time farms and two part and spare time. They are engaged in mixed dairying, stock and sheep rearing, and cropping... Modern methods of farming are in full use...”
Nine farms are featured in the exhibition: Hillfoot, Lawhill, The Thorn, Middleton, Westertoun, Linnbank, Dollarfield, The Haugh and Dollarbank. Today, only Dollarbank is a fully working farm. The descendants of the original farmer, William Cullens, are still farming and will be celebrating a century at Dollarbank later this year.
Visitors will see many photographs illustrating the changes around these farms over the years, including those of farmers and their workers as well as land girls employed locally during and after the Second World War. There are modern photographs of all the farms featured, together with a map showing their locations.
To supplement the objects from the museum’s collection, we have been lent a great variety of interesting farming artefacts by local farmers. These range from tools, milking and dairying equipment, a seed fiddle, an egg transporter and even a real chain, as used for measuring distances.
Children will enjoy the handling collection. In the Children’s Corner there are farm animals to play with and drawing sheets to colour in. A prize for the best at the end of the year!
An exhibition illustrating Dollar's links with China and Japan.
The Japanese Garden at Cowden, near Dollar, was created by Ella Christie, an intrepid Victorian traveller who was the first European woman to visit Tibet. She employed a Japanese garden designer, Taki Handa, and a gardener, Shinzaburo Matsuo, who lived beside the garden for many years. The garden was described by Professor Suzuki as 'the best in the western world' and had many visitors, including Queen Mary.
James Legge travelled to China as a missionary and translator and later became the first Professor of Chinese at Oxford University. He sent his children to Dollar Academy and while on leave in Dollar in 1867 he invited the scholar Wang T'ao to help him translate the Chinese classics into English. Wang T'ao kept a diary during his two-year trip and wrote lively descriptions of his travels from Hong Kong to Scotland. The exhibition concentrates on his experiences in and around Dollar.
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Page updated 1 October 2011