MANY years ago, I was regularly intrigued by a sign on the road into Dumbarton where my family eventually came to live.
It stated proudly that Dumbarton was the “Ancient Capital of Strathclyde” and carried the date 500 AD.
I had to find out what “Strathclyde” was all about and discovered that this town of fewer than 30,000 souls had indeed been the capital of a lost ancient kingdom of the Brythonic people, who occupied the land from the north of Loch Lomond all the way down into modern-day Cumbria.
Back in the early 1970s, local government was being re-organised and a name was sought for the biggest region. Eventually, Strathclyde was chosen in more than just a nod to that ancient kingdom, though Glasgow became its “capital” when changes took effect in 1975.
It is ancient Strathclyde that I am writing about today in this latest part of my current series on the lost ancient kingdoms of Scotland. I have already written about Dalriada of the Scoti, and Fortriu of the Picts.
In the coming weeks I will write about Galloway of the Gaels; the Norse kingdom that comprised Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, Caithness, part of the west coast and the Isle of Man; and I will finish with Bernicia in the south-east of our country. I remind you again that with respect and affection I am dedicating this series to a great Scot and lover of our history, Alex Salmond.
Dumbarton and more specifically its Rock – a 240ft (75m) high volcanic plug – was for centuries the capital of Strathclyde, even though that name wasn’t really much used until the eighth century, Alt Clut – meaning cliff or height of the Clyde – being the first name recorded.
The name of the River Clyde was much more ancient. West Dunbartonshire Council’s very informative website pages on local history tell us: “This name emerged out of the so-called Dark Ages in the time of the Strathclyde Britons.
“They were a Celtic people who spoke a Brythonic language related to modern Welsh. Their word for the river we call Clyde is thought by scholars to have derived from an old Indo-European root clut that meant something like “wash”. Versions such as Cloithe and Cluith were used in medieval times, and a poetic word, Clutha, was developed from them many centuries later.
“The name is spelt Clyd in Timothy Pont’s late 16th-century map, suggesting that the ‘d’ sound had become common and it is likely that the use of “y” indicates some vowel-sound modification during the preceding centuries.”
Variations on Alt Clut are used to this day. When Dumbarton MP John McFall joined the House of Lords, of which he is now Lord Speaker, in 2010, he took the name Baron McFall of Alcluith – I didn’t always agree with his politics but he champions his community and knows his stuff about his home town’s history.
It was known as Alt Clut to the Romans, who moved into
the area in the first and second centuries and built the Antonine Wall, the western end of which was at Old Kilpatrick just a few miles upstream from Dumbarton.
Strathclyde and Dumbarton would have had a different name altogether if a legend is to be believed – Theodosia, named after a Roman leader called Theodosius.
Revered local historian Dr IMM MacPhail destroyed that legend years ago, writing: “The statement by Joseph Irving and older historians that there was a Roman naval station called Theodosia at Dumbarton in the latter part of the fourth century is one which has no archaeological evidence to support it, for it is derived not from any genuine source but from the fertile imagination of Charles Bertram, the literary forger. Bertram, an English teacher in Copenhagen, produced in 1758 a forged history of Britain in Roman and post-Roman times, which was accepted by all historians for a century.
“The forgery was exposed independently by two scholars in the late 1860s but the errors of Bertram continued to be found in many histories down to this century.”
Modern scholarship has concentrated on the tribes who came together to form the Kingdom of Alt Clut in the Iron Age. Almost certainly the largest tribe in the area was the Damnonii who were recorded by the Roman writer Ptolemy in the second century when the Roman Empire was at its greatest extent in what is now Scotland.
The problem is that Ptolemy is the only source for this information, and historians have long argued about his veracity. The simple truth is we do not know exactly how Alt Clut formed, but formed it was and as an entity it was acknowledged by the authors of the ancient Irish and English annals.
We know that their language was Brythonic so it can be presumed that their form of governance was similar to that of other Brythonic areas.
It seems pretty certain that Alt Clut was first put together by peoples who were either Romano-Britons or who had descended from the Britons who had at one time been part of the Roman Empire.
There is no doubt that the Romans knew the strategic significance of Alt Clut at the confluence of the Rivers Clyde and Leven. Although there has been little Roman archaeology found in the area recently, there was enough discovered in the 18th and 19th centuries to confirm their long-term presence such as the remains of a fort near Old Kilpatrick and the Antonine Wall itself.
The greatest early figure of Alt Clut was almost certainly St Patrick. I have written before about why I accept the local legend that Patrick was born at Old Kilpatrick as the son of a prominent Romano-Briton. In his memoirs, Patrick maddeningly does not state exactly his place of birth but he does mention being captured by Scoti from nearby Dalriada and sold as a slave in Ireland at the age of 16.
Much later in his life, probably in the late fifth century, Patrick became Bishop of Armagh and in that capacity wrote his famous letter to Coroticus who may have been the King of Alt Clut.
Coroticus is thought to be the same warrior king as Ceretic Guletic who had his castle on Alt Clut.
St Patrick excoriates Coroticus in a way which suggests strongly he was indeed a Brythonic king who may have been Christian but turned against the faith with his men: “Soldiers whom I no longer call my fellow citizens, or citizens of the Roman saints, but fellow citizens of the devils, in consequence of their evil deeds; who live in death, after the hostile rite of the barbarians; associates of the Scots and Apostate Picts; desirous of glutting themselves with the blood of innocent Christians, multitudes of whom I have begotten in God and confirmed in Christ.”
That all fits with the timescale suggesting Alt Clut was extant at the time of St Patrick. The first “king” of Alt Clut in written history was one Caunus or Caw in the late fourth or early fifth century. He is credited with being the grandfather of St Gildas, a monk said to have been born at or near Alt Clut, who wrote the only chronicle of the ancient Britons, entitled De Excidio e Conquestu Britanniae, usually shortened to Excidio.
It is in this work that a first mention is made of a figure who through time and folklore may have become Arthur, King of the Britons. The Excidio contains the passages known as the “Groans of the Britons”. They are said to have taken place in the 440s and were identified as the final appeal of the Romano-Britons to Rome for assistance in dealing with the incursions of the Scoti and Picts.
They had raided deep into what is now England after the Roman soldiers and authorities went back to the continent around 410. The Emperor Flavius Aetius was rather busy trying to preserve Roman rule in Gaul and we don’t know if he even bothered to reply.
As a result of the failure of the Groans, the Britons invited Continental tribes, particularly the Angles and Saxons, to come across the North Sea and help them repel the northern invaders. In return, the lords of the “helpers” were given land and in time they developed to become the Anglo-Saxons who would much later rule over England.
As they advanced westwards, and with the Picts and Scoti expanding their territories, the Britons of Alt Clut were hemmed in. It is not difficult to see how Alt Clut came about – you simply need to follow the course of the River Clyde and then extend it in the imagination down into modern-day England.
The Britons needed to defend their territory and they did so, usually in alliance with the closely related Brythonic tribes in what is now Wales and Cornwall.
Gildas mentions a Brythonic general called Ambrosius Aurelianus who was of Roman descent and who gathered the Britons from as far apart as Alt Clut and Wales and united them in a war against the invading Saxons. It has been suggested this Ambrosius was in fact Arthur of the Britons – would that make Alt Clut Camelot and Loch Lomond Avalon? I have absolutely no idea and nothing about Arthur will ever be proved completely, so let’s leave him in the realms of fiction.
One early King of Alt Clut who we know a lot about was Rhydderch Hael, Rhydderch the Generous, the name often translated to Roderick. He ruled over the kingdom in the latter years of the sixth and early seventh centuries.
By that time the people of Alt Clut had largely converted to Christianity under the influence of Irish monks and King Rhydderch I had no hesitation in asking the greatest Irish missionary to Scotland, St Columba, for advice on how he would meet his death, which was a matter of great concern to him.
Adomnan, in his Life of Columba, writes that the saint replied to Rhydderch that he would die in his bed and that’s what happened around 614. He was lucky to do so as Rhydderch survived some hefty battles defending Alt Clut, including the Battle of Arfderryd in 573 in which he defeated a rival self—proclaimed king of a Brythonic sub-kingdom, Gwendoleu ap Ceidio.
Rhydderch was so renowned that he featured in several legends, including the foundation of Glasgow by St Mungo. It was recorded centuries later that Rhydderch suspected his queen Languoreth of adultery as she had “lost” her wedding ring in the River Clyde.
St Mungo duly summoned a salmon which had the ring in its mouth and the fish and the ring appear in the city’s coat of arms to this day.
It is also known that Rhydderch and his successors had trouble with their northern neighbours, the Scoti of Dalriada. Eventually the borderline between them was settled at the northern edge of Loch Lomond.
Intriguingly we can see the evidence of that border, set about 1500 years ago, in the shape of two giant stones. One stands near the Loch at Glen Falloch and is called Clach nam Breatann, Stone of the Britons. It is part a natural feature, part a man-made monument, the upper stone having been placed on top of an existing megalith.
Just 12 miles west at Ben Donich is the huge boulder known as Clach A’ Bhreatunnaich, The Briton’s Stone, left over from a retreating glacier many thousands of years ago. Although there is no direct evidence, it would appear that these two stones defined a boundary between the two kingdoms.
Next week we’ll see how Alt Clut flourished, became Strathclyde, and then ended as part of a “new” Scotland.
