Bowden
Bowden KTT S NO327077 1 373 NWF
Bowden 1753 Roy sheet 18, 1
Ba<u>den Hill 1790s OSA, 441 [written Banden, silently corrected to Bauden in NSA ix, 106]
Bowden 1856 OS 6 inch 1st edn [also Bowden Hill]
Sc bow + Sc den
‘Cattle den’, the den or small, deep valley starts quite abruptly at Bowden (house), with another branch starting at Airdits a short distance to the north-west. The den is deep, narrow, and practically impassible, certainly today in its heavily wooded state. On OS 6 inch 1st edn it is called Balmalcolm Den, which is described by the OS Name Book as ‘a ravine ... planted with fir and forest trees, through which runs a small stream. The stream has got no name’ (14, 40). OS Name Book (ibid.) also describes ‘a small cottage on the west side of Balmalcolm Den’ which is shown on OS 6 inch 1st edn as Balmalcolm Bank.
OS Pathf. Bowden Hill is a very prominent, flat-topped hill 600 m to the east of Bowden, on which OS 6 inch 1st edn records (as an Antiquity) ‘Remains of Fort’. It is described in OSA as follows: ‘On Banden [sic, for Bauden] Hill, which overlooks Coalton [of Burnturk] from the eastward, and commands an extensive view of the Strath of Eden, from Kinross to St Andrews Bay, are some remains of a circumvallation and rampart, of which tradition is silent. It is of circular form, and nearly 200 yeards in diameter. About half a mile to the eastward is another eminence, with ruins of the same kind on its summit. It is called Down Hill [OS Pathf. Down Law], is the highest in the parish, and commands the whole Strath of Leven, the Firth, and the Lothians’ (OSA, 441). In relation to Bowden Hill, NMRS states that, when visited in 1962, no trace of any defensive work was to be seen. OS Name Book, however, reported in the 1850s: ‘the only appearances at present are slight undulations of the surface, but can still be accurately traced’ (19, 33). Without excavation we cannot tell whether or not there was actually a fort on Bowden Hill.
/ˈbəudən/
This place-name appeared in printed volume 2