Clachan
Clachan * SSL S NO438181 3
Clauhan c.1220 Terrier F [17/18th c. copy; land held by bp and his men]
G clachan
There is a clachan referred to (as clochin) in a charter of 1189 × 1198 (surviving in the sixteenth-century Black Book of St Andrews fo 35). It lay at the east end of North Street, St Andrews, beside the perimeter wall of the cathedral, and was the site of the burgh market before it was moved to Market Street (Brooks and Whittington 1977, 290, 292). However, given the clear grouping of this section of the Terrier of geographically adjacent lands, all of which lie around Nydie and Kincaple in the north-west corner of SSL, this cannot be the place referred to here. The term has been most fully explored by Aidan MacDonald (1987a), who concludes that its common meaning in Scottish Gaelic of ‘hamlet, especially one near a church i.e. kirkton’ is in fact a late development, and an earlier meaning may have been ‘paved road’ or ‘stepping stones’.[274] Any of these meanings could underlie the Terrier’s *Clachan. Opposite Bruckley LEU, on the lands of Nydie Mains, between the modern farm-house and the River Eden, was the chapel of St Gregory (NO4388 1770), which would explain the name in terms of a ‘hamlet near a church’ (see discussion under Nydie SSL, below). There was also a ford across the Eden between Nydie Mains and Bruckley, which may well have been paved or provided with stepping stones, most likely at around NO438184.[275]
A third possibility is that it might represent Clatto SSL q.v.
This place-name appeared in printed volume 3