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Brig o' Balgownie (Polgouny)
Fishing at sea and on the
Don and Dee
was carried out by many people including
John Penuyr (1461)
and
Andrew Brabnar, a fisher who lived at the
Brig o' Polgouny
(Balgownie) in
1508.
Hand lines would have been used for large fish and nets for smaller ones.
The Auld Brig o' Balgownie, built about 1320,
either by Bishop Cheyne or by King Robert Bruce, crosses the Don, 2½ miles N by
W of Castle Street. A single Gothic arch, narrow and steep, of 67 feet span and
34½ high above the black deep salmon pool below, it is commemorated by Byron in
Don Juan, where a note records how a dread prediction made him pause to
cross it, and yet lean over it with a childish delight. For he was his mother's
only son, and the prophecy runs:-
'Brig o' Balgownie, black's
your wa' (or, though wight be your wa'),
wi' a wife's ae son. and a meer's ae foal,
Down ye shall fa' !'
In 1605
Sir Alexander Hay left lands of a yearly value of £2, 8s. 5½d. to keep the
Auld Brig in repair: its accumulated funds amounted (1872) to £23,153,
though out of those funds in 1825 was built the new Bridge of Don,
502 yards lower down, for £17,100. With five semicircular arches, each about 86
feet in span, this last is 26½ feet wide and 41 high.
 The Brig o’ Balgownie is built on a
constriction of the River Don on a stable geological feature immediately
downstream of a meander loop and upstream of the river’s final reach to the
North Sea. The Don is tidal at its crossing. The bridge has a span of 67
feet and stands 34 feet above a salmon pool mentioned by Byron in the
poem “Don Juan”. The bridge was called The Bridge of Don until it
was superceded in 1830 by a larger bridge about five hundred meters
downstream. That new bridge assumed the appellation. The Brig o’ Balgownie
is a single and elegant Gothic Arch of mortared granite and sandstone.
Construction began around 1290 when Bishop Henry Cheyne
commissioned Richard Cementarius to provide a design. It appears that the
building was interrupted by The Scottish War of Independence because the
bridge was completed in 1320 under the direct command and expense of
Robert the Bruce, using the banished bishop’s emoluments. The original
purpose of the crossing may have been to assist English military consolidations
in Moray and Buchan, which occupations were of course voided at The
Battle of Bannockburn. The Bruce may have had his own, but similar,
strategic aims in view.
De-industrialisation of the Don Valley has led to improvements in river water
quality and the planted saplings have of course matured. A third road bridge
has been built to the Brig’s West, and the old bridge is now restricted to
cyclists and pedestrians only.
BRIDGE OF
BALGOWNIE
Dod Dow Website
Built into a buttress at the west end of the Bridge
of Balgownie, on the south side, there is a slab with a shield and an
inscription. The shield bears three small shields, the Hay coat-of-arms. In the
centre there is a small square, for a difference from the shield of the chief
family. Above the shield there is the letter S for Sir. and at the sides A and H
for Alexander Hay. Below there is the following : —
ANNO 1605 DOMINUS ALEXR HAV CLERICUS REGISTRI EX INNATO IN REMPUBLICAM AMORE 27
8 8 SCOTICOS EX QUIBUSDAM AGELLIS QUOTANNIS AD ABBREDONIAM HUIC FABRICAE
SUSTENTANDAE DEDICAVIT ; which means.
In the year 1605 Mr Alexr Hay, Clerk of the Register, from innate love for his
country dedicated £27 8s 8d Scots, to be paid yearly at Aberdon from certain
crofts for upholding this fabric.
SIR ALEXANDER HAY'S MORTIFICATION
 All the land in Scotland originally belonged to the Crown for the nation and at
the Reformation all grants of land for public religious services no longer to be
performed reverted to the Crown. In 1587 an Act of Parliament annexed to the
Crown the temporalities of all benefices ; but the usual liens were reserved for
the clergy, with their manses and glebes, and the bishops' residences. At the
Reformation the chaplains and vicars of the choir of St Machar Cathedral held
lands, feu-duties, and annual rents, which reverted to the Crown; but the
chaplains and vicars of the choir were allowed by the Lords of the Council to
retain their dwelling in the Chanonry and to draw their revenues as before
during their lives. Alexander Hay, one of the King's servitors, holding the
office of Director of the Chancery, had coveted their properties and had got the
promise of them from the King during his life. The chaplains and vicars,
however, still remained in possession and, though Hay had been at great expense
and trouble to establish his right to the properties and to secure the
title-deeds, lie had derived little benefit from his grant, and the King was
induced in 1574-5 to give him the chaplains' properties in perpetuity. A long
list of feu-duties and rents with the lands from which they were payable, is
given in " liegistrum Magni Sigilli," under date February 10, 1574-5, No 2360.
It contains the names of many places in ancient Aberdeen which have now dropped
out of use. The reddendo or return for the grant was Id of rent, with the
obligation of upholding the Bridge of Don or paying annually for that purpose
£20 Scots. Alexander Hay died in 1594, and probably he had never contributed
anything to the maintenance of the bridge, because he had not got full
possession of the chaplains' revenues.
His younger son. Sir Alexander Hay, afterwards a
Court of Session judge with the title of Lord Newton but then styled the King's
servitor, one of the Ordinary Clerks of his Supreme Senate, succeeded to his
father's rights and responsibilities in the chaplains' revenues. In 1600 he got
the revenues confirmed to him by a new charter from the Crown. In 1605 he
mortified to the Town Council of Aberdeen feu-duties and annual rents formerly
belonging to the chaplains and vicars to the amount of £27 8s 8d Scots,
annually, to be applied by them for the upkeeping of the Bridge of Don and for
no other uses, as they should wish to answer to God at the last Judgment, The
reason for this stringent clause was that the whole revenues of the grant were
liable for the £20 for the maintenance of the bridge, and if the Town Council
sold or misapplied the subjects conveyed to then the part of the grant which he
had kept to himself would become liable for the whole obligation contained in
the grant.
THE BRIDGE OF DON FUND
The Town Council were so pleased with the charter that they paid all the
expenses connected with obtaining it, amounting to more than £20, and presented
Sir Alexander Hay with a barrel of salmon worth £40. Moreover, they put up on
the bridge the flattering inscription given above, which attributes to Alexander
Hay's patriotism what was merely a discharge of a legal obligation incurred by
his father. It should also be remembered that the great annual income of the
chaplains was given by Parliament to the King for national purposes, and not to
be given to greedy, importunate servitors. The small fraction of the revenues
given to the Bridge of Don was intended to give the colour of legality to a
shameful, illegal transaction, and hence Sir Alexander Hay's care to get, first,
his right to the grant sanctioned by Parliament; and, secondly, its approval of
the mortification as a discharge of his legal obligation concerning the bridge.
He seems to have found the collection of the revenues a troublesome business,
and in a few years he sold his right in them to the depute town clerk of
Aberdeen; but it mattered nothing to the Town Council who held the main part of
the original grant so long as their small part was paid. The repair of the
bridge seems to have been completed about 1610, and after that date the Town
Council had been able to save up the annual income from the mortification for a
long time. In the beginning of the seventeenth century the rate of interest
seems to have been 10 per cent., and at that rate the annuity would have
amounted to ten times its value in the course of 24 years, to a hundred times
its value in 48 years, and to a thousand times its value in 96 years. In a
hundred years the amount of the annuity with interest would have been over
£30,000. Even at 5 per cent, the amount in a hundred years would have been
nearly £6000.
 The Town Council invested the Bridge of Don
accumulations, along with other funds under their management, in the purchase of
the estate of Easter Skene, three-tenths of which belongs to the Bridge of
Don Fund, from which an annual income of £300 is derived. Other accumulations of
revenues have been lent out at interest, and the whole income of the fund,
including the original bequest — £2 5s 8d stg. — amounts to £728 ; and the fund
itself at present is worth about £26,523. By agreement with the promoters of the
Victoria Bridge the free annual revenue of the fund goes to the reduction of the
debt on this bridge, which amounts to £10,000. By retaining a sum
sufficient to erect a new bridge, if either the Bridge of Balgownie or the
new
Bridge of Don should fall, the Town Council feel that they may disregard the
imprecation of Sir Alexander Hay against them if they turned the mortification
to other uses than upholding the Bridge of Balgownie. Out of the fund they
erected the new Bridge of Don, and from it they are practically paying two-
thirds of the whole cost of Victoria Bridge. The bridges at Persley,
Dyce, Mintray, Kintore, Kemnay, Monymusk, Towie, Insch, Newburgh, Maryculter, and
Huntly, and the old bridge of Powis all benefited by the Mortification.
ROBERT THE BRUCE AND THE BRIDGE
In the narrative clause of the deed of mortification Hay says -
History testifies that the Stone Bridge over the water of Don was built by
command of Robert Bruce, which bridge seems to be falling into decay because
there is no annual provision for its maintenance. History nowhere testifies
anything of the sort. The statement has no other foundation than an Act of
Parliament, dated December 18, 1318, titled: — "Carta restitutionis Iloberti
liegis Henrico Episcopo Concessa," Charter of restitution given by King Robert
to Bishop Henry [Cheyne]. It is given at full length in " Registrum Episcopatus
Aberdonensis " (1. 44), and the substance of it is that the King in a full
Parliament held at Perth remitted a hostile feeling which he had conceived
against Bishop Henry of Aberdeen, and which had led him to arrest in the hands
of all the officers of the Crown and the provosts and baillies of burghs north
of the Forth the temporalities of his office. These were now to be restored to
the bishop for the future, along with any arrears not paid to the King's
officials. There is not the slightest indication of the offence which the bishop
has committed, nor of the use to which the revenues of his office had been
applied. The Bridge of Don is not mentioned, and there is nothing said to show
how many days or years the arrest lasted, or whether the sum withheld was large
or small. Nor does what is known of the bishop throw any light on the King's
rancour against him. Though he swore fealty to Edward I. at Berwick, and again
did homage to him at Aberdeen, and afterwards at Berwick, on the other hand he
was present at a great meeting of the clergy held at Dundee in 1309, where they
issued a declaration in favour of Robert Bruce, King of Scots, with whom his
faithful people said they wished to live and to die. And after his remission we
find the King appending to a document in addition to his own seal that of Bishop
Henry and some other seals, because they were better known than his own. There
is, therefore, no ground for attributing the erection of the bridge to Robert
and no evidence that the cost of its erection was defrayed from the sequestrated
temporalities of the bishopric of Aberdon. The Act seems to be a forgery.
THE "legend" of the BRIDGE.
All old alliterative and metrical triplet by an unknown "poet" but in folk-lore
ascribed to Thomas the Rhymer, runs : —
Brig o' Balgownie, though wight is thy wa',
Wi' a mither's ae sou, on a mear's ae foal,
Down shalt thou fa' !
"Which may be paraphrased : —
Oh Brig of Balgownie, though now in your youth your sides are strong, yet you
will inevitably grow old, and a day will come when you will be so frail that
your back will be broken by the weight of a single rider. The day of fate will
come for you when the rare coincidence shall happen that a man who is the only
son of his mother attempts to ride over you on a horse, the only foal of a mare.
Byron in " Don Juan," Canto x. 18, shows that he had learned to repeat the versicle
in his residence in Aberdeen, though he had partially forgotten it. He
says : —
As " Auld Lang Syne " brings Scotland, one and all, Scotch plaids, Scotch
snoods, the blue hills, and clear streams, The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's Brig's
black wall, All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams ....
In a foot-note to the stanza he says : —
The Brig of Don, near the " auld toun " of Aberdeen, with its one arch, and its
black, deep salmon stream below, is in my memory as yesterday. I still remember,
though perhaps I misquote, the awful proverb which made me pause to cross it and
yet lean over it with a childish delight, being an onlv son, at least by my
mother's side.
Balgownie Dairy
- The Collectable Milk Bottle with a Brig on it
Balgownie
started trading as an engineering company in
1907
in sheet metal work and tank manufacturing supplying to shipyards, farmers and
the food industry diversifying into manufacture and supply of dairy equipment.
Bob Mann took over the company now mainly dealing in dairy equipment and water
pump supplies at that time and diversified the company into machinery supplies
(garden machinery, generators, power washers etc), trailers construction
machinery.
Filpumps incorporation of Balgownie Dairy Equipment Ltd
to expand
their portfolio. This enabled Filpumps to better support a farm dairy market
expanding in geographical area and requiring products with greater
sophistication than previously required.
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