This is the cave on the river Allan that Robert Louis Stevenson felt had always been “a part of me”.
My family used to own Drumdruils, where the cave is to be found on the Darn road. It was in this cave that my relative, Margaret Baird, received a proposal for marriage at midnight on the 22nd of February 1866, from her sweetheart Daniel Watson. This couple lived at Sunnylaw as a married couple for more than 50 years together.
It has been said that Robert Louis Stevenson first visited this cave beside the Allan Water in 1859 when he was nine years old. The cave is an old adit or horizontal tunnel for the copper mine. He was to write “I went for my favourite walk by the riverside among the pines and ash trees. There is a little cavern here,….which has been a part of me anytime these last 12 years or more.” It is probably this cave that he transformed in ‘Treasure Island’ to become Ben Gunn’s cave.
Two postcards from Bridge of Allan:
To play this film please click here or on the image above.