Alloa Tower is the standout subject in this collection. At 68 feet high, it's the largest surviving keep of its kind in Scotland, built in the 14th century originally to protect a ferry crossing on the River Forth. It was the ancestral home of the Erskine family, later Earls of Mar, for four centuries, and both Mary, Queen of Scots and her son James VI spent part of their childhoods there.
Castle Campbell, in Dollar Glen, is another landmark that recurs throughout this collection. Originally known as Castle Gloom, for its setting between the Burns of Care and Sorrow below Gloom Hill, it was renamed Castle Campbell by an act of parliament in 1490 at the request of Colin Campbell. It served as a lowland seat of the Earls, later Dukes, of Argyll, and was burned by Royalist rebels in July 1654 in revenge for the Campbells' support of Cromwell's forces at the Battle of Dunbar.
Postcards from Alloa, Tillicoultry and Clackmannan, the county town of Scotland's smallest historic county, appear in this collection too, and we add new stock regularly.
