WHO WAS JENNY BRASH?
Jenny’s Glen, Jenny’s Burn, Jenny’s Lum: Blanefield locals are well familiar with these names. But who was Jenny? It took a bit of digging but an evening’s research produced a surprising amount of information about her.
In his history The Parish of Strathblane, published in 1886, John Guthrie Smith refers to “two rows of cottages parallel to the road, and occupying very much the space where the Free Church and manse now stand. It had its two shops, one of which was also the ale-house. This pretty thatched cottage, now gone, was long occupied by Jenny Brash, after whom the Netherton Burn and Glen are often called, and whose “lum” far away on the top of the hills still “reeks” furiously when the storm is at the highest.”
The only map showing the two rows of cottages seems to be John Grassom’s map of 1817.
By the time the first six-inch Ordnance Survey map of the area was produced in 1860, the cottages were gone, though the area is already referred to as “Jenny’s Glen”.
The name “Brash” appears in many local records going back centuries. For instance, in 1691 Edward and John Brash appear among those in the parish of Strathblane deemed eligible to pay the Hearth Tax, used to raise money for the army.
“Our” Jenny Brash is almost certainly the Janet Brash, born at Burnfoot [later Glengoyne Distillery] on the Duntreath Estate and baptised in Strathblane on the 23 June 1782. She was the fifth of six children, four girls and two boys. Her parents, John Brash and Jean Galbraith had married in Strathblane in 1773. They were probably tenant farmers on the Duntreath Estate and were perhaps involved in some of the informal distilling of whisky that was then rampant in the Blane Valley.
Jenny never married. Instead she ran a small grocer’s shop in what was then known as Netherton. And we know from the 1837 Pigot’s Directory of Stirlingshire, she also sold spirits. This must have put her under pressure from the church and local supporters of the temperance movement. A local branch of the Temperance Society was formed in Strathblane in 1830 and had 84 adult and 56 juvenile members by the time of the Second Statistical Account of the parish in 1841. Its author, the Rev Hamilton Buchanan complains:
It can’t have been easy for Jenny to control her rowdier customers. A later memoir written by Dr Willliam McAuslane bears this out: “The Free Church now occupies the site where formerly stood “Jenny Brash’s cottage”. Jenny kept a small shop where she sold spirits.”
He relates: “The cottage was a favourite resort of those who loved a social glass, who, it is to be feared, occasionally drank more than they paid for, if one is to judge by the trick played on the hostess on a certain occasion. A company of topers [drunkards], after indulging freely, made their exit one by one through the back window, singing meanwhile, “We’re wearin’awa, Jean”, till, as the last of the party was leaving, he cried our “We’re a’ awa noo, Jean” which was followed by significant silence – so significant as to induce Jenny ultimately to enter the room, to find the revellers gone.”
Dr McAuslane recalls that Jenny “conscientiously abandoned the drink trade after the death of a carter, who, it was alleged, had fallen off his cart and been killed shortly after leaving the cottage, where he had taken some additional refreshment.”
It took a bit of excavation to unearth Jenny Brash from the 1841 and 1851 censuses, though she appears in both. In 1841 Scotland’s People wrongly construes her name as “Janet Beath”, grocer in Netherton. Unfortunately the enumerator also lists her a “male”. She lives alone and her age is given as 60. (She was actually 59 but ages in this census were rounded to the nearest five years.)
1841 Census Return for Jenny Brash
In the 1851 Census, which occurred earlier in the calendar, she is correctly described as a 68-year-old woman and a grocer in Netherton but her name is given as “Janet Brush” by Scotland’s People. Ancestry got her name right but gave her age as 18, instead of 68. By 1851 she has a 15-year-old lodger called Ann McFarlane who is a worker at the local bleachfield.
1851 Census Return for Jenny Brash
Jenny died on 13 July 1854, aged 72. Sadly for us, this is the year before the advent of statutory registration in Scotland, which would have given us a lot more information about her. However, the lady did have a will, which can be downloaded from Scotland’s People. She says she is making a will “to prevent disputes regarding my property after my death”.
However, while not a pauper, she had very little money or property. Her furniture and effects were valued at just £12.15s, along with “a few potatoes and small items” worth £1.15s and cash in hand, £2 8s 4d. The only other item is a £100 bond in favour of Strathblane Minister the Rev James Pearson “in trust for the deceased”. She gives her bed, furniture and “articles of apparel” to the daughters of her executor, friend and neighbour, Ballewan farmer Robert McKean, and the residue to her niece Isabella Aitkenhead . The will is written down by the Rev Pearson and Jenny signs it herself.
(Isabella was the daughter of Jenny’s sister Mary (b. 1778), who married an Alexander Aitkenhead in Glasgow in 1804. Isabella was born in Renfrewshire around 1816 and worked as a cotton power loom weaver, according to the 1841 Census. By the time her Aunt Jenny died in 1854, Isabella was married to provisions merchant David Neil and they had recently named their second daughter Janet Brash Neil.)
Scottish history tends to be exactly that: ie HIS story. Until recently, the lives of most women were overwhelmingly private and domestic and men got to do most of the things that get recorded in official documents. Men also did most of the writing. Women often seem invisible. For example, of the 77 people recorded on the page of the 1837 Pigot’s Directory where we find Janet Brash’s name, only three are women, all of them shopkeepers. So it is important to record what we can of the lives of women.
Jenny Brash must have been a strong character. She ran her own business for many years and outlived most of her contemporaries. She also gave her name to the area of the community where she lived. More than 170 years after her death, her name lives on in Blanefield. And when a south-westerly gale catches “Jenny’s Burn” in spate as it pours over the lip of the Campsies above the site of her old cottage, sending up a plume of spray that resembles dense grey smoke, we point it out and say: “Jenny’s Lum is reeking today”.
Anne Balfour 2025
Postscript 1:
In the absence of historical information about Jenny Brash (prior to this research), Jenny and her lum have been a source of both fantasy and comedy. In 1979 Helen Carrick-Anderson, who lived in Moor Road, wrote the first of several charming illustrated children’s stories featuring Jenny to entertain her grandchildren. These imagine Jenny living in a cave in the Campsies above Strathblane. She makes ornaments out of local gypsum and gathers wildflowers.
Three more books followed: More About Jenny (1981), Jenny Goes on her Travels (1985) and The Magic Potion (1985). Copies of all the stories can be found in the general section of the local history archive at the Thomas Graham Community Library, Strathblane.
Postscript 2:
Readers may also enjoy Tom Rennie’s poem The Sweepin’ of Jenny’s Lum, which satirises various fondly remembered local worthies including builder and plumber Arthur Muir (“kind of thrang an’ dour”) and joiner Donald Macintyre.
