Wolfhill

Wolfhill is a village in

Perthshire Perthshire (locally: ; gd, Siorrachd Pheairt), officially the County of Perth, is a historic county and registration county in central Scotland. Geographically it extends from Strathmore in the east, to the Pass of Drumochter in the north, ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

, with a population of 316 (2001 census). Formerly known as Carolina, it was given the nickname of "Snipetown" many years ago by locals, owing to the high numbers of

snipe A snipe is any of about 26 wading bird species in three genera in the family Scolopacidae. They are characterized by a very long, slender bill, eyes placed high on the head, and cryptic/camouflaging plumage. The ''Gallinago'' snipes have a near ...

s that used to inhabit the area. The hamlet is near the source of the Burrelton Burn and lies between the

Sidlaw Hills The Sidlaws are a range of hills in the counties of Perthshire and Angus in Scotland that extend for 30 miles (45 km) from Kinnoull Hill, near Perth, northeast to Forfar. A continuation of the Ochils, they separate the valley of Strath ...

and the

River Tay The River Tay ( gd, Tatha, ; probably from the conjectured Brythonic ''Tausa'', possibly meaning 'silent one' or 'strong one' or, simply, 'flowing') is the longest river in Scotland and the seventh-longest in Great Britain. The Tay originates ...

, 2 miles (3 km) north east of Guildtown and 7 miles (11 km) north-east of

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

. Close to Wolfhill are examples of pre-historic

standing stone A menhir (from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large human-made upright rock (geology), stone, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. T ...

s. One of the best-known sites in folklore is "The Witches' Stane" located between Wolfhill and St Martins. According to local legend, this was the stone to which

Macbeth ''Macbeth'' (, full title ''The Tragedie of Macbeth'') is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those w ...

's witches were chained, and it does indeed bear chain marks. "MacBeth's Castle" (a

hill fort A hillfort is a type of earthwork used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Some were used in the post-Roma ...

) can be found at the nearby village of

Collace Collace () is a parish in Perthshire, Scotland, northeast of Perth, in the Carse of Gowrie district. The parish boundary includes the neighbouring villages of Kinrossie and Saucher. The traditional industries of the area are farming, quarry ...

, near the Council Quarry on the Sidlaws. There are varying stories on how the village got its name, one being that the "Wolf of Badenoch" (

Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, Alasdair Mór mac an Rígh, and called the Wolf of Badenoch (1343 – c. 20 July 1405), was the third surviving son of King Robert II of Scotland and youngest by his first wife, Elizabeth Mure of Rowallan. He w ...

) camped there before going to Perth in the 14th century to be officially forgiven by the church for his evil ways. He is buried at

Dunkeld Cathedral Dunkeld Cathedral is a Church of Scotland place of worship which stands on the north bank of the River Tay in Dunkeld, Perth and Kinross, Scotland. Built in square-stone style of predominantly grey sandstone, the cathedral proper was begun in 12 ...

in a cask. It is also said that the last

wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly u ...

in Scotland was killed in Wolfhill but many other villages across the country lay claim to the same story. There is no doubt that wolves inhabited the area at one time. The monks of nearby

Coupar Angus Abbey Coupar Angus Abbey was a Cistercian monastery near Coupar Angus, in central Scotland, on the boundary between Angus and Gowrie. It was founded on the old royal manor of Coupar in 1161 x 1162 with the patronage of Máel Coluim IV ("Malcolm IV" ...

, who formerly owned the land, stipulated in certain mid-16th-century

lease A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the user (referred to as the ''lessee'') to pay the owner (referred to as the ''lessor'') for the use of an asset. Property, buildings and vehicles are common assets that are leased. Industrial ...

agreements recorded in the document known today as the ''Rent Book of Coupar-Angus Abbey'' (Rogers 1880; pages 251, 262) that tenants were required to ''"... sustene and nwrice ane leche of hundis for tod and wolf.."'' – that is to say, "...sustain and nourish a leash of hounds for (hunting) fox and wolf..". Birthplace of

James Croll James Croll, FRS, (2 January 1821 – 15 December 1890) was a 19th-century Scottish scientist who developed a theory of climate variability based on changes in the Earth's orbit. Life James Croll was born in 1821 on the farm of Little Whitefi ...

, FRS, joiner, janitor, librarian and arguably first world climatologist. {{authority control Villages in Perth and Kinross