Qualla: Penicuik https://qualla.com/penicuik en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/t/penicuik-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Penicuik https://qualla.com/penicuik Penicuik: Introduction https://qualla.com/penicuik/ Photo credit Suicasmo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pennycook. That's how the locals say it - not Pen-i-cuik, the way a stranger might guess from the spelling, but Pennycook, three soft syllables. The name comes from a Brythonic compound, pen y gog, meaning 'hill of the cuckoo' in the language that was spoken in southern Scotland before the Gaels and the Angles arrived. The cuckoo is gone from the modern town's name in any language anyone here actually speaks. But the bird still calls in the Pentland foothills above the River North Esk on May mornings, and the syllable that names it has been clinging to this hill, in one language after another, for at least 1,500 years.

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Image: Suicasmo | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/t/penicuik-wp/gcvt-penicuik-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Penicuik: Paper and Power https://qualla.com/penicuik/ Photo credit YOGAN, CC BY-SA 3.0. Penicuik has been a papermaking town since 1709, when Agnes Campbell - a printer in her own right and one of the few women running an industrial concern in early-18th-century Scotland - established Valleyfield Mill on the North Esk. The river drops steeply through the town, and t...

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Image: YOGAN | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/t/penicuik-wp/gcvt-penicuik-paper-and-power.mp3 0:06 2 full Penicuik: The 309 Names https://qualla.com/penicuik/ Photo credit Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1811 the War Office bought Valleyfield Mill from Charles Cowan, who had owned it for thirty-two years, and converted it into a prison camp. The Napoleonic Wars had begun in 1803 and Britain was holding thousands of French prisoners of war; the existing facility at nearby Glenc...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/t/penicuik-wp/gcvt-penicuik-the-309-names.mp3 0:06 3 full Penicuik: The Curling Match and the Pretender https://qualla.com/penicuik/ Photo credit Jim Barton, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 8 November 1745, Charles Edward Stuart - the Young Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie - crossed the River Esk at Pomathorn Bridge as he marched his Jacobite army south. He was making for London. He got as far as Derby before turning back. Just over a century later, Penicuik host...

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Image: Jim Barton | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/t/penicuik-wp/gcvt-penicuik-the-curling-match-and-the-pretender.mp3 0:06 4 full Penicuik: Mauricewood, 1889 https://qualla.com/penicuik/ Photo credit Stephencdickson, CC BY-SA 4.0. On the morning of 5 September 1889, a fire broke out at the Mauricewood Colliery. Sixty-three men and boys died underground. Only seven came out alive. The Shotts Iron Company, which owned the pit, closed it after the disaster - not as a tribute but as a calculation. The dead wer...

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Image: Stephencdickson | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/t/penicuik-wp/gcvt-penicuik-mauricewood-1889.mp3 0:06 5 full Penicuik: The Doctor Who Inspired Sherlock https://qualla.com/penicuik/ Photo credit Stephencdickson, CC BY-SA 4.0. Joseph Bell, surgeon and lecturer at Edinburgh's medical school, grew up partly in Penicuik. One of his students was a young Arthur Conan Doyle, who noticed how Bell could deduce a patient's occupation and habits from a few minutes' observation - the limp that betrayed an old inj...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/t/penicuik-wp/gcvt-penicuik-the-doctor-who-inspired-sherlock.mp3 0:06 6 full