Geograph - photograph every grid square

This slope, near the eastern summit (the Beak) of Dumbarton Rock, a volcanic plug, might seem an unlikely spot for a spring, but the feature is shown on early OS maps; it was located on this slope, just to the north-west of the Magazine (NS4074 : Dumbarton Rock: the Magazine is the building that can be seen the background of the present picture).

Donald MacLeod, in his "History of the Castle and Town of Dumbarton" (2ed, 1877), stated that "the Castle, prior to the introduction, by pipes, of the water from the Long Crags, was supplied by a never-failing spring on the eastern summit of the Rock".

It is unfortunate that the spring would go on to fail just a few years after that book appeared. According to one of the notes at the end of Dr MacPhail's book "Dumbarton Rock" (1979), the spring "is said to have dried up when the dock of the Leven shipyard was constructed at the base of the Rock in 1884".