Turkey red

Cloth processing came to the Leven long before the Industrial Revolution. Bleaching of linen was being carried out by Andrew Johnstone in 1715. The bleachfields at Dalquhurn were the first established in Scotland in what was for many years a summer only activity. Sour milk, water and sunlight were the bleaching ingredients with seasonal workers drawn down from Argyll. By 1728 Walter Stirling and Archibald Buchannan had established the Dalquhurn Bleaching Co which with government subsidy and had extended the bleachfields - a mass of narrow canals of water, and beach hedges for shelter - to more than twelve acres.

For the many people in the Vale of Leven, Scotland, born after the last of the Vale textile works closed in 1960, it may be difficult to visualise the quiet stretch of the river from Balloch to Renton as one of the world's leading produces of bleached, dyed and printed cloth. It is certain however that without more than 250 years of continuous textile processing on the Leven the urbanised, industrialised communities which make up the Vale of Leven, would not be there today.