The letter is written on thin cream paper with a watermark of H WILMOT 1808, and addressed to Messrs William Wilson & Son, Bannockburn, by Stirling.
There are just two postal markings, 1) the framed name stamp with the mileage mark for ALLOA 430 - E of the type in use at many Scottish offices from 1811 to 1839. The E in the stamp indicates that mail to and from London would have been through Edinburgh.
2) the charge mark of 4 indicates four pence, the amount to cover the cost of the distance of not exceeding 15 miles.
From the map, it does not look as if there was a road or a bridge across the river, so that the mail would have had to go out to Stirling, and then back down to Bannockburn (indicated by the address). The scale of this map is 6 miles to the inch, so that works out within the 15 miles. It is possible that there was a ferry service to connect Alloa and South Alloa, but that would not involve Stirling.
Now for a transcription of the letter – most of it is quite legible, but as is often the case on these old letters, the signature gives more problems than the rest of the letter.
Gentlemen
I have just received yours of yesterday & beg the amount for carding & spinning at Alloa, and the price of the wood liquor may be paid into myself & shall cause Lachlin send you a sale of this amount, as the account book is at present at Alvas,
I am
Gentlemen
Your most obt st.
(Elim? Perhaps Clive?) Ramsay
Alloa 12 Decr 1810
I cannot be sure of the first name of the signature. It may be “Elim”, which may be an abbreviation of a name, or even a particularly fancy first letter ‘C’, so that it may be ‘Clive’.
An internet search brought up information about industry in Alloa in 1810, but no information at all about a Mr Ramsay in Alloa at that time, so that was no help.
I was interested in this address as somewhere in my memory was a piece of information about a battle of Bannockburn, and as I know nothing else about the town, I checked in my reference book The History Today Companion to British History edited by Juliet Gardiner & Neil Wenborn, which gave the following information.
The Battle of Bannockburn 24 June 1314.
By marching to the relief of Stirling Castle, Edward II issued a challenge that, reluctantly, Robert Bruce felt bound to accept. On the day, Bruc’’s tactical superiority and the fighting spirit of the Scottish infantry proved more than a match for the larger, but incompetently led, English army. As the only occasion when an army led personally by a king of England was defeated by Scots, the battle, which was fought near Stirling, has obtained heroic proportions in the eyes of Scottish nationalists.
More than 700 years later this battle is not forgotten, no wonder I had heard of the name of Bannockburn, even though I have no Scottish heritage.