Once the original suspension bridge was closed and demolished over the River Clyde at David Livingstone, it had an immediate impact on visitors to the Centre. A new bridge was needed fast.
The Sunday Post October 1949 reported “The closing and demolition of the suspension bridge over the Clyde between Bothwell and Blantyre had an adverse effect the number of visitors to the Livingstone Memorial at Blantyre. Despite the remarkably good summer weather, this year’s total of visitors to date, 68.838, shows a decrease of 6977 compared with the previous year, which, from the weather standpoint, bore no comparison. So Mr R. G. M’Callum, warden of the Memorial, reports. If, he adds, a new bridge is not built before another summer, the governors of the Memorial should consider the possibility of reverting to the conditions of a hundred years ago bv placing a ferry boat on the Clyde at this point. “
The old bridge is pictured here in the 1920s.
There was a convent school over the bridge Mike. In bothwell parish.
My late mom was born in 1914 and lived on Waterloo Row. She always said that she had to cross a rickerty old bridge in order to get to the Convent School she attended. Does anyone know of a Convent School in, I presume, Bothwell?