1940s or 50s Blantyre Works Farm by Louise Forrest

This photo was shared with me from Alex Rochead via Louise Forrest. Pictured is Blantyre Works Farm, although Louise had referred to it, whilst in discussion with Alex, as Mill Farm. I’m unsure of the date, but clothes styles look 1940s. (Update: David Forrest has since stated its 1936)

The Mill Farm reference is appropriate as the farm originally belonged to R Monteith Esqr, the owner of the nearby mill. This company owning the Blantyre Works village and mill, owned a lease for this farm and used it extensively. D Dunne was the factor of the farm in the mid 1850s with William Thomson being the farmer.

1859 Blantyre works Farm

The farm dates from the early 1800s. Blantyre Works Farm sat just off a road leading from Station Road. This track was later to become Farm Road, certainly named after this very property. Pictured on this map in 1859, there is nothing much surrounding the farm, but fields and of course the nearby Blantyre railway station. Farm Road had been named by 1910 with properties built immediately adjacent to the farm. By the 1930’s the current housing estate across the Farm Road had been built, enclosing the farm in, but the farm still maintained the fields behind it, stretching up to as far as the Dandy at Thornhill.

William Thomson was born in 1779 and died on 9th March 1859 at aged 80, having farmed on this land for several decades. He was listed on the 1851 living at Blantyre Works Farm with his wife Isabella and their daughter Isabella and son Robert. The Souter family were lodging also at the property at the time and Elizabeth Brownlie was the farm servant girl. On 28th December 1864, John MacFarlane married Judith Thomson, another daughter of the late William Thomson. Shortly after on 1st January 1865, Isabella Thomson (nee Anderson) widow of William died at the ripe old age of 85 years. In 1878 James Hamilton is listed in the Naismith’s directory as farmer of Blantyre Works Farm. Working for him was Alexander McWilliam, a cow keeper, confirmed in the 1881 census.

C&A Forrest are listed as the farmers of Blantyre Works Farm in 1915 and certainly for quite some time after that. It is the Forrests who are pictured in this photo. Today, Blantyre works farm is no longer there, instead modern homes on Farm Road. The Farm used to sit at the junction of Kerr Street and Farm Road.

On Social media Margaret Quinn told me, “The farm was next door to us in Kerr Street and we were allowed in on a Saturday evening to watch the Lone Ranger as they had a television auld Bob as we knew the farmer was dead by then his wife Mrs Forrest and Minnie her daughter were there would reckon the house was still there in the early sixties so it would be some time in the sixties it was demolished.”

Gerard Kellachan added, “I was brought up in 1 Monteith Place , directly opposite the farm , until married in 1967 . Like others I was also sent for milk and eggs . Some of the present houses were occupied about 1964/65 , therefore farm would probably have been demolished 1962/63.”