1895 The Cochranes at Calderglen
Meet the Cochrane family, perhaps one of Blantyre’s most prominent families. John Richard Cochrane, a power loom cloth manufacturer business man at Calderglen and his wife, Mary Ann (nee Howden) and their children.
John Richard Cochrane, a liberal unionist was born in Glasgow on 5th December 1827 and married Mary Ann in Edinburgh on 30th April 1856. Together they are pictured around 1895 with their entire family. Six daughters and one son.
The “children” pictured in all their finery are James Cochrane, Adelaid, Laura, Charlotte, Louisa, Victoria and Muriel Evelyn. This was a big family living the high life. At the time of this picture, they were waited on by 10 live-in house servants. During 1871 the Cochranes had been living at Glasgow and clearly their wealth enabled them to move to grander premises. They were considerably wealthy and moved from Hamilton to the large, detached sandstone house at Calderglen in 1882. This house also had (and still does have), extensive grounds.
They didn’t get off to a good start at Calderglen. There is one son Pelham Maitland Cochrane, an army offer who is missing. He sadly died in 1884 in a nearby railway accident and his parents built a little chapel in the grounds in his memory. The family are pictured with tennis rackets, although no tennis grounds are shown on any Calderglen map. This may have been a family outing. J.R Cochrane died in 1921 and had held a position of Justice of the Peace for Lanarkshire. I’ve recently been looking at the ancestry of this family and J.R’s extensive and impressive will. There are many more stories to tell.
Thank you to Calderglen Nursing Home staff for this photo and to Gordon Cook who helped me with some of this detail.