1905 Kirkton Top Cross
Pictured here in 1905 is Kirkton Top Cross, in High Blantyre.
This row of houses, shops and pubs was built in 1865 and is no longer there. Looking at this scene today, you would see the coal monument to the 1877 pit disaster.
The two storey tenemental type buildings were largely owned by the Downie family who resided there too. Shanks’s Pub was located in this block, just out the picture to the right, although by the mid 1930s the pub in this block was gone. At the end of the row of homes was the General Supply Grocers shop, as pictured.
The water fountain you see in the foreground was installed between 1898 and 1905. (It is not on 1898 maps, despite water being run into the nearby area in the 1880s). The fountain also acted as a gas street lamp, with gas running up a conduit on the Southern side of the structure. It still existed in that position beyond WW2 years. What a crying shame such structures weren’t kept or preserved.