Pictured here is extraordinary resolution is Calderwood Castle. Remarkably, the photo was taken in 1910, over 105 years ago, the glass plate captured by High Blantyre photographer David Ritchie. I’ve sub divided the image up into separate areas of interest, each highlighting some detail otherwise hidden by the original image. Of particular interest are the ornate heads carved on the roof, the detailing above doors, the back steps pictured, the servants quarters, a coat of arms likely to be the Maxwells of Calderwood and even figures on the terrace and balconies!
Shared here by Alex Bowie, a distant relative of mine, Calderwood Castle was a castle actually in East Kilbride but sat on the boundary of Blantyre Parish.
The castle was situated near the banks of the Rotten Calder Water in what is now Calderglen Country Park. Constructed in the late 14th to early fifteenth century by the Maxwell family, the original peel tower collapsed in 1773 after several days of severe weather. An earlier building is suggested to have stood on the site which belonged to the Barony of Mearns (Roland De Mernis), which passed with its lands to the Maxwells through marriage. A new castle was later rebuilt on the same site in the 1400’s. Later in the mid 1700’s and then 1840’s another mansion house was constructed and extended on the site, but it eventually fell into disrepair by the 1940’s, with the final vestiges of the castle being demolished with explosives in 1951. Nothing now remains except ruins and rubble. Blantyre’s now-ruined Craigneith Castle is nearby.
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