This website has previously explored Houses 2 to 11 Mid Row, which later became known as Hamilton Place.
The other 2 blocks of homes in Mid Row, Blantyre Works Village were numbered from houses 12 to 54. With the exception of numbers 12 and 14, the homes located just off Station Road, were owned in 1900 by Joseph Monteith, a descendant of the former mill owners. Numbers 12 and 14 were owned by Angus McQuarrie, perhaps buying them from Monteith at an earlier date. Number 12 was a shop a butchers let out to the Powell family an arrangement that existed from at least 1900 right up until the row was demolished in 1928.
I have transcribed the valuation rolls for Mid Row from 1905 until 1925 setting the information out on the attached spreadsheet. This lets us see in pink, a change in circumstance, or in green where the previous valuation roll details continued. It shows a pattern of not only change in ownership of the buildings, but where there were changes in tenants renting them too.
Between 1905 and 1915, Mid Row was sold from Monteith to William Baird & Co, coalmasters. Indeed much of Blantyre Village was sold to them, including the suspension bridge. Many of the tenants were miners in 1915 and would continue to rent those one storey terraced small homes into the 1920s. By 1925, many of the people renting were different from previous years, perhaps a sign that the rows were becoming poorly maintained and another sign of their impending demolition.
What I did notice were that these miners, sometimes with their families would change homes, moving further up or down the row itself. My initial thought was that this was done due to a requirement for larger homes, but I think it simply was the case that when one became available, if it was in better condition that their own home, a quick nod from William Baird Coalmasters would have permitted the move fairly quickly. As such, there are several miners and families moving around the row between 1915 and 1925.
This type of statistical analysis and patterns can usually only be seen from drafting comparative information in a tabular format, something due to the nature of the research, can be time consuming to prepare. However, the rewards are a better understanding of what was happening in streets or homes and a greater understanding of the comings and goings of residents.
From “Blantyre Explained” by Paul Veverka (c)
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