Blantyre, not an island

A modern myth seems to have manifested in recent years. It is said that you cannot cross the Blantyre Parish Boundary without stepping over water, based on the fact that the Parish Boundaries are the River Clyde to the North, The River Calder to the West, The RottenBurn to the south and the Park Burn to the east.

Sadly, this is not true. Fanciful and would have been a great piece of trivia had it been correct. You can most definitely get out of Blantyre Parish without passing over water.

Parish Boundary in Basket Fields

The myth is corrected in my forthcoming enormous Blantyre book, “Blantyre Explained” using my graphic attached, which shows the Parish Boundaries in blue. The problem is some folk perpetuating the myth, have just simply assumed the Parish Boundaries are all rivers, when actually they’re not. Some parts of the official boundaries are roads, others are field fencelines.

There are areas on the west of the Parish near Crossbasket and Basket that the boundary is not the River Calder, but actually old roads and fencelines.

More significantly the boundary to the east is only partially the Park Burn, but importantly, is comprised of hundreds of feet of field boundaries, to the south before the ParkBurn rises at Park. It disproves the myth entirely, for clearly you can enter Blantyre Parish by land without crossing over streams and rivers. I’ve marked up these accessible spots in red on the Parish Boundaries.

Blantyre is an island? Nice idea, but wrong nonetheless.

From “Blantyre Explained” by Paul Veverka (c) 2017

Featuring Blantyre Project Social Media with permission. Strictly not for use by others on or offline, our visitors said,

Angela Burns I was told that about burnbank and thats also how it got its name. Dont know if its true or not 😕