Researching the origins of Herbertson Street proved more difficult than first thought. Nobody has previously written how Herbertson Street acquired its name when postal addresses were allocated around 1910 and the name wasn’t in any valuation rolls of that time. Some research in the earlier 19th Century was called for and all became clear when it was found that Mrs Janet Jackson (nee Herbertson) was the last owner of Springwell Farm House prior to it being demolished in 1876. Indeed her family had owned the farm for a few decades before that. The name Jackson and Herbertson are absolutely linked to that same person, related to the Jacksons of Spittal and Bardykes.
Janet’s mother in law Mrs Margaret Herbertson was born in Blantyre in 1793, although lived most of her life over the boundary at Spittal Farm. In 1851, she was a widow at the young age of 58 and living with her daughter Janet and her husband Andrew Jackson and their family of young children at Spittal. Along with them are 4 servants. Margaret owned Springwell Farm House, which following her death in 1863 would be inherited by daughter Janet, who later lived at Old Place, High Blantyre.
Herbertson and indeed nearby Jackson Street are both therefore named after the last owners of Springwell Farm, whose former field boundaries became the two small streets leading south off Glasgow to Hamilton Road.
Odd numbered postal address were located on the east side and even on the west.
Herbertson Street has always been a small street and although side streets branching off Glasgow Road are fully explained in another Blantyre Project book, since there were only a few buildings, its worth touching upon them here too.
Many excellent old photos have been held back from Blantyre Project website to feature in this book. Meantime, here’s a great old photo of Herbertson Street in the mid 20th Century. Previously unseen online.
From “Blantyre Glasgow Road South – The Real Story” by Paul Veverka (c) 2017
Featuring Blantyre Project Social Media with permission. Strictly not for use by others on or offline, our visitors said,:
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My grandparents lived upstairs, round the back at Herbertson Street, overlooking some sort of joiners yard, I think. We got to their flat by going up stairs round the back. They left there to live at the top of Auchinraith Road in the mid 60’s. I have some old photos of the back garden and newspaper cuttings about the start of the co-op. Their name was Erskine, and there was an old lady who lived downstairs at the front, called Mrs Smith. My memories are a bit vague as I was only a kid when we visited there