Showing previously unseen photos, from my own private collection, this is the Eastern Caldergrove Lodge House. Pictured around 1898, you can see Priory Bridge on the left hand side.
Caldergrove Lodge House (East) – is a current sandstone house situated near Low Blantyre. Within the Parish of Cambuslang, it sits just over the boundary of Blantyre, on site of an old well.
Built in 1896 by Caldergrove Estate owner, John Marshall, a retired tube manufacturer, the house is situated at the Priory Bridge on the bend on the former Glasgow to Cambuslang road, to the south of the River Calder. The back of the house directly faces out to the ruins of the Bardykes Mill.
Built on a terraced steep slope over two levels, the tall central doorway faces south. At the front are 2 double long windows with prominent lintols and cills. With a slated roof and single central chimney, the house is about 40 foot long and well constructed.
The first tenants in 1896 were the Fisher family who moved over from the older, nearby Caldergrove West Lodge. Robert Fisher was a coachman and moved to Caldergrove around 1887. He was still at the East Lodge in 1901 with his wife, Bella and 2 sons and 2 daughters. Robert had moved out by 1905 as the valuation roll shows it rented to George Dukes, another coachman whom in 1905 was paying rent of £15 per year.
During WW1 when the main Caldergrove House was taken over as an auxialliary hospital, Mr William Groves, a fireman was the tenant of East Lodge. William was still there in 1920, even after the acquisition of the estate following WW1 by Archibald Russell Ltd (Coalmasters). During the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s, tenants changed often at this lodge house. The Main estate house was being rented by J Jeffrey Waddell, an Architect. By 1930, Maggie Smillie, a servant at Caldergrove was renting East Lodge for £21 per annum. By 1935, the sub tenant was Mr William MacGowan, a contractor. By WW2, a new tenant Mr Robert Sinclair had moved in. Archibald Russell Ltd (Coalmasters) owned the lodge house until after WW2.
Today, the house has been significantly extended to the east and north including a conservatory and is now almost triple its original size. It is a private residence, now partitally obscured by trees.
Featuring Blantyre Project Social Media with permission. Strictly not for use by others on or offline, our visitors said:
Margaret Brown Burns It’s called a gird and cleek
Joseph Allan Right enough so clear
Chris Ladds It’s simply because they were created using a film camera Paul. Digital technologies have not advanced to the stage yet where even an DSLR can translate such tonal gradations as well as ‘translate’ the distinctions between objects in a picture plain. Modern digital cameras are varying degrees of noise whereas the above displays no translation of reality. What we are seeing is instead reality. That is the reason for the clarity, and not detail. On fact the image, aside from perhaps the stone finish is not that detailed and in places even blurry. It’s superior clarity is simply because we as people can look at it and have a true sense of space and light. Most images from the period as you know only survive through halftone or dot matrix reproductions, and we really have to see the originals as with your relative’s photos to understand their original quality.
In that time there was no resolution and an image’s success depended on the quality of light and the sharpness of focus – whereas now it’s always a sacrifice of detail and noise even on the best regular market cameras.
Stuart Oneil the man resembles jimmy finlayson who did a lot of the laurel and hardy movies
Anne Irvine The wee boy looks like wee rascal