This map from 1958 is a good snapshot in time showing what is essentially the end of Dixon’s Rows, ar Stonefield, Blantyre.
The tied, miners terraced homes which had existed for nearly 90 years were all but gone, largely demolished with just a few isolated homes on Dixon Street, Hall Street and Park Street, three streets which would be gone by the 1960s.
Change was in the air. Not just in the demolition of Dixon’s Rows, but looking to a modern Blantyre and the future. You’ll see on this map, white blocks of homes, which signify they were under construction all along Calder Street and at Wheatlands. Though this map was published in 1958, it was surveyed a few years earlier and therefore the map more likely represents a point around the mid 1950’s. The Calder Street houses would have been completed by 1958.
Change also was present in mining itself, with the closure of High Blantyre’s pits and the opening of further factories in the Industrial Estate.
I recall playing on the site as a four year old and picking up “waaally” tae play shoaps wi’ and getting into trouble when ma wee sister and I finally went hame, ma wee sister’s nappies fa’in aff….we lived (illegally) with my foster Grannie Cook in Calder street. They had lived at number 30 Dixons Raws.