Yesterday, I’d posted about the Priory ruins in the 1960s and 2010’s and suggested that in another 50 years they would be all but gone. What about going BACK to how they looked a half century or so before yesterday’s photos?

During the 1920’s, the Priory ruins were certainly a LOT more substantial. Whilst literally only a couple of walls, the facades of the building were still tall, with decorative features like doorways and windows able to be made out. You can see the holes for timbers which once separated floors, indicating the Blantyre Priory was once multi storey, something many people still don’t realise to this day. These two photos were important, showing the priory easily accessible then, far more so than it is today.

The site around the Priory has been partially infilled, perhaps as a result of previous official excavations, coal mining activity of the adjacent former Bings and indeed even in modern times as the playing fields were constructed. The site used to be far more than just the walls of the Priory building. The perimeter walls of the compound itself, now largely buried, except for the part you can see on the north side near the gorge.

Today, very little of this remains. Nature intent on taking everything back under a green canopy of trees, climbing ivy and various flora.