Another previously unseen photo of Crossbasket House, again from nearly 120 years ago. This photo shows the new stone entrance which George Neilson added and it looks like the older windows had been renovated around that time too, in a style sympathetic to other parts of the house.
However, what I’d like to show are the tennis courts, which in this era were a modern addition by the Neilson family. Such was the tradition in the first decade of the 1900s for several of Blantyre’s grand houses to have their own tennis courts, a rising fashionable game, offering sportsmanship literally on your doorstep!
Two decades later, the tennis courts were moved to the side of the house (on the Greenhall side) as this area at the front of the house once again became a small formal garden. Today, this same scene, most impressively looks like this:
