I’ve not written much about the former Craighead School on Blantyre Project, so it’s been great to get some information recently from a teacher. Craighead’s 60th birthday was celebrated on Friday, August 29th 2008. By all accounts, it was a great day, full of surprises in the form of guests AND loads of different activities! […]
It’s the Winter Solstice. To be more precise, it’s at 1.30pm Monday, 21st December 2020. Yes, incredibly already, the days are changing getting lighter earlier by around 3 minutes each morning from now on. Darkness is on its way out and with it I look forward to seeing the back of 2020. It’s the first […]
A train crash occurred in Blantyre on Monday 21st December 1914, exactly 106 years ago today. That Monday evening an alarming collision between a passenger train and a mineral train took place between Blantyre and Newton on the Caledonian Railway. The track was which was blocked was cleared on the Tuesday morning and services resumed […]
Blantyre Project reader, Linda Marieskind has kindly shared this wonderful poem. She told me, “I decided to think about and write something in a similar vein to record my first day at Nessie’s skuil! I hope you like it, it’s just as it happened and I still see it in my mind’s eye as if […]
Jonathan Maynell, a Town Historian in Halifax writes, “I’m researching a footballer called McGill. Known to have played for Blantyre Hibernians before joining Albion Rovers in January 1903. Later played in West Yorkshire with Mirfield United (1909) and Halifax Town (1911). It has been suggested his first name is Allan, but can’t find anything an […]
On Wednesday 8th July 1914, a somewhat unusual case relating to betting in the street arrived before Sheriff Shennan in a Hamilton Court. I’ve mentioned before on this page about people who used to bet on Blantyre street corners, being lifted by police and charged. Though this case was similar, a bit of twist gave […]
In the first week of September 1914, the Hamilton Advertiser Newspaper told its readers that between three and four hundred men in Blantyre had responded to the wartime call to arms. All those men had left their daytime employment and signed up in a hurried effort to get to training and onwards to the front […]